British entrepreneurs get a nosebleed if they get too high up on the ladder. They don’t feel they belong. Much of the great British public feels the same, they denigrate success and scorn those business leaders who achieve it.
These words come from one of the witnesses – David Glick of Edge Investments – giving evidence at the recent House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee investigating “Scaling up – AI and creative tech”. A former media lawyer turned investor and dealmaker, Glick went on to quote Gore Vidal’s famous dictum: “Every time one of my friends succeeds, a little piece of me dies”. He goes on: “There is still, sadly, that kind of attitude in UK society. Comparatively, when I see American entrepreneurs, Indian entrepreneurs and those from other countries, it is always, ‘Come on, I’m going to help you climb up higher.’ So there is a cultural issue there.”
There certainly is. Another witness, Barney Hussey-Yeo of Cleo AI, talked about how his highly successful fintech company was founded in the UK but moved to the US because the market was so much more promising.