Glad People Care to Debate

You may have seen the post on RookieOven last week which was originally posted on The Social Penguin Blog on 15th June called

A Rallying Call for the Scottish Startup Scene. It kicked off a great bit of debate in the post comments and on Twitter and also not one but two responses from The Startup Cafe crew. Some people agree with our perspective others don’t either way I’m happy they care enough to have an opinion and to voice it.

I do however want to clarify a few points; firstly I wasn’t expecting readers to play the worlds saddest song on the worlds smallest violin for me. The post called out what we see and what we don’t like, it will not hold us back but we feel these problems exist and are potentially holding back others. It’s something that maybe wasn’t communicated adequately in the last post but me and the guys are determined and we are going to become a success story for Scotland but along the way we would like to make a difference in Scotland and see others succeed with us. I know that sounds a bit idealistic and maybe I have my head in the clouds but you’ve got to have ambition. I don’t see (or expect) anyone coming in with a magic wand to ‘fix’ things; the people who are going to change things are us, the community.

On the subject of the community, I did not say there was no community but one that is disjointed. Why limited yourself to one city? Scotland is a small place so why do we make a big deal about jumping in the car or letting the train take the strain and get supporting and promoting each other? Regardless if the startup is in Glasgow, Dundee, Edinburgh or elsewhere. Is it due to the traditional divides we have in Scotland such as the East/West divide?

The Divide

I really didn’t see the last post as pulling out excuses or being negative because there are a lot of great, diverse tech companies in Scotland just look at Interface3, Moviecom.tv, Kiltr and many more from Informatics Forum to name a few but just because a lot of good is happening doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t strive for more or better.