The UK investment scene is an absolute joke. It’s packed with investors too sheepish to bet on startups or new companies.

UK investors are slow as hell, taking a ridiculous amount of time to decide anything. Angel groups are among the worst—I’ve literally sat in rooms watching angel investors review pitches, and one sarcastic comment can derail someone’s investment. It’s pure crowd behavior from people you’d hope could make sound, individual decisions.

The UK is also crawling with clowns who claim they can “get you investment.” The sheer amount of shit-talking in this space blows my mind. And when an investor finally decides to fund a company, they offer a pathetic trickle of cash for a massive chunk of equity. Just another reason to ditch the UK and head to the US.

There’s a noticeable brain drain happening in the UK too. Tech sector workers are flocking to the US for better pay, perks, and more interesting work. Founders are following suit, chasing investment and getting their ideas off the ground over there. The US is better—investors are more ballsy, a sharper understanding of risk management, more cash, and make decisions faster. The only catch? You’ve got to move youself (sometimes) and your company there. Tons of once UK-registered companies are now headquartered in the US.

Even with all the tax incentives and government co-funding thrown at UK investors, they still suck. They expect you to have built the product, landed customers, and generated revenue before they’ll even consider investing. That’s fine, but that’s not a startup—that’s a scale-up.

I’m not saying every single investor in the UK is useless, but most of them are.

The UK doesn’t have any globally dominant tech companies (with the exception of a very small few e.g. Revolut)—how could we? Startups here die before they can even make a dent (yes, I know lots of startups die).

This mess has been damaging the UK economy for years, and it’s not some new problem—it’s been festering for ages.