I really like the guys over at Nestoria, a property search engine in Europe. I met them over at Yahoo! and they asked my to be their interview of the month. Here’s an excerpt, for the whole thing check out their blog.
3. Why set up your start-up in the UK? Especially in the current environment of higher taxes (VAT, capital gains, etc) and reduced government spending?
Here’s something controversial for you, I don’t mind paying taxes. Especially for things like education and health care. As someone who grew up with a single mom who worked very hard, I had to take on a huge debt to go to University and then graduate school so I appreciate everything the state does and if that means that I take a little bit less home so be it.
At the same time London is one of the most active entrepreneurship and digital centres so anytime you can get a mix like that you’d be mad not to take advantage of it.
The capital gains tax hits entrepreneurs and investors hard, but I do believe the government won’t take it higher than 40% which is what it was a couple of years ago. Hopefully, the government will include some breaks and exemptions for entrepreneurship.
Right now you have to be where your market is and where you can build a business, if you get to a point where you’re worrying about how much of your profits are being taken by taxation you’re going in the right direction. For me, the amount of connections, meetings, clients, advisors, investors you have in the UK and especially in London is phenomenal. People always talk about Silicon Valley and that’s great if you’re a tech company, but in places like London and New York you’re closer to the real world, where most people look at you funny when you say you “tweet”.
More on the Nestoria blog
