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Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

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Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#31

Post by watwut »

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…

Out of curiosity, what risk in last paragraph have you in mind? What is in stakes and what can you loose?

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#32

Post by hal9000xp »

madeuptempacct wrote: post #27
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…

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 learned it all myself.

Schools were terrible, I mostly skip all classes. But ZX Spectrum is very simple machine, so it's possible for 10 year old kid to learn it without external guidance.

Funny fact, I started working in Internet club in Uzbekistan in 2003 for 10 USD per month. In 2004, I discovered wonderland called Knoppix and FreeBSD. Then I learned programming in Bash. After that I learned programming in C because Kernighan and Ritchie books was so thin and at the same time all Unix/Linux was written in C.

More details on how I learned programming:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16508460

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#33

Post by leepowers »

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…

> While it is true that venture-capital investment in the U.S. continues to rise, having reached more than $90 billion in 2017, such investment is growing even faster in other parts of the world, expanding by nearly 375 percent—more than twice the 160-percent increase here.

Looks like the story here isn't the U.S. falling behind, but the rest of the world catching up.

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#36

Post by madeuptempacct »

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…

Cool, thanks.

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#37

Post by seanmcdirmid »

NTDF9 wrote: post #25

I personally am ok with silicon valleyesque hubs coming up around the world. 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 e…

Fun fact: China and Japan both use far more cash than the USA. Cloud, especially cloud providers, is way more mature in the USA. Car sharing ditto. Try finding a car charging station at a Chinese supermarket parking lot like you’d find at Whole Foods, etc....

China has made a lot of progress in the last few years, they are definitely making faster progress than the USA. But they also started way behind and are still, to much extent, behind in many areas.

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#38

Post by hal9000xp »

watwut wrote: post #31
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…

Out of curiosity, what risk in last paragraph have you in mind? What is in stakes and what can you loose?

Are you asking about what I mean by "It was tough decision for me"?

You can read my post dated 2014:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8692961

In short, I was very upset by political situation in Russia and I felt that I must settle in any relatively free country even at great opportunity cost.

But now, I became more confident of my skills and as a result I became more risk tolerant and more ambitious. I decided that in order to be truly happy I should take more risks and completely abandon the idea of stable and predictable life in Europe.

When I leave the Netherlands, all my legal time till citizenship will reset. And I can't truly settle in Hong Kong because housing prices are insanely high and I can't get citizenship there but my bet is that I will become so successful that I will be able to settle anywhere I want as high net worth individual.

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#39

Post by emiliobumachar »

NTDF9 wrote: post #25

I personally am ok with silicon valleyesque hubs coming up around the world. 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 e…

Is there a single Asian city that scores on all of the examples you cited?

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#40

Post by beat »

leepowers wrote: post #33
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…

> While it is true that venture-capital investment in the U.S. continues to rise, having reached more than $90 billion in 2017, such investment is growing even faster in other parts of the world, expanding by nearly 375 percent—more than twice the 160-percent increase here. Looks like the story here isn't the U.S. falling behind, but the rest of the world catching up.

Yep. But it's not presented that way, because bullshit. Same numbers, completely different conclusion - but important data that would reveal the bias left out of the article.
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