Lessons from London ? and a few UK Start-ups that aren?t Rubbish

So that was London for another year - my annual trip back to the old town to see what?s what, en route North to spend Christmas with the family. Interested readers might recall (almost) a couple of weeks ago as I was leaving San Francisco, I reiterated my already year-old proposition that there are no interesting start-ups (which is to say companies less than 5+ years old) in the British capital. By ?interesting?, I dunno, I think I meant companies that are making a splash on the world stage, or might one day bring in - say - ten million pounds plus in annual revenues (hell, even ten million dollars would be nice). My reason for being so mean-spirited in my review of the UK start-up scene was two fold. First off, I was concerned that my reception in London would otherwise be too warm: punching every British entrepreneur on the nose before I?d even landed seemed like a good way to head off that possibility. But secondly, and more importantly, I wanted to be proved wrong. Brits love proving people wrong, and so I figured that by saying there were absolutely no good start-ups in London, scores of brilliant entrepreneurs would contact me to refute my claim. Guess what? Didn?t happen.

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