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China VC has overtaken Silicon Valley, but do aggregates tell the whole story?

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Re: China VC has overtaken Silicon Valley, but do aggregates tell the whole story?

#41
post #4

Adjusted for purchasing power it probably looks even worse for Silicon Valley. How much is an office and a good developer in a big city in China?

Chinese real estate prices are SV level already in some cities that are popular with tech. However, they lean more on dense open offices and even converted underground shopping malls. They also tend to put development centers way out in the suburbs away from expensive city centers (well, it depends, for every Lenovo that is almost out to changping, there is a Microsoft in the heart of Zhongguancun). High office price…

The good thing is that their public transportation does work. Not like bayarea ...

Re: China VC has overtaken Silicon Valley, but do aggregates tell the whole story?

#42

China is an interesting case because many of the startups are directly backed by government interests. This is also true for SV but not to the extent that it is in China. Most SV firms are backed by private capital with a few notable exceptions (In-Q-Tel). It's not really an apples to apples comparison. Massive government funding is providing huge amounts of capital to make this happen and there is speculation on bub…

This is not true. In fact, most of the startups are avoiding government interested related projects because China government can easily shutdown or take control of your startups for FREE.

That's why there is no SpaceX or anything that can used in weapon area.

Re: China VC has overtaken Silicon Valley, but do aggregates tell the whole story?

#43
post #14

> China has its money where the action is. This has been absurdly obvious for about 3-5 years now. The knowledge of actual hardware creation & manufacturing has largely migrated to China (hello outsourcing). Costs of living in reasonably stable environments (required for broad innovation) in the US is absurdly high. Government support and funding for innovation - which is required for high value research - has been g…

> they can watch the US hamstring itself via libertarian policies The size of the US federal budget has only gone in one direction regardless of which party was in power, and it hasn't been to get smaller. And they keep passing anti-startup garbage like FOSTA or the incredible bureaucracy that de facto prohibits small businesses from participating in the finance or medical industries. These are not libertarian polici…

> The size of the US federal budget has only gone in one direction regardless of which party was in power, and it hasn't been to get smaller. And they keep passing anti-startup garbage like FOSTA or the incredible bureaucracy that de facto prohibits small businesses from participating in the finance or medical industries. These are not libertarian policies.

Yup, all correct. I say this with the slight bias of a dual national, but if you want a glimpse into the future that current US policy gets you, look at Italy. And then keep in mind that Italy still provides education and healthcare.

EDIT: Not sure why I'm getting downvoted. I didn't make this comment to be inflammatory, moreso to point out that our policy promotes wealth concentration and erodes middle class opportunities. I'm not suggesting that libertarian policies are a solution, nor that the US has adopted them. Just saying that the Italian regulatory environment favors incumbents and that my take is that we're headed in that direction as well via corporate capture. Italy's not a disaster - it's still the 9th largest economy in the world - but it certainly doesn't live up to its potential following its post-war boom.

Re: China VC has overtaken Silicon Valley, but do aggregates tell the whole story?

#44
post #42

China is an interesting case because many of the startups are directly backed by government interests. This is also true for SV but not to the extent that it is in China. Most SV firms are backed by private capital with a few notable exceptions (In-Q-Tel). It's not really an apples to apples comparison. Massive government funding is providing huge amounts of capital to make this happen and there is speculation on bub…

This is not true. In fact, most of the startups are avoiding government interested related projects because China government can easily shutdown or take control of your startups for FREE. That's why there is no SpaceX or anything that can used in weapon area.

China has a bunch of orbital rocket launcher startups.

Re: China VC has overtaken Silicon Valley, but do aggregates tell the whole story?

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Suburban Ohio is literally an order of magnitude cheaper than say San Francisco and Cleveland isn't that much more expensive or for that matter unstable. Do you know what else is within 300 miles of Cleveland Ohio? Absolutely nothing.

> Do you know what else is within 300 miles of Cleveland Ohio? ~50 million people live within 300 miles of Cleveland vs about ~16 million within 300 miles of SF. https://www.freemaptools.com/find-population.htm

A circular radius of Cleveland is meaningless because half the circle is in Canada. A large portion of that population would be metro Toronto. On top of that the absolute numbers don't matter at all; it's about density.

Re: China VC has overtaken Silicon Valley, but do aggregates tell the whole story?

#47
post #14

> China has its money where the action is. This has been absurdly obvious for about 3-5 years now. The knowledge of actual hardware creation & manufacturing has largely migrated to China (hello outsourcing). Costs of living in reasonably stable environments (required for broad innovation) in the US is absurdly high. Government support and funding for innovation - which is required for high value research - has been g…

> they can watch the US hamstring itself via libertarian policies The size of the US federal budget has only gone in one direction regardless of which party was in power, and it hasn't been to get smaller. And they keep passing anti-startup garbage like FOSTA or the incredible bureaucracy that de facto prohibits small businesses from participating in the finance or medical industries. These are not libertarian polici…

> These are not libertarian policies.

The Iraq war had significant buy-in from (some now mainstream) libertarian writers and thinkers. For example, Megan McArdle, under the name "Jane Galt", wrote feverishly in favor of the war on terror and mocked those who opposed it. The libertarian argument was that by toppling dictatorships and theocracies, these "liberated" middle-eastern democracies would all have liberalized economies.

I don't want to single out libertarians here though, I just want to point out interventionist policies have widespread support in the United States across the political spectrum (after all "even the liberal New Republic" supported it) and I don't see that trend reversing any time soon.

Re: China VC has overtaken Silicon Valley, but do aggregates tell the whole story?

#48
The Total Addressable Market is huge in any developing country. The only problem was that the previously internet penetration was very low and not many people had computers to get online. Cheaper and more mature smartphones has changed all that. Now with the huge and growing "online" population it is not surprising that this is happening.

But, I must add that China's notorious protectionism is also playing it's part. No international company can take money from Silicon VC and then pump it in China to build their brand. Uber tried and failed. This is in complete contrast to India. If you look at it ecom saw bigger and bigger deals for Flipkart until Amazon happened. Same with Uber holding it's ground against Ola. I am sure if India had similar protectionism, we might have seen similar headlines for them too, maybe not at the same time but couple of years give or take.

Re: China VC has overtaken Silicon Valley, but do aggregates tell the whole story?

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they can watch the US hamstring itself via libertarian policies The size of the US federal budget has only gone in one direction regardless of which party was in power, and it hasn't been to get smaller. And they keep passing anti-startup garbage like FOSTA or the incredible bureaucracy that de facto prohibits small businesses from participating in the finance or medical industries. These are not libertarian polici…

> These are not libertarian policies. The Iraq war had significant buy-in from (some now mainstream) libertarian writers and thinkers. For example, Megan McArdle, under the name "Jane Galt", wrote feverishly in favor of the war on terror and mocked those who opposed it. The libertarian argument was that by toppling dictatorships and theocracies, these "liberated" middle-eastern democracies would all have liberalized…

[dead]

Re: China VC has overtaken Silicon Valley, but do aggregates tell the whole story?

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the USA have been screaming they are the best in the world for decades, while their leader have been making sure it won't last. Now, we are at the tipping point where China is looking more and more like the world most powerful country.

Unless leaders was a typo and you meant leaders, as much as I disagree with our president, I don't think you can blame him for China overtaking us in VC It's really just that China is doing an excellent job of developing itself, and they have 4x as many people. Once they reach a reasonable level of development - doesn't even need to be close to the US - of course they will have more VC, and be more powerful

It's a really limiting view to think your potus is your only leaders.

Also, you can only buy something if somebody has the will to sell it.

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