I've lived in London for a decade, and feel incredibly lucky to have access to the transit here - having lived in Aus, NZ and Canada previously.

It's not perfect. It's late sometimes, pollution sucks, and often crowded - but people here who like to criticise it really don't recognise how much better they have it than lots of other places.

Same with travel from here to Europe (by train), is just awesome.

I think it is widely known that public transport in the US is god awful. Public transportation is lovely in most European countries, IMO.

I've visited Paris and London a few months ago as a tourist.

I am really impressed by London public transport, both the classical red double deck buses and the subway.

Some bits about the service can be pretty astounding.

I used to live near the Central line. The station near home was open air and the exit was at the very end of the platform, so I always wanted to make sure I entered the train from the correct end. Service on the Central line is frequent enough (24 trains per hour off-peak), that, if I hopped off the train from the wrong end, the time it took me to walk the length of the platform was long enough for the next train to arrive.

Thin air? It was delivered 3 years late and cost £5bn more than it should have. While projects like HS2 to the North are scaled back. The UK uses other parts of the county as a piggy bank to fund London projects.

I have a dog in this fight as I'm quite close to the public transport industry in the North and it's pretty disheartening to see politicans use us as some sort of "policy win" and then never follow through with it. Manchester only recently got devolved powers meaning the region did not have to get approval from Westminster on how they use their money and the bus and tram system has completely improved in the sapce of a couple of years (unified tickets, tap and go) with the suburban rail to come into that this year.

What is also interesting is that London's productivity growth is falling compared to Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool. So those cities that aren't getting the fancy new train lines are actually performing better.

> Under the project name of Crossrail, the system was approved in 2007, and construction began in 2009. Originally planned to open in 2018, the project was repeatedly delayed [...] The service is named after Queen Elizabeth II, who officially opened the line on 17 May 2022[...].

I wouldn't say thin air, exactly.

The Elizabeth Line was unbelievably expensive to build; that's how the UK did it.

having done a lot of work on it in a previous career, I can confirm that it was born out or no shortage of blood, sweat and signalling snafus.

I think you're right that the ambitions in Europe are smaller and I'd say more likely healthier for those involved and maybe the world in general. I have spent some time working in a start up hub in Scandinavia and there was the usual talk of innovation, disruption, work hard, etc... but by 4:30 the offices were empty and people had gone home to their families. Work life balance still came first.

I feel that these shouldn't be alternatives. Calling something startup is up to the definition that we use; one that I like is the following:

   A startup is a temporary operating model designed to discover a repeatable, scalable, and profitable business.

A friend of mine used:

   A company that just started that can scale to 100M evaluation in less than 5 years. 

From these point of views, there are a lot of wonderful SMEs that need to see the ligth. They should be supported by the government and the community, but they need very different tools from what we define as startups.

A seed round of million of dollars might not make sense for a flower shop, but could be reasonable if you plan to develop the next generation B2B flower shop SaaS integration.

I really hate the exponential growth every year, which is physically impossible, instead of a plain "sustainable business solving a need that people have." as you mention.

Naturally as soon as the need is covered, and there are no new people to sell the product to, the exponential growth every year mentality bursts into entshitification, or firing half of the company because the targets weren't reached, but no worries at least the shareholders are happy.

Maybe it is my European mindset that cannot grasp this MBA mindset into creating /destroying jobs as if people didn't matter.

I mean, I do slightly appreciate this (not all businesses need to grow 10X every year to succeed), but the other way of phrasing it is that London produces lots of business that generates lots of money.

US founders have essentially outsourced risk to London.

> What London actually built is Europe’s most efficient farm system for US acquirers. The city does the expensive, risky work of finding founders, funding early rounds, and proving product-market fit. American companies wait until the risk is de-risked, then buy the winners at discounts enabled by London’s shrinking public markets.

https://xcancel.com/aakashgupta/status/2016375397131420005

It's a classic example of how natural advantages and network effects can overcome mediocre to poor policymaking.

The UK has been run by blithering idiots for decades at this point, but London has survived so far

Is it reasonable to say that in many (not all) parts of London, English no longer functions reliably as the default public language, even if most individuals technically "speak English"?

Startups might thrive there, but business investment in England (particularly in mature businesses) has not exactly been lively ever since Brexit. I can't recall the last time I heard someone talking favorably about investing in England, or at all, really.

Plus SEIS is the most insanely generous investment tax relief

Is deep enough pool of capital for the vast majority of businesses.

Its cultural diversity is a plus for most people (other than people like DHH).

The big problem with London is that it is very, very expensive.

I don't know London all that well, I've only spent about a month there. But in my limited experience the food scene didn't come close to LA, SF, NYC, Tokyo.

As an example, the LA metro Area (LA, OC, SB), 46% latino, 27% white, 15% asian 7% african, 3% mixed

There huge sections of those cities, several kilometers long where you drive for miles and see majority one culture. Several areas majority korean, chinese, japanese, vietnamese, middle eastern, african,

Food only takes you so far. The housing stock is simply terrible. Extremely small, damp, badly insulated ... I lived in four boroughs, from poor Southwark to rich Richmond. Had a couple of friends sharing a luxury flat by the Emirates stadium, you could hear the neighbours two doors down.

It was alright in my twenties. Built a career, made a ton of money before the IR35 reform, but you sort of felt like everyone had an expiration date, was there to build a career and then move away. It's not that interesting outside of zone 1, it's the same high street full of Prêts/Nerro/Itsu (If you're lucky) or Paddy Power/Chicken shop/charity shop, and rows of small, drafty and moldy terraced houses.

I wouldn't live there, but Paris is infinitely more charming, and keep getting more pleasant as they remove the cars from the city. It's a place that feels lived in, that encourages and rewards you for wandering.

Having spent some of my life on UK, I would rather live in Bristol or Cardiff, and travel to London on per need basis, than be located there.

True. Generally whatever niche interest people have, they usually can find it in London. As a fellow passenger old lady once put it on the tube: "London might not be the prettiest but certainly the most interesting city".

Though personally I find it pretty enough.

Where else have you lived though? The cost of living is high, healthcare is problematic, crowded, bad weather, low economic growth prospects.

It's not even top 10 on most lists. Europe, Australia has way better cities.

Example Sydney, life expectancy is at least 5 years more.

The poverty rate in London, 26%, is double of Sydney at 13%.

E.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2025/06/18/the...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Index

Back when I ran the Shenzhen Gastronomic Society I did most of the alphabet in Bangkok one trip, beginning with Afghan. I'd wager it's better food than London on average, purely based on freshness and tropical inputs. I think if you were to pick the best city on earth for food it would have to have resident international populations, a tropical climate, and at least enclaves of wealth with a relatively free visa policy. Bangkok fits the bill. For variety I much prefer it to Singapore, KL, HK, Jakarta, Taipei, etc. Best for drinks has to be HCMC. Paris and New York are up there too, but you have to be 0.1% to enjoy them exhaustively. I spent 10 years designing food robots mostly because so much damn awesome food is ~unavailable outside its origin. Now raising for GTM/growth: https://infinite-food.com

There is only so much of food one can eat and after all potatoes and steak do the job as well.

>> Surprised London holds this position given the cost of living. Housing alone eats such a massive chunk of salary that I'd expect talent to gravitate toward cities where their equity/salary goes further. How do early-stage startups compete for engineers when rent is £2k+ for a one-bedroom?

thinking about comparisons, in SF the average 1B is $3300 https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/san-fran...

In NYC it is similar.

SF's challenge is that the business distract is split across 2 areas (SF, SV) 50mi apart, with extremely sparse public transit in SV. Everything is doable, just be prepared for $100 Uber bills as you go between meetings.

In NY the business district is thankfully mostly centralized. However, poor commuter train service outside of Manhattan makes everything more expensive as there is insatiable appetite in central areas to avoid the commuter trains.

Plenty of stuff much much cheaper than that outside of the center. Quick look in Deptford shows a bunch of 1 bedrooms for £850/m

I mean, by comparison to the booming US market, paying for London talent is becoming an absolute bargain...

Another British company swallowed by the US :(

"Freetrade built a profitable trading app, got acquired by IG Group for £160M after targeting a £700M valuation"

That is not an accurate recollection of history. Freetrade raised money at a £700 million valuation at the very top of the market when money was plentiful, then, when the money dried up, and they were forced to go from losing money to making money, and they cut all advertising, they were able to just about scrape profitability. At the point of the acquisition, Freetrade either needed more investment to fund more advertising, or get acquired. After 10 years, a dozen rounds of fundraising and capital drying up, £160M is a good exit. Freetrade was significantly overvalued at £700 million.

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/investing/article-142962...

London and UK for that matter is great and seeding Startups...high quality universities, entrepreneurialism and attractive tax benefits for angels but for real growth capital it lags massively behind US and has forever.

The Kraken story is one to follow to see if this changes...https://www.british-business-bank.co.uk/news-and-events/news...

This.

Also UK contract law is well established and it's easy to find experienced transatlantic lawyers and firms (there's a reason UK lawyers can practice in NY and why both Hong Kong and the Emirate of Dubai kept poaching British judges with contract dispute into their business judiciary).

In most cases when we'd invest in a startup abroad, the founder would often structure their startup as a subsidiary of a US, UK, Singapore (especially Indian/Chinese startups), or Cayman Islands (it's a BOT so you basically get it for free) corporation.

Ironically, this ease of financial access is what makes it difficult to seed a lasting DeepTech startup in the UK because capital would often be deployed to invest in other startup ecosystems. I wrote about this before on HN as well [0][1][2]

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42768018

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42767986

[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42763734

There's an argument that some of these takeovers should have been blocked.

> enabled by London’s shrinking public markets

That doesn't seem to be true?

I don't know Aakash Gupta so I can't say if he's lying or just didn't do his research, but I know the IPO figures he cited there are wrong, like very wrong, which puts everything else there in doubt.

Not to mention location of IPO not being all that important. But that's a whole separate thing.

In football we’d call the US “tap-in merchants”.

Error 404, Berlin apartment not found, or current tenant wants 11k for "the furniture" if I want the honor to be allowed to rent the apartment

I arrive in 2026. Decide to start a startup. By the year 2038, the state mandated reader of legal documents has finished reading out aloud to me and my co-founder. Now we find a VC. His documents need to be read to us both. But the Y2K38 problem strikes. He thinks we are in the year 1970. He needs to read us the "ancient company addendum". While he's reading he chokes and keels over, dead from the emissions from his Volkswagen. Our ARR may be zero, but what about our government grants? Also zero.

My friend. He starts in France in 2026. The government mandates that the retiree earnings to worker earnings ratio must be fixed by law to what it was in 2025: 130%. For every employee I hire, I must also pay a retiree 1.3 times his salary. He visits me via train in 2038. I ask him how his trip was. Turns out he actually got on Deutsche Bahn train back then in 2026. I just didn't know because he spent all his time on Twitter explaining why the US approach to startups won't work. He's lucky. Pretty short delay for DB train.

Come to Germany, the letters from Rundfunkbeitrag and Waldorf Frommer are already waiting for you!

There's a lot of problems with bureaucracy there (I've lived in London and Lisbon). It's a great city but the government is insanely inefficient (compared to the UK IME).

Long term visa waits are 2 years+. In a personal example, Portugal was the last country _by far_ in the EU to be able to issue residency cards for UK people after Brexit (despite having a very sizeable british population). This caused a lot of practical problems, as it stuck everyone in a massive limbo - other EU countries wouldn't accept that you were a portugese resident with the piece of paper they gave you. It took intense lobbying by the British embassy and European Commission to get the system in place at all.

In a commercial sense there are other problems. The court system is completely non functional. A simple civil case can take _years_ just to get a hearing. With appeals etc you can easily look at a decade. Again, there's a lot of problems in the UK with courts, but it is on a different scale there. This causes a lot of problems because businesses can get away with various shady stuff knowing it is basically impossible to enforce contractual terms - everything from landlords to b2b has issues.

It's got an enormous amount of promise but until the immigration/court system improves it is very hard to do business there.

The CEO of cloudflare has posted about this kind of stuff on Twitter (Cloudflare is a huge employer there) occassionaly. It's not positive to say the least.

It truly is. I've seen multiple pre-seed startups and founders burn significant amounts of personal capital in order to land an O-1A visa because of how much capital and mentorship is available here.

Working for London startups in the past, I've found they're much more polite, but much less honest and straightforward. There's a layer of britishness you have to get past sometimes to get to what people really want instead of directness.

Yeah SF is 10x every other place in earth. People that think things are comparable have never lived here.

How's the comp? From HN I had gotten the feeling that the UK was worse than most of western europe in that regard.

It's not based on marketing, it appears to be based on metrics like amount of venture capital raised.

For you specifically that may be true, but the numbers say London dominates by far.

Sand Hill road

Could you give only a few examples from those PLENTY of other places that are better? Like the first 10 that come to your mind, you made me very curious!

I'm waiting for the yearly "Waterloo is the Silicon Valley of Canada" article that always fails to deliver its promise.

I grew up in Waterloo but it's just not it lol.

Isn’t it the same deal in every major tech hub?

The math works out for almost every HCOL area. Your salary is higher. Rent is high too but people either choose to live further away or accept a smaller apartment/condo.

London has a big commuting radius with strong regional transit (as maligned as it is).

Sounds more like a company problem than a London problem. Wages also - the distribution is very wide.

This is generally how it is. For the entry level market you have a realistic choice of 5 companies like Barclays, BT, Amazon, SKY for limited positions while competing against the world for them. A fresh linkedin job post for tech even for no-name companies gets a 100+ applicants in under an hour starting at 30k salaries. I'm not even sure which startups are hiring graduates except maybe from Oxbridge. It is obvious a lot of people commenting particularly in this thread are ultra-privileged expats where "London" is just zone 1 for them and are well connected in the industry. They probably don't even know what Morley's is. Living costs along with the high tax rates alone will eat up your income and I know British people who work in international bank's at senior positions complaining about these things and about mass immigration all the time.

This doesn't seem true, I work in a UK tech company and it's an incredibly international team. My team has three Brits (including me), a Norwegian, a Swede, a Pole, and an American. The CEO is Irish, the CTO is German/American.

Obviously that's just one data point, but every tech company is similar.