11–20 of 61 posts
China aside, the U.S is still by far the strongest place for startups. Venture capital was invented in the U.S, but just because it is not the only country with such industry today doesn't mean it has lost its edge.
I buy the data. I don't buy the conclusion. America blazed the trail. Do you think the rest of the world is simply going to sit idly on the sidelines after watching the success? No. Entrepreneurs around the world have been watching, and they've been inspired to create movements in their own cities. Governments have been watching, and they're inspired to support their entrepreneurs. The rest of the world woke up and t…
> Do you think the rest of the world is simply going to sit idly on the sidelines after watching the success? I think Europe will. When it comes to business, they tend to eat their young.
There have been relatively big exits in the past five years, there's more money than ever in the ecosystem and people seem to be willing to do more risky ventures than before.
I've got a friend in Berlin in the startup industry who's very bullish in their local ecosystem as well. Neither of these places is Silicon Valley nor will they ever be, but they're both doing pretty ok and you can easily start a company here and have it be pretty successful, even globally.
I see this as a very good thing. What we should do is, find a way to collaborate with each other and to help each other do better.
This article seems like bunk fear mongering to me. It talks about everything in terms of percentages of investment, percentages of companies and growth rates: cherry picked statistics that seem to be intentionally misrepresenting reality. The global economy is not zero-sum. Other countries growing their startup scenes is a good thing (with a notable exception around those doing it with heavy IP theft) and should be c…
A rising tide lifts all boats.
It's only showing American startup activity as a proportion of global startup activity. I might have missed it in a quick read, but nowhere did I see total numbers by nation, or by startup city.
Let's shift perspective slightly. Is American investment in startups decreasing? Not compared to China or whatever, but compared to itself? Or is it staying the same, or growing? Looking at Pitchbook data, the biggest year for US venture capital was 2015 ($82.2B), with 2017 close behind at $81.9B, and 2018 looking to be about on par. So stable, basically.
What this tells us is not that the US startup activity is in any way unhealthy, but rather that the rest of the world is figuring out how to do it, too. And what's wrong with that? How is that a negative? We don't get that from the article, because it's stuck in this misleading mode of lost competitiveness from is comparison model.
This is why everyone should read Factfulness. No other book I've ever read has helped tune my bullshit detector so well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do you think the rest of the world is simply going to sit idly on the sidelines after watching the success? I think Europe will. When it comes to business, they tend to eat their young.
What do you mean by eating the young?
The lost decade in Japan is often cited as such an example, but increasingly we are seeing things like wage stagnation among <30 in the US and Europe that may also be the result of this (of course plenty of mainstream explanations abound as well).