We are not American Entrepreneurs 🇺🇸

We love American entrepreneurs, especially the Silicon Valley ‘rock stars’. We love the stories about their routes to success, embodied by Mark Zuckerberg’s comment about innovation: ‘Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.’ Bumper sticker-style slogans pronounce ‘Fail fast, Fail often’, ‘Fail better’ and ‘Fail forward’. American entrepreneurs have taken to heart the original Samuel Beckett quote (from his 1983 short story, ‘Worstword Ho’) — ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better’ — and made it their own mantra.

There seems to be something intrinsically American about being an entrepreneur: the rags-to-riches stories; the college dropout; the garage startup. It’s all very Hollywood and glamorous; and not very British. Yes, Silicon Valley is full of Brits trying to ‘make it’ and actually ‘making it’ but, culturally, American entrepreneurialism is a million miles away from its British equivalent.

British entrepreneurs

Compared to our American counterparts, we Brits have been brought up in a different environment, more reliant on state assistance than outright capitalism. As a topical example, take the National Health Service (NHS), especially during the current lockdown period of the coronavirus pandemic. The British style is a vestige of our class system, leading to more nepotism and less meritocracy. Our class status isn’t based on our financial status: it’s more a reflection of our parents’ backgrounds. This legacy is changing rapidly: thankfully, equality is starting to permeate society, even if this shift in society is still far too slow in my opinion. Blatant, overt capitalism is still deemed unsavoury to the British palate.

Having lived briefly in San Francisco in the early 2000s, and visited the Bay Area many times, I love the entrepreneurial spirit of the Americans in Northern California. With so many people having side hustles and plenty of startups (successful and failed) behind them, it’s definitely a badge of honour to be an entrepreneur. Yes, the investment infrastructure in Silicon Valley is geared more towards higher risk than on Silicon Roundabout, but in reality there is plenty of capital in London for good ideas that have been validated.

Photo by Mathieu Turle on Unsplash

Part of the success of US capitalism is the ‘American dream’ myth every citizen buys into: the love of rags-to-riches stories and the idea that, whatever their background, anyone can become President of the United States with enough hard work, luck and determination. Most Brits have a different outlook: we buy less into this national attitude (it’s just a cultural thing). However, British millennials are more like their American counterparts. In these uncertain times, when fortune favours the brave, we are likely to see a large-scale move towards entrepreneurship in the UK, particularly from our millennial generation that is less interested in preserving the status quo. Even so, it’s unlikely British entrepreneurship will ever mirror its American cousin.

As another of my music heroes, Sting, sang in ‘Englishman in New York’: ‘I don’t take coffee; I take tea, my dear.’

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