phk
phknrocket1k
Atlas Icon
Posts: 12,906
Political Matrix
E: 1.42, S: -1.22
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« on: November 30, 2010, 07:56:18 PM » |
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« edited: December 26, 2010, 08:20:15 PM by phknrocket1k »
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1. The US does a good job of attracting the best and brightest. American campus's are filled with foreign born professors and students. In fact about 1 in 3 American Nobel Laureates are first generation immigrants.
Most of America's once mature but superstar startups you can think of have been founded or co-founded by first generation immigrants – Google (Russian), Yahoo! (Taiwanese), PayPal (Ukrainian, German, Polish, South African) , eBay (French-born Iranian), Sun Micro (Indian)…the list can go on.
2. t’s true that China owes its spectacular growth partly to Beijing’s efficient authoritarianism, where decision-making is ten times faster than in Washington. But can new ideas flourish in a place where people can’t take existing knowledge for granted?
3. Stanford and Berkeley yielded Silicon Valley. Strong research institutions will provide the brain, while prestigious schools of business and law will give you the money and connection.
4. Europe and Japan have rigid ways of routing people into careers. This makes unconventional paths such as entrepreneurship harder to emerge. The European approach reflects the old idea that each person has a single, definite occupation. Once you find that place, you’d work your whole career for it. This type of society perceives entrepreneurship as a futile detour from your “real” career path.
In Japan, companies recruit only once a year, and they only want recent college grads. Why? Because seniority wage system gives incentive for companies to allocate new positions to low-wage, docile youngsters.
The nature of employment in the States makes it a friendlier place for entrepreneurs. Firms hire and fire more freely, workers in turn switch jobs more frequently. When you see your career as a series of different jobs, instead of a lifetime service to a single employer, there’s less risk in becoming independent, because you’re only replacing one segment instead of trashing the whole career. Startups are not the sort of career that people could plan, so you’re more likely to get them in a society where it’s okay to make career decisions on the fly.
5. Less business regulation makes the place more attractive to all sorts of companies, including the startups. If your country has lots of business regulations, expect startups to break most of them, because they don’t know what the laws are and don’t have the time find out.
For example, many entrepreneurs in America begin in places where it’s not really legal to run a business. HP, Apple, and Google were all run out of garages. Dell was started in a college dorm. If the laws against such things were actually enforced, most entrepreneurs wouldn’t emerge.
6. Money matters. Startups elsewhere would struggle to get the funding because they’re not creditworthy. Banks are not going to bet on your imaginary business proposals and lend you money.
Entrepreneurs here have much easier access to funding. First, there are thousands of venture capital firms (VC) that are willing to bear the risk and support promising startups.
Entrepreneurs can also get money from individual “angel investors”. Facebook might never have got to the point where they could raise millions from VC funds if Zuckerberg hadn’t first received $500,000 from Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal. This funding pattern is repeated constantly in Silicon Valley. And it’s this pattern that makes Silicon Valley the world’s tech hub.
Sources:
The Social Network
Paul Graham
"How to Be Silicon Valley"
"Why Startups Condense in America"
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