Follow Up: Entreprenuer featured on front page of StartUp Britain speaks out

April 5, 2011 2:04 PM

Follow Up: Entreprenuer featured on front page of StartUp Britain speaks out
posted by nam3d (12 comments total)

That was a very long article laying out very clearly a lot of frustration. I understand the frustrations as laid out, despite having no real intersection with anything it's talking about.

Maybe the entrepreneurs will discover a real leader arising from their midst rather than relying on a disinterested government to create one for them.
posted by hippybear at 2:48 PM on April 5, 2011

I am a peer with many of the people who are working to figure out how creative industry can work in Europe. This site launched two weeks ago. It is a government-backed initiative to put people toward investing in their own business. How does an entrepreneur come along, is there a philosophical basis for the decision?

Nearly everything, now, is published with government funding because that has been the main funding source for a very long time in business development. The UK has latched onto an idea of industrial precariousness as a source of stability in the economic sector. This means getting more middle class people into part-time employment. I am sure you will balk but it's the truth.
posted by parmanparman at 2:57 PM on April 5, 2011

"Was the only real entrepreneur featured on the website is pushed out by the founders of the project?"

Is our children learning?
posted by maryr at 2:58 PM on April 5, 2011 [3 favorites]

Yes the article is horribly written. The project is an ill-thought-out gimmick. That's all you need to know.
posted by Summer at 3:03 PM on April 5, 2011

You're not alone Britain, American politicians are also cynically using the mythology of startups to get votes too.
posted by formless at 3:17 PM on April 5, 2011

Yeah, anyone can start a business. At least, anyone with the proper education or social connections to know how to run a business. And of course, people who know enough rich people to be able to raise money. A great way to make sure wealth is well distributed throughout society.

Now, of course in the U.S there are things like the SBA and stuff like that to give people a central place to look for advice and whatnot, and get start-up capital as well. Does the U.K. have stuff like that as well?

But the whole problem with 'entrepreneurship' is that only people with enough money to take at least a year without a real job, or someone who knows investors. It's not really available to the working class or lower middle class.

And of course, 9/10 start-ups fail, especially stuff website type things like the GoBoom site. In fact with things like Steam and the App Store the idea of a game trading via physical media is kind of becoming obsolete. You're also not really creating value, you're just serving as an intermediary, hoping to skim some money off everyone for using the games that they (collectively) already own.
posted by delmoi at 3:51 PM on April 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

Maybe the entrepreneurs will discover a real leader arising from their midst rather than relying on a disinterested government to create one for them.
Yeah. Right.

Sadly, the business world seems fixated on a model that requires government to come along and create an economic environment to properly incubate new business. Or, barring that, they require government to spend the money to fund mountains of research from which "entrepreneurs" can cherry-pick the most profit-potential results.

Business hasn't done anything by itself in decades. But they sure do like to bitch and moan about government being in their way.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:59 PM on April 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

it transpires that the StartUp Britain website was produced by the same agency (Browser Creative) that developed her GaBoom website and they must have had her images and company graphics at hand. If this is the case, then what we have here is a serious administrative oversight clearly demonstrating the gross incompetence’s of those behind the project – worse still nobody bothered to tell her what the project was about prior to launch – even today she’s had no contact whatsoever with the founders and that she has no more knowledge of the project than anyone else does.

Hahah, weird.

It's interesting how much flameage this project has inspired. Is it generally being mocked in the rest of the media in the UK as well?

I feel like there's probably some bias in the links I'm seeing for this project, since A) most people I read probably hate Cameron, and B) since this is the web I'm probably seeing a lot of hate from the U.K web scene, but I was thinking it was probably geared more towards people opening coffee shops and stuff.

Still, government service cuts are going to be negative for most service sector companies, since people who lose government support for various things aren't going to have much money to spend on lattes.
posted by delmoi at 4:11 PM on April 5, 2011

only people with enough money to take at least a year without a real job, or someone who knows investors

For the founders, sure. But if it hangs in there just a little while it odes create paying jobs. I worked at several early-stage startups and got paid at all of them (admittedly none survived more than a couple years). Not as much as I would at a large company, but a reasonable amount. They do create jobs for non-wealthy people, usually (and of course a handful become successful and then create wealthy people out of non-wealthy people, but thats not the most common outcome).

But to start one, yeah you need money or connections.
posted by wildcrdj at 4:31 PM on April 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

I worked at several early-stage startups and got paid at all of them (admittedly none survived more than a couple years). Not as much as I would at a large company, but a reasonable amount.

True, but that's no different then working at any other company. Except with less job security (and the potential to make a ton of money if it goes well, which is unlikely)
posted by delmoi at 4:36 PM on April 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

I worked for a government agency tasked with commercializing technology. When I started there was a sector-building approach (provide resources in focused areas such as clean energy, software, etc) but a new CEO came along who made it all about entrepreneurs. Since we were government funded, the "leadership" felt we needed to tell success stories in order to get funding next fiscal. So the bus dev officers (I was one of them) were pressured to somehow take credit for the hard work of startups, in order to say that, thanks to our agency, these startups were successful. Which was a lie. A very hurtful lie, considering the amount of hard work it takes to build a business versus the utter sloth, mixed with rapaciousness of a government agency.
posted by KokuRyu at 4:44 PM on April 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

Is it generally being mocked in the rest of the media in the UK as well?

It got mocked pretty heavily on Twitter. I didn't see any coverage at all in mainstream media. On Twitter the design community got involved and made it all about them.
posted by Summer at 3:28 AM on April 6, 2011