We don’t seem to make it easy for new technology to remain in the UK. Just the other day I met up with Paul Stanley and Mark Jones, the top team at digital technology firm 360globalnet. They were telling me about the frustration they have had with two R&D propositions they had submitted to the EU under FP7 (Seventh Framework Programme) for funding.
I won’t go into the full story here (I am sure they’d be happy to tell you too if you asked them), but I have seen the products (a data matching system and a video-over-IP system – both completely cloud-based) and I was duly impressed. The team have recently been over to the US where the products have generated much interest in the VC community. It seems Americans ‘get it’ but the EU doesn’t. And that could mean the Americans may indeed get it and the UK won’t!