Follow-up on the Brighton tech company quitting the UK

A little follow-up on the idea that a Brighton-based tech company is quitting the UK, because of the current government’s proposals. An unusual number of people got in contact to suggest that calling ind.ie a tech company was a little premature.

The organisation, led by Aral Balkan, best known currently as a compelling speaker on privacy on the tech conference circuit, raised over $100,000 late last year to launch everything from a social network to a mobile phone. It has yet to ship the promised pre-alpha to the backers, and one in particular has found the announcement of the overseas move to be enough:

I could wait. Maybe Heartbeat will really be awesome and the wait will have been worth it. But how can they possibly get a phone ready before 2017 with their small team? Especially if they plan to design and build the hardware and operating system from scratch? And if they want to get a bigger team they’ll need to fund-raise again, which means less time for development. I don’t think it’s going to happen. And I don’t want to wait to find out what will happen.

(It’s worth noting that the move has been explained on Aral’s personal site, but not on the ind.ie blog).

For the outside, this looks like a mix of unrealistic deadline promises from ind.ie, given their very small team, with matching unrealistic optimism from the backers.

Aral has responded quickly:

@adders @hiddentao Will update the pre-alpha list this week.

— Aral Balkan (@aral) May 15, 2015