Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

citylab.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 61 posts

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#41

Post by d1zzy »

hal9000xp wrote: post #32
madeuptempacct wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am interested in how you learned to program given that you are saying you have no degree. 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 was born in Uzbekistan. I lived 22 years in Uzbekistan. My parents had no money but in 1994, my father bought me russian clone of ZX Spectrum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%BF%D0%B0... Basically, in 1990s many of us, used what was popular in 1980s in UK. My father wasn't technical person but I fell in love with ZX Spectrum from day one! So I just learn…

Wow, that mirrors so much of my computer learning experience. I grew up in Eastern Europe and my parents made a huge effort to buy me a local clone of ZX Spectrum when I was 10 years old after I was exposed to these computers (and computers in general) because of the local computer club for children (all state sponsored, since it was a communist society). It was love at first sight like you said and all I ever wanted to do.

Then learned everything else on my own with whatever sources I could find (resources from the computer club, magazines, books, etc). And took part in programming contents. These were of all levels, there were town level contents, then the winners would move to county level contents then the winners going to national level. I made it to national level for years after having that ZX Spectrum clone at home. By the time I had some kind of computer class in my education path (high school then later on college) I already knew all that they were going to each. At least it made those classes easy :)

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#42

Post by adventured »

beat wrote: post #19

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…

Further to that point, the article pretends it's a global phenomenon that's occuring. It's not. Venture capital has barely budged in the developed world. That growth is almost exclusively isolated to two countries: China and India. The growth in the rest of the world is very modest as a share of the global total VC.

Just look at the expansion in China since 2005, as one would expect, it represents the extreme majority of all VC expansion globally. The story should have actually been framing the premise as: China's dramatic economic expansion since the late 1990s, in which it added ~$80 trillion in cumulative economic activity over 20 years, has resulted in a lot of venture capital activity. They went from 1% of global VC activity, to 25%, in roughly 20 years (12x that of France now) - that's the primary story.

Or put another way, since ~2006, the US has bled only three to four points of its global share of all VC to 190 some countries, and roughly 24 or 25 points to just China and India.

That wouldn't make for nearly as attention-getting of a headline though.

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#43

Post by mhjas »

hal9000xp wrote: post #22

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…

While I find your perspective interesting I disagree with some of your conclusions.

> It's effectively cap to enforce equality of outcome.

It isn't so much to enforce equality of outcome as to enforce equality of income. What you are experiencing is to a large extent being on the wrong side of inequality. Just that isn't income inequality, but rather things like wealth, real estate, inheritance and education. Inequalities which people in Sweden largely aren't aware of, or accustomed to. If you had arrived 10 years earlier you would have, at least to a larger extent, been set for life. Other than that I can certainly see your perspective because it is almost impossible for a "salary man" to catch up in Sweden.

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#44

Post by hal9000xp »

d1zzy wrote: post #41
hal9000xp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was born in Uzbekistan. I lived 22 years in Uzbekistan. My parents had no money but in 1994, my father bought me russian clone of ZX Spectrum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%BF%D0%B0... Basically, in 1990s many of us, used what was popular in 1980s in UK. My father wasn't technical person but I fell in love with ZX Spectrum from day one! So I just learn…

Wow, that mirrors so much of my computer learning experience. I grew up in Eastern Europe and my parents made a huge effort to buy me a local clone of ZX Spectrum when I was 10 years old after I was exposed to these computers (and computers in general) because of the local computer club for children (all state sponsored, since it was a communist society). It was love at first sight like you said and all I ever wanted…

I think educational microcomputers should be reintroduced in modern schools, so kids would have easier time to imagine all path from programming language to hardware.

By the way, your username reminds me of great game on ZX Spectrum called Dizzy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dizzy_(series)

I sometimes have urge of nostalgia and play such games on ZX Spectrum emulator :)

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#45

Post by thoughtexplorer »

snackbugs wrote: post #28
merpnderp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why the down votes, as the long term trend has been for this to be emphatically true.

It's a contemporary euphemism for "trickle down", the long term trend of which has been emphatically untrue.

> It's a contemporary euphemism for "trickle down"

Really? Trickle down proponents have co-opted the rising tide aphorism? Ugh.

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#46

Post by 100-xyz »

Another clarification: most of these VC in China is in a few, huge deals by Alibaba, Tencent etc. If one looks at the number of startups that are getting funding, China ranks very low.

I have lived in China for 15 years, am located in Beijing and am a founder of a startup.

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#47

Post by hal9000xp »

mhjas wrote: post #43
hal9000xp wrote: post #22

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…

While I find your perspective interesting I disagree with some of your conclusions. > It's effectively cap to enforce equality of outcome. It isn't so much to enforce equality of outcome as to enforce equality of income. What you are experiencing is to a large extent being on the wrong side of inequality. Just that isn't income inequality, but rather things like wealth, real estate, inheritance and education. Inequal…

"as to enforce equality of income". This is what puts me off of Europe!

I don't mind if group of people voluntarily decide to live in communism and share with each other everything they earn. Like hippies who lived in сommunes.

If high taxes (>33%) are not voluntary then it just means that social democrats are not confident that most successful people in the country will share their ideals.

If European social democracy is so cool, then it should work on purely voluntary basis.

Let's re-frame conversation from arguing to selling. I mean there are lots of top technical talents in India and China. How are you going to convince them to go to Sweden instead of US? It should be pretty damn good reason to decline $300k offer from Silicon Valley and go to Stockholm instead!

P.S. I think selling/pitching society ideals is much more positive and productive than arguing.

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#48

Post by beat »

adventured wrote: post #42
beat wrote: post #19

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…

Further to that point, the article pretends it's a global phenomenon that's occuring. It's not. Venture capital has barely budged in the developed world. That growth is almost exclusively isolated to two countries: China and India. The growth in the rest of the world is very modest as a share of the global total VC. Just look at the expansion in China since 2005, as one would expect, it represents the extreme majorit…

Are there any other countries that are seriously in the software industry besides the US, China, and India?

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#49

Post by jernfrost »

beat wrote: post #19

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…

Without reading your comment I had already read from the article just by skimming it that the US was not declining it absolute terms, but rather the rest of the world was catching up.

So I think you may have jumped the gun there.

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#50

Post by jernfrost »

hal9000xp wrote: post #22

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…

Thanks for the insight. I don't think all societies can be all things to all people, but I don't 100% agree with your final conclusion. Europe has a great safety-net which allows people to take on risks that would be nuts to do elsewhere especially if you have a family.

For the kind of people like you who want to work long hours and reach the stars, I can agree Europe is probably not the place.

But there are many talented people with families who want a work-life balance. For them places like Hong Kong is not going to cut it. My wife has family there that have visited us, and IMHO they have zero work life balance there. It may be good for making money, but not for having a family.

They speak of kids committing suicide because they are so insanely stressed out about their life.

Still I found your perspective very interesting to read. I wish I get to hear sometime in the future how your life in Hong Kong turns out. I have always been very fascinated by the city and hoped to visit it some time in the future.

Post reply on HN