I get what you're saying, obviously - although what you're probably picking up on is not an unfamiliarity with things that happen outside the M25, given that I'm specifically talking about Brighton, Bristol, York, Cambridge and Oxford as good locations I'm hardly London-centric. I would say rather that the start-ups you're talking about aren't in my specific segment of the industry - ie. internet / web / data / social media areas. I'm looking at good places to start those kinds of start-ups not the pure computer science ones - I'm pretty familiar with Silicon Fen - I grew up in Norfolk as well, and know the area quite well.

According to Microsoft Cambridge Reseach site http://research.microsoft.com/cambridge/ "More than 300 companies and commercial laboratories specializing in computing and advanced technology are concentrated in the Cambridge area."

I guess Cambridges internet software success story is Autonomy http://www.autonomy.com/ but also Bango www.bango.com

A good site for whats happening techwise around here is http://www.businessweekly.co.uk

and Tom I hope you are enjoying your new job.

Thanks Geoff, some better examples than I could think of at short notice :-)

And Tom, it was obvious that you were thinking outside of London, but I wanted to show that there's at least an existing base of startups (and so also startup-friendly ancillary businesses and services) in Cambridge.

I suppose the interesting questions are how we interest more people in starting their own business, and why are so many of our startups swallowed up into big American corporations?

Here is a place to meet startups in cambridge:

http://www.schoolforstartups.co.uk/2010/04/20/start-here-starting-growing-a-successful-business-university-of-cambridge/