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Now if you want to list which places are the best to BUILD a startup, that's a different thing all together.
I came across this awesome site the other day[1] and its made me think about potentially opening up shop somewhere other than NYC.
I lived in Sweden for almost one year as an expat (I'm a software engineer). Now, I live in the Netherlands for more than two years.
I can say for sure that Europe is nowhere near Silicon Valley in terms of compensation for ambitious software engineers. Sweden went total nuts with taxes, anything above $6500 per month would be taxed at 55-60% tax rate. It's effectively cap to enforce equality of outcome.
60% tax doesn't mean that ultra-high salaries will be taxed at this rate. It means that ultra-high salaries will not exist in job market in the first place.
The best Swedish startup threatens to leave Sweden because of regulatory and tax burden [1].
The Netherlands recognized importance of highly-skilled expats by introducing tax discounts called "30% ruling". I do respect their efforts to attract talent. That's why I moved from Sweden to the Netherlands in 2016.
However, as non-EU citizen you can work only for publicly registered sponsors [2]. Usually, it's boring well-established companies. So I missed some cool opportunities due to this limitation.
As I learned dutch local job market, I found that almost nobody will pay you 10'000 EUR per month.
Aside from tax and regulatory burden in Europe, there are cultural things like Law of Jante [3]. I can't imagine how society with such mentality can attract highly ambitious people.
Also, talking about money in Europe is kinda taboo. And dutch automatically repeat "money is not everything". It wouldb't annoy me if someone committed to work for open source software. Or being great painter. But when recruiter respond me "money is not everything" when I'm asking "too much", it annoys me a lot.
With that in mind, I decided to abandon idea of living in Europe, getting citizenship, learning dutch language etc. It was tough decision for me but it's time to move on. It's not kind of a society where I want to spend rest of my life. Sorry dutch and swedes, I don't fit here.
So I decided to move to Hong Kong. I've just got very lucrative job offer in Hong Kong (in HFT). The size of compensation is far beyond of what Europe can offer me. Now, I'm almost on par with US (I couldn't get into US because I don't have any degree). Now, I'm just waiting for my HK visa getting approved.
You might troll me saying that, I'm whining. OK, I have answer to that. Just look at my net salary increases:
Russia -> Sweden (2015) +28%
Sweden -> Sweden (2015) +15%
Sweden -> the Netherlands (2016) +63%
the Netherlands -> Hong Kong (2018) +83% (and possible bonus up to 300% of yearly salaries!)
I will work like crazy fanatic and in next six years I will be well over $1M of liquid net worth.
So Europe lost me. Europe is perfect place for people who just want to work from 9 to 5 and put family as their top priority. It's not suited for risk takers.
Links:
https://www.thelocal.se/20160412/spotify-founders-sweden-is-...
I recently read Factfulness , by Hans Rosling, and it really changed how I read articles like this. Here's where this article goes totally off the rails... 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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you mean by eating the young?
usually it refers to policies which (usually unintendedly, sometimes explicitly) take from the productivity of younger people to finance older people. Because it is difficult to predict the future, the fear is that the unintended consequence is that this may take so much from the young that it robs their future. There are very good reasons to at least consider this as a possibility, because policymakers seem to make…
But what's really surprising is the speed. The reason? The best markets and the best people are not coming here anymore.
Sometimes when I go to Asian countries, I almost feel like they're from the future. Payments, electric scooters, charging stations, rental bikes, AI, digital ecosystems, car sharing, hotels, biofuels, cloud based systems etc. are all waay more important, waay more mature, waay more people designing, waay more usage, waay more convenient than the US.
The more that smart entrepreneurs decide that US is not the future, the more tides are a turning. The next Sergey Brin will probably be in Asia.
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.
Look, I don't want to be a Europe apologist because the continent does have it's problems, but having moved just to Stockholm, the startup scene here seems to be very much hitting its stride. 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…
Europe will not win race for ambitious people. I lived in Sweden for almost one year as an expat (I'm a software engineer). Now, I live in the Netherlands for more than two years. I can say for sure that Europe is nowhere near Silicon Valley in terms of compensation for ambitious software engineers. Sweden went total nuts with taxes, anything above $6500 per month would be taxed at 55-60% tax rate. It's effectively c…
It seems most Russian immigrants either come from the 80s phd era or have wealthy patterns and go to a foreign school.
So, you learned on your own?
I recently read Factfulness , by Hans Rosling, and it really changed how I read articles like this. Here's where this article goes totally off the rails... 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…
I read "How to lie with statistics" and had the exact same experience.
Article states that investment outside the United States is increasing at a faster rate. That makes sense since its a combination of trying to catch up from a lower base and a faster growth rate in gdp.
The us share of world gdp is 23%, if venture capital was proportionally distributed across the world the us would only get 23% of total venture capital spending.