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[ BAILLIE GIFFORD ]
James Anderson,
joint manager, Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust
The US, the UK and
company creation
I
’m sitting in the sunshine with
a fashionable coffee at the Cool
Cafe in Menlo Park Business
Park. There are Teslas in the car
park and I’m waiting for my Lyft after
meeting the extremely impressive
new (female) CEO of Grail. Grail
may be able to make most cancers
curable. So I’m living the clichés but
what’s the substance? Why doesn’t
this happen in Britain? Is it chance or
more serious?
The best conceptualisation that
I’ve heard of why new companies
flourish comes not from the left coast
of America but from the right side of
China. Robin Li of Baidu opines that
three characteristics are required: lots
of nerds, serious venture capitalists
and markets of scale. Everyone now
has nerds and most venture capitalists
at least pretend to be global. This
leaves us with markets at scale.
FE TRUSTNET
For sure China and America offer
this but nowhere else does; it’s
conceivable India will but it’s already
been colonised by Sino-America
before this can be clarified. So
perhaps we just need to accept this
and move on. QED so to say.
But although this is appealing I don’t
think it’s fundamentally sufficient. Out
of modesty I think Robin Li neglects
the most critical factor of all: founder
and firm motivation. After all as our
government endlessly tells us global
Britain isn’t excluded from international
markets and most certainly not from
those of American hegemony. Indeed at
times we’re welcomed as being neutral
outsiders with the right language.
ARM has benefited hugely from not
being a US company. Spotify is beating
Apple, Amazon and the music labels
without being troubled by its very
Swedish values.
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