Reprisal said:
When you find yourself sitting around with some smart people and a good
idea, you try to get moving on it as expediently as possible. Generally
that means, where ever most of you happen to live at the time. Moving
is costly and time consuming.
If you are young (as I expect you are) you won't have the shackles that
hold you in London. If you are older and own property, selling up and
moving will raise a huge amount of capital in the current UK market,
even after purchasing elsewhere. Capital that you could invest in the
startup.
I moved from Alexandria (Loch Lomond, north of Glasgow) to Cambridge in
1988. I was penniless having not been paid for months and then the
company went tits up. And yet I could afford it. Moving doesn't cost
that much (it didn't then and it doesn't now and I had my stuff in
storage for over a year - it cost so little I can't even remember it -
if it had been expensive that'd be lodged in my brain forever) in
relative terms. It doesn't take that much time (not when you factor the
cost against where you are living).
Cash burn is your major issue - compared to this, moving costs are
trivial. Cash burn in London is worse than just about anywhere you can
choose in the UK, from premises rent to wages to live, etc.
Being in very large cities has a lot of other advantages as well, even
to >start ups.
There are plenty of large cities in the UK. None of which of have the
costs associated with London. Or the -ves of living in London (but I
guess you see those as +ves). If I was in the market for choosing a city
(I'm not, I hate them) I'd choose Manchester or Leeds or Glasgow.
Anyway, as I said, good luck with your startup. I hope for your sake it
has a higher barrier to entry than punchbowl.com. Do you have a website
so we can see if you have a decent idea? (No I don't want to copy it,
I'm way too busy already).
Stephen