Met a good guy running a tech hub in Germany. We talked about equity and about the number of angels required to fund a start up in Cambridge, UK and Silicon Valley. He called it “crowd funding”.
Apparently it is very difficult to do in Germany as every new shareholder in a company requires formal approval. Guess they learnt some pretty tough lessons in the past so they have tough rules on shareholders. So to get round this problem, one shareholder makes an investment and then sets up something like a trust in which other investors can take a “stake”.
Of course you need some rules but the more rules the greater the constraints on the entrepreneur who has enough on his plate to get a start up off the ground.
My new friend from Germany also told me that he had lost a lot of his families money in a start up and was now running a hub. Nice guy and hope things work out for him.
Perhaps our Prime Minister was right to keep out of Europe. If we had these crazy rules our City would not be the creative hub it is and the key part of the UK economy. We certainly would not have the Cambridge Cluster or Cambridge Phenomenon as some like to call it. It is a cluster really as Prof Porter identified with all the people working together without too many rules and bureaucracy.
Sometimes we forget how lucky we are to live in Cambridge, UK. And never forget the beautiful church music especially at this time of the year. As I had to remind a friend – it is a service not a concert!
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