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VC from Asia is skyrocketing

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Re: VC from Asia is skyrocketing

#41

Post by citilife »

abhiminator wrote: post #9

I remember The Economist doing a piece on this fairly recently[0] that talked exclusively about how China's tech VCs and established corporations (referring to the likes of Alibaba/Tencent) are challenging (and to a certain extent dethroning) Silicon Valley "monopoly" when it comes to investing in innovation/R&D in super critical areas like A.I., for example. One huge advantage Chinese corporations and startups have…

> One huge advantage Chinese corporations and startups have is China's super lax (non-existent, in fact) privacy and data protection laws

I think it's more that the Chinese government will essentially gift you a monopoly if you are deemed strategic (which almost everything is at this point).

Re: VC from Asia is skyrocketing

#42

Post by kekebeici »

abhiminator wrote: post #9

I remember The Economist doing a piece on this fairly recently[0] that talked exclusively about how China's tech VCs and established corporations (referring to the likes of Alibaba/Tencent) are challenging (and to a certain extent dethroning) Silicon Valley "monopoly" when it comes to investing in innovation/R&D in super critical areas like A.I., for example. One huge advantage Chinese corporations and startups have…

China just passed pretty strict rules on data, particularly on state secrets and personal information. Would be curious to hear why this counts as nonexistent?

Re: VC from Asia is skyrocketing

#43

Post by sanxiyn »

abhinavkulkarni wrote: post #31
abhiminator wrote: post #9

I remember The Economist doing a piece on this fairly recently[0] that talked exclusively about how China's tech VCs and established corporations (referring to the likes of Alibaba/Tencent) are challenging (and to a certain extent dethroning) Silicon Valley "monopoly" when it comes to investing in innovation/R&D in super critical areas like A.I., for example. One huge advantage Chinese corporations and startups have…

I think we need to be careful about attributing all of the China's success and splurge of VC funding to IP theft, hostile domestic market for foreign players, etc. China is succeeding because it really wants to. With manufacturing in US hollowed out in last couple of decades and China being the new global manufacturing powerhouse, it is not surprising that China is seeking smart (software/cloud/AI/robotics powered) s…

> Why hasn't US achieved the level of digital payment smoothness that China has been able to?

This isn't unusual. Because of legacy issues, latecomers often enjoy superior infrastructure. For example, US is still on 110V despite all the disadvantages.

Re: VC from Asia is skyrocketing

#44

Post by lazerpants »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #32
abhiminator wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> quite the contrary, it means you never know when the government will come down on you for violating some unwritten rule. Isn't bribing your way out of "violations" common in China?

Not really. You at least have to build up your guanxi before the violations occur (or brought up as a problem), once it happens, it’s too late. At anyrate, the FCPA has to be followed by American citizens as well as companies (other western companies have similar acts), so it isn’t really an option. My point is, unless you are Chinese working for a Chinese company, don’t try to be edgy in China, follow both written a…

Meh, I often saw people ignore FCPA or find ways around it when I worked in China. Really, having your 51% JV partner be someone well connected with the Party was pretty much a guarantee of success. Granted, this was a decade or so ago.

Re: VC from Asia is skyrocketing

#45

Post by pascalxus »

abhiminator wrote: post #9

I remember The Economist doing a piece on this fairly recently[0] that talked exclusively about how China's tech VCs and established corporations (referring to the likes of Alibaba/Tencent) are challenging (and to a certain extent dethroning) Silicon Valley "monopoly" when it comes to investing in innovation/R&D in super critical areas like A.I., for example. One huge advantage Chinese corporations and startups have…

This may sound naive, but how does IP Theft even work?

I've worked as a software engineer for over 12 years at over half a dozen companies, with codebases numbering in the millions of lines of code and I have yet to see any software or code I could imagine anyone would want to steal. And if you really needed some code, I'm sure it's available somewhere as open source. And wouldn't the open source code be much more preferable? rather than ripping out some piece of "stolen" code that was never meant to serve other purposes.

Re: VC from Asia is skyrocketing

#46

Post by csomar »

Everyone is ignoring the fact that China is a massive closed market. Most western services do not care about China. China culture is different and it doesn't seem that the "world" is willing to translate and adapt its services to it.

This means a huge opportunity for local ventures.

Re: VC from Asia is skyrocketing

#47

Post by fspeech »

Chaebixi wrote: post #35
abhinavkulkarni wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we need to be careful about attributing all of the China's success and splurge of VC funding to IP theft, hostile domestic market for foreign players, etc. China is succeeding because it really wants to. With manufacturing in US hollowed out in last couple of decades and China being the new global manufacturing powerhouse, it is not surprising that China is seeking smart (software/cloud/AI/robotics powered) s…

> Why hasn't US achieved the level of digital payment smoothness that China has been able to? Because it already achieved that "level of digital payment smoothness" with credit cards? > I think we need to be careful about attributing all of the China's success and splurge of VC funding to IP theft, hostile domestic market for foreign players, etc. China is succeeding because it really wants to. > It's important to re…

> Because it already achieved that "level of digital payment smoothness" with credit cards?

Whether the two are equivalent depends on the transaction costs of the two models.

According to the Economist: "Visa and MasterCard extract over 0.10 cents of net income for every dollar of payments. Ant takes a smaller cut, of less than 0.03 cents." https://www.economist.com/news/business/21726713-ant-financi...

Perhaps more importantly I've seen estimates that Chinese banks lose $20 billion yearly in credit card fees due to the mobile payments.

Re: VC from Asia is skyrocketing

#48

Post by pascalxus »

kozikow wrote: post #6

I got a random idea: what if sites like HN, Reddit, RSS readers, etc. would have netflix-like subscription for articles? I don't care about WSJ or other paywall publishers. Especially not enough to subscribe. I however do care about occasional story that ends on HN.

I wouldn't mind paying for articles with micropayments of say 10c per article. I guess i'm the only one.

Re: VC from Asia is skyrocketing

#49

Post by yorwba »

pascalxus wrote: post #45
abhiminator wrote: post #9

I remember The Economist doing a piece on this fairly recently[0] that talked exclusively about how China's tech VCs and established corporations (referring to the likes of Alibaba/Tencent) are challenging (and to a certain extent dethroning) Silicon Valley "monopoly" when it comes to investing in innovation/R&D in super critical areas like A.I., for example. One huge advantage Chinese corporations and startups have…

This may sound naive, but how does IP Theft even work? I've worked as a software engineer for over 12 years at over half a dozen companies, with codebases numbering in the millions of lines of code and I have yet to see any software or code I could imagine anyone would want to steal. And if you really needed some code, I'm sure it's available somewhere as open source. And wouldn't the open source code be much more pr…

IP that's worth stealing is not limited to one specific implementation, it's about using someone else's idea. (So "theft" is a misnomer, it's really about imitation.)

For example, if you buy a competitor's product to take it apart, replicate its components and assemble lots of knock-offs, you have some validation that the product is going to work, without having to do any costly planning and design yourself. All of that works without literally breaking into the competitor's factory to steal their equipment or their code.

For a lot of really valuable IP you won't find an open source implementation, or if you do, you won't be able to legally use it, at least as long as software patents are a thing.

Re: VC from Asia is skyrocketing

#50

Post by yorwba »

kekebeici wrote: post #42
abhiminator wrote: post #9

I remember The Economist doing a piece on this fairly recently[0] that talked exclusively about how China's tech VCs and established corporations (referring to the likes of Alibaba/Tencent) are challenging (and to a certain extent dethroning) Silicon Valley "monopoly" when it comes to investing in innovation/R&D in super critical areas like A.I., for example. One huge advantage Chinese corporations and startups have…

China just passed pretty strict rules on data, particularly on state secrets and personal information. Would be curious to hear why this counts as nonexistent?

Do you have a link to a source handy?
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