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Ask HN: Is it possible for a third world country to have a Silicon Valley?

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Ask HN: Is it possible for a third world country to have a Silicon Valley?

#1

Post by marv_in »

Sorry if I'm linking to my downvoted AskReddit submission. I just thought you guys might want to get a sense of why I'm asking this question.

I actually don't know how to program but I really wanted to get a more neutral but detailed information on how much work it takes before reaching the promised land for local third world developers/start-ups.

As one commentor used as an example:

"So many times have I heard people here look down on pinoy artists and game developers and look up to Korean artists and game developers, but the irony here is that A LOT OF PINOY ARTISTS AND DEVELOPERS ARE WORKING FOR KOREAN GAME COMPANIES."

I hope you don't mind me morphing this issue into a tech-related subject. Aside from Reddit, HN and Metafilter are the only two other major social media sites I know of that are well known for their quality comments. I failed to generate Reddit's interests and I don't have a MetaFilter account and this is the last place I have of asking aside from local sites, many of whom I'm not familiar of and many more who might not have as grand a knowledge as to the pros and cons and history of the web 2.0 boom as a global audience.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/e9jmo/could_the_philippines_seriously_have_become_the/

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible for a third world country to have a Silicon Valley?

#2

Post by gexla »

"So many times have I heard people here look down on pinoy artists and game developers and look up to Korean artists and game developers, but the irony here is that A LOT OF PINOY ARTISTS AND DEVELOPERS ARE WORKING FOR KOREAN GAME COMPANIES."

Sure, when you have cheap labor to export, you end up doing a lot of work for other people.

Also, perhaps Koreans are simply better at running gaming companies, regardless of the nationalities of the employees.

As for Silicon Valley, there is only one Silicon Valley.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible for a third world country to have a Silicon Valley?

#3

Post by Mz »

I would recommend you look into the history of Silicon Valley. As I understand it (and I don't know much about it), it was a lovely, inexpensive place, a very prestigious college decided to do some stuff to help develop local businesses and then some folks who really loved the place went there to start their business(es) because in part because it was so lovely. Do a bit more research and see if you can find a "formula". I'm sure that luck/happenstance plays a role but that doesn't mean you can't get clues for how to encourage something similar to sprout elsewhere.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible for a third world country to have a Silicon Valley?

#4

Post by perucoder »

Here's my 2 cents from having spent a considerable amount of time in Lima, Peru. I think primarily its a cultural thing. I don't see the same level of risk taking or entrepreneurship here that I do in the US. People are more focused on finding stable employment and it seems that being your own boss doesn't get the same level of respect as working for a good company.

People also don't seem to have the same level of confidence in themselves here. Kind of hard for me to understand as I am from what is considered the "greatest" country in the world. Hard to imagine what its like for someone growing up in the 3rd world. The only analogy I can draw is perhaps someone coming from a rich family vs someone coming from the ghetto.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible for a third world country to have a Silicon Valley?

#5

Post by flotsam »

Mz wrote: post #3

I would recommend you look into the history of Silicon Valley. As I understand it (and I don't know much about it), it was a lovely, inexpensive place, a very prestigious college decided to do some stuff to help develop local businesses and then some folks who really loved the place went there to start their business(es) because in part because it was so lovely. Do a bit more research and see if you can find a "formu…

Steve Blank has a nice series of posts on the history of Silicon Valley: http://steveblank.com/category/secret-history-of-silicon-val...

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible for a third world country to have a Silicon Valley?

#6

Post by hasenj »

1. Don't try cloning the silicon valley, if you're in that mentality you've already failed because that's not a leader mentality, it's a follower mentality.

2. Start the change locally. Do a startup, try to hire people. Try to organize a small group of developers/hackers, bring books about programming (e.g. SICP), make them available and easily reachable, maybe translate them to your local language.

If the Japanese where trying to do mimic Disney exactly, there wouldn't have been Anime, and they wouldn't have caught up with Disney either.

Actually now that I think about it, studying the history of Japanese Anime might be very useful.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible for a third world country to have a Silicon Valley?

#7

Post by notahacker »

If you wanted to create a hacker heartland in the Philippines you'd do well to look at what Silicon Valley doesn't provide (easily obtainable visas, bootstrapper-friendly costs of living, wage levels which allow for multiple staff with minimal investment/income). You can't compete with the Valley's concentration of investors, but you have the advantage of not needing anything like the same level of investment to build a basic webapp in the first place.

I think it's feasible to create a tech hub there that is a bit more than offsourcing for multinationals, but you'd be looking at attracting a different class of entrepreneur.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible for a third world country to have a Silicon Valley?

#8

Post by marv_in »

notahacker wrote: post #7

If you wanted to create a hacker heartland in the Philippines you'd do well to look at what Silicon Valley doesn't provide (easily obtainable visas, bootstrapper-friendly costs of living, wage levels which allow for multiple staff with minimal investment/income). You can't compete with the Valley's concentration of investors, but you have the advantage of not needing anything like the same level of investment to buil…

Thanks. What do you mean by attracting a different class of entrepreneurs?

Could you also clarify how a wage level which allow for multiple staff with minimal investment/income would work?

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible for a third world country to have a Silicon Valley?

#9

Post by marv_in »

hasenj wrote: post #6

1. Don't try cloning the silicon valley, if you're in that mentality you've already failed because that's not a leader mentality, it's a follower mentality. 2. Start the change locally. Do a startup, try to hire people. Try to organize a small group of developers/hackers, bring books about programming (e.g. SICP), make them available and easily reachable, maybe translate them to your local language. If the Japanese w…

Thanks. I haven't studied much about the history of Japanese Anime but I did some on Japanese manga and I was under the impression, Anime was merely a piggyback on Tezuka's dream of having a movie version of his mangas which coupled by the success of his pioneering designs and cheap printing allowed for the type of growth that would help Anime flourish.

Unfortunately for us here, this isn't quite the case from my little observation of our culture. Even start-ups work on a corporate mindset. Just a few days ago, I spotted someone selling a DVD of Ubuntu for higher than the average price of pirated DVDs. This doesn't even take into account the difficulty of establishing meet-ups here.

I apologize if these just sound like excuses. I'm just trying to put the problem into context from my perspective in case this allows for a better explanation of what type of non-government development that can be done to turn this concept into a reality.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible for a third world country to have a Silicon Valley?

#10

Post by marv_in »

perucoder wrote: post #4

Here's my 2 cents from having spent a considerable amount of time in Lima, Peru. I think primarily its a cultural thing. I don't see the same level of risk taking or entrepreneurship here that I do in the US. People are more focused on finding stable employment and it seems that being your own boss doesn't get the same level of respect as working for a good company. People also don't seem to have the same level of co…

I agree and I don't think they can be blamed. It's mostly the economy and the corruption. Easier to jump ship than to repair a sinking ship too damaged to be repaired.

I don't think the analogy is quite correct though. At least based only on the movie impressions of ghettos I've seen, I feel it's sort of an interesting ironic antonym of cultural personalities.

If many of the people in your ghetto had the same cultural identity as many of our poor people over here, you'd see a more unified poverty like the one I imagine exists in the Filipino groups in San Francisco. (I haven't been outside of my country except for HK and so I'm only guessing.)

In reverse, if we have more of a ghetto culture, it won't necessarily mean we will lift up ourselves better but certainly we'd be a lot more angrier and violent at the poverty level that in ways may further hurt our very unstable lifestyle but will be better breeding grounds for the type of entrepreneurs that mimic the US lifestyle.

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