I my experience of both US & UK companies I find the US ethos is far more rewarding in terms of stock/options and compensation. Even with some small UK startups I find the mentatility is still for the senior management to protect their interests and as such there’s really no advantage for general staff. Each type of employment should have its benefits and downsides, but working for low pay for a startup or VC with no hope of progressing can be pretty soul destroying. It’s maybe a very British thing that the desire to make heaps of cash should go unspoken.

You are kidding? So, you don’t approve of books, then? The publisher of a Jane Austen, or an annotated Coleridge – no reward for their work?

Listen, sunshine. Your work at the BBC and the BBC’s involvement in the education marketplace does not come at no cost. It’s funded by a mandatory licence fee, which is the most regressive form of taxation you could imagine, should you ever, ever bother to think about the reasons why your job at the BBC should have been funded by a tax that put people in prison.

You really are a thoughtless, bratty, arse, aren’t you. Absence of question maek intentional.

Hey thats a little unfair – there are lots of skilled people working some extreamly long and hard hours, generally for the consultancy companies.

Why? Because they are too scared to leave. The chance to make serious money in a start up comes with a serios risk, and so they stick with making their money in a low-risk environment.

Actually, it’s only promo tv content (which kinda disappoints me) so I don’t see it as much of an issue. But then also I’m not a TV license payer anymore!

Great points about the European scene – definitely agree.

On the BBC front – I’m actually a bit annoyed that they are going to post content on YouTube as what does that mean to the UK taxpayer where everyone else in the world will now get to see the content for free…?

Not really, in fact I think the BBC is doing some wonderful things right now with projects such as the Innovation Labs – where the BBC (in partnership with bodies such as NESTA, I believe) pays small companies to attend week long residential workshops to hone their idea and pitch it to the BBC commissioners at the end of the week.

I helped on one of these last year when I was at the BBC, and Ian Forrester (current head of backstage.bbc.co.uk) is currently in Scotland doing another. There is a great push on this project to do these outside of the South-East.

I think overall BBC commissioning model could be improved – it’s currently a long drawn out process to become an approved supplier although one could argue this is protecting license fee payers by ensuring the BBC only deals with companies that can deliver projects to the scale and quality the BBC requires.

Clearly we’re also talking about agencies here (who would potentially supply the BBC) and I’m currently more thinking about start-ups (who want to run their own projects). One could argue that an agency pitching a project to the BBC (or anyone else) should consider it’s commercial viability, and if there’s something there, consider running the project themselves rather than for the BBC or another party.

Andrew – was there a specific aspect of the process you were specifically thinking about as your question was particularly open-ended.

I fear this approach often doesn’t work – for a number of reasons.

Firstly if you work somewhere like the BBC, Yahoo, Google or practically any of the large companies (and even the smaller ones) you usually sign away your rights to IP and thus you are on shaky ground as to who has ultimate control of the business. I know at least one VC deal that fell through because during the due diligence it transpired that the startup had begun whilst the founder was working at a ‘Big Name’ and it wasn’t clear cut whether under his employment contract the Big Name could claim ownership of the idea and the implementation if things became a success.

Also, it’s very hard to loose that steady income – I know from personal experience. And the more you earn over time, the harder it is to pull away – especially if your life style also improves with the greater money coming in.

I think if you have an existing steady job, it’s wreckless to quit everything and then do a start-up – sure, do a prototype in your own time etc.

But it’s hard to scale a business you’re only running in your own time. Many entrepreneurs I meet find it hard to run their startup given all hours of the day (thus the nod to the ‘25 hr day’).

And VC’s are going to look for full-time commitment if they are going to back you. You’ll need to quit your job way before they’ll look at investment in you.