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Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

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Re: Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

#111

Post by mi100hael »

leggomylibro wrote: post #90
mi100hael wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There cannot be a Bell Labs or Fairchild Semi in silicon valley today, because they could not promise 10,000,000% user growth and a massive acquisition in N years. Sure there can, they just can't have VC as a part of their business plan. Thankfully, more and more startups are realizing that VC is not their only option, nor usually their best one.

Good point - they will still need someone to front a lot of money, though. Talent and film-deposition facilities ain't cheap. I guess they could go with a Bajillionaire Patron, or get funding through usury. Sorry, those aren't even close to fair comparisons, but 'bootstrapping' does seem pretty out of reach these days, for people who don't already have 8-10 figures laying around.

Yeah, I agree. It's not like Bell Labs was ever "scrappy," though.

Re: Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

#112

Post by tptacek »

CalChris wrote: post #66
derekp7 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why Chicago isn't more of a major destination for tech companies. The city is highly walkable, has excellent transportation infrastructure, and low cost nice housing is plentiful within an hour commute by train or car. You can get a nice house for less than 200k, apartment rent is around 600 - 1000 a month. In the city, there are a lot of old 3-4 story houses that have been converted to each floor being a re…

University of Chicago isn't a bad school. I am, however, straining to think of another Chicago research university. But then compare it to Stanford+Cal+UCSF and it just isn't a fair fight. An underrated advantage in SV is its top tier legal and capital talent. WSGR, Cooley, Fenwick, ... are outstanding. For VCs you can start with Sequoia at the top and work your way all the way down to angels. L+S did a demo in Andy…

Chicago is one of the legal and finance centers of the entire country. Unlike SFBA, it's a trading center (it was the heart of the HFT phenomenon). Some of the largest law firms in the world are headquartered here.

What you're really trying to say is that there's no venture capital market here. That's true. (And, as a result, there's no real venture law here). Venture capital is a rounding error in the global financial markets. Don't extrapolate lack of VC to lack of capital.

Obviously, none of this is helpful for tech companies that want to raise a round in Chicago. If you plan on raising, you should probably at least start in SFBA or NYC.

Re: Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

#113

Post by volkl48 »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #13
icu wrote: post #8

With the greatest respect for Mr. Thiel and his accomplishments I'm skeptical. I've travelled the world and my experience is that very few places in the world have America's, often irrational, can-do attitude, appetite for new venture risk, and societal acceptance of new venture failure as an important part of the entrepreneurial process. I just don't think it's that easy to graft these cultural norms to other cultur…

He did say SV, which is probably true. Europe may or may not have the culture you are suggesting, China might have that hunger but no business started there is safe from gov control, Russia has that control without the economic growth, a lot of places are too small. But...there's probably a dozen cities in the US where you could get everything you can in SV (ok, maybe not the monoculture, the crazy VCs, the crazy cos…

It is worth keeping in mind that SV's focus is only one area of employment for programmers.

The major Northeast hubs have tons of programmers. The difference is that a lot of them work for the financial industry, government contractors, pharma, and the "unsexy" sort of older tech companies.

This is good for finding somewhere with a lot of programmers but the downside is that the employment market is just as tight here and COL/salary is nearly as high.

--------------

If you're looking for somewhere that actually offers you payroll savings but still has a good enough talent pool to be able to find employees fairly easily, that list is pretty small and arguably getting smaller.

A lot of the trendier secondary cities for this (ex: Denver, Portland, Austin) are themselves getting very expensive, very quickly.

Re: Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

#114

Post by closeparen »

CalChris wrote: post #88
strange_quark wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UChicago is an excellent school, right up there with Stanford and the Ivys, and you're forgetting Northwestern, UIUC, Wisconsin - Madison, Michigan - Ann Arbor, Purdue, and plenty others.

There's a good reason I've never met anyone from the University of Chicago in Silicon Valley. It doesn't have an engineering school. I have met two people from Moscow State University (quite a bit further, no?) in Silicon Valley. It does have an engineering school.

There are dozens of us! Dozens! As CS is under physical sciences rather than engineering, we come away with less differential equations experience than those in the engineering tradition, but also much more systems programming. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Lots of people went to big tech companies - we may just have lower risk tolerance/entrepreneurialism than Stanford.

The graduate rankings for CS aren’t great, but the CS faculty are teachers first and researchers second; this may be to your advantage as an undergrad who is not eyeing a career in academia.

It has 5500 undergraduates, and until the last 5 years or so, less than 100 of them were CS students. So yeah, you won’t see as many of us out in the world as you will graduates of a school with 25k students.

It’s also a global institution in a cloister 7 miles/45+ CTA minutes from the nearest part of Chicago that white professionals set foot in (extremely segregated city); its effect on the city as a whole is going to be muted. People come from all over the world and then promptly disperse all over the world.

Re: Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

#115

Post by patio11 »

ryuker16 wrote: post #96
acchow wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> apartment rent is around 600 - 1000 a month You can't really use this as an "advantage" since it disappears rapidly once it starts become a tech hub.

We have a lot of excess housing stock from the rust belt days and can build a lot more towers(not sitting on fault lines).

Tokyo waves hello and says, in a friendly but firm tone of voice, that the decision to not built up is political and not based on earthquake-resistant buildings being an engineering technology humanity lacks access to.

Re: Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

#116

Post by closeparen »

nostrademons wrote: post #67
aaron-lebo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can learn an unbelievable amount sitting in your room in your underwear and work with and on world class projects. There are more free resources than ever before, location is not a constraint.

The difference is largely in the domain knowledge. You can learn just as much about web or mobile development on the web as you can at Google (more, probably, since Google's stack is largely proprietary and bound by lots of legacy code). You can learn as much about databases and programming languages. You can even learn all the machine-learning algorithms you'll need. But you won't learn as much about search as you w…

Coursea is a complement but not a substitute for actually working on significant systems, which you are much more likely to do in SV than a random remote contract or local small business.

Re: Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

#117

Post by CalChris »

tptacek wrote: post #109
CalChris wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a good reason I've never met anyone from the University of Chicago in Silicon Valley. It doesn't have an engineering school. I have met two people from Moscow State University (quite a bit further, no?) in Silicon Valley. It does have an engineering school.

It has a CS program, but it's not a great CS program. Aspiring engineers in Chicago tend to go to Champaign or Madison. UIC has a competent, serious research-university engineering program that is adequate to the region but not a standout on the national scale. (Northwestern, the other top-tier Chicago school, does have an engineering program). We should probably dispense with the notion that regions "need" engineeri…

My brother got his PhD in physics at Champaign. And of course, Chris Lattner did LLVM at Champaign (and then came to SV). Good school.

Re: Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

#118

Post by CalChris »

closeparen wrote: post #114
CalChris wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a good reason I've never met anyone from the University of Chicago in Silicon Valley. It doesn't have an engineering school. I have met two people from Moscow State University (quite a bit further, no?) in Silicon Valley. It does have an engineering school.

There are dozens of us! Dozens! As CS is under physical sciences rather than engineering, we come away with less differential equations experience than those in the engineering tradition, but also much more systems programming. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Lots of people went to big tech companies - we may just have lower risk tolerance/entrepreneurialism than Stanford. The graduate rankings for CS aren’t great,…

I finally visited Chicago a few years ago. I probably can't handle your winters but otherwise, it's a great city, accent on city. My brother made sure he shot baskets on Obama's court. I sail, and unfortunately, we (family thing) got there about two weeks before the boats got put into the water; so no beer can racing for me.

I hope Chicago or Saint Louis gets Amazon's second HQ but not at too great a cost.

Re: Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

#119

Post by Apocryphon »

icu wrote: post #95
oh-kumudo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahah, the old eastern asian vague social structure narrative. You'd be surprised how closely knitted Chinese companies are with SV, and how they replicated the SV in every possible way, even the interview process. So I will say guanxi is not an noticeable factor here. If you look back, how many SV startups are funded by people with a lot of resources, under the name of, networking? Does that count as your definition…

I'm happy to start a conversation as long as you don't resort to ad hominem which "if you are willing to come out of your idealogical(sic)/cultural bubble" certainly seems like. Exactly why do you think I'm in an ideological or cultural bubble? What personal experiences in China's new venture scene can you share with everyone on HN that does not involve guanxi at all? Lastly I disagree with your assertion that guanxi…

So guanxi is the local equivalent to networking and reciprocity, the same sort of communal relationships which exist in any society. China, being a developing former communist state, has a highly corrupt environment which effects how guanxi is practiced. There, an explanation of a universal phenomenon in a localized setting, without Orientalism.

Re: Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

#120

Post by leggomylibro »

mi100hael wrote: post #111
leggomylibro wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point - they will still need someone to front a lot of money, though. Talent and film-deposition facilities ain't cheap. I guess they could go with a Bajillionaire Patron, or get funding through usury. Sorry, those aren't even close to fair comparisons, but 'bootstrapping' does seem pretty out of reach these days, for people who don't already have 8-10 figures laying around.

Yeah, I agree. It's not like Bell Labs was ever "scrappy," though.

Ha, yeah I guess they did sort of get the 'wealthy benefactor' thing with Ma Bell.
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