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Erik: What do you see as the key enablers of success within the London startup culture?
Richard: Well, London is very different from the US. I think just there are a lot of cultural
differences. I think Londoners tend to be really, not Londoners, Europeans, quite pessimistic
about things. I think I'm lucky my parents are both from, not from the UK, so my dad
was from South Africa and my mom was from the US. I don't know, I maybe I had a little
bit more optimism than my friends at school who all thought, you know, 'Why would you
go and start a business? You'll definitely fail. It will be awful.' And then so on, and
so on, and so on. And I think London and Europe needs to go over the failure, the fear of
failure. I think that's one of the biggest things that, that things like Seedcamp, things
like mentorship, and, you know, being connected to a network of other successful people will
really help kind of that sort of negative culture of London or of Europe, I'm lumping
all of Europe into this, this is really unfair of me. I think the British tend to be, you
know, their wry sense of humor. You know, 'It rains a lot. We're all depressed.' And
we tend to, you know, it's glass half empty kind of stuff.
Getting over that and, you know, seeing the positive success stories and the fact that,
you know, making these -- taking these kinds of risks can have huge benefits. There's no
doom and gloom if you get it wrong. I think that's one of the things that's starting to
happen in the UK.