Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US • Hacker News Board

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#51

Post by mhjas » Thu, Oct 11, 2018, 10:14 PM UTC

hal9000xp wrote: post #47

mhjas wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 democra…

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

It is one of the few ways to have an equal society. With to large income inequality the welfare state becomes unsustainable. The poor can't pay for services performed by the rich and ultimately you get a society like the US or worse. Everywhere doesn't have to be the same, no one is forced to live in Sweden. Swedes have very good visa conditions and generally do very well abroad.

> How are you going to convince them to go to Sweden instead of US?

Sweden is a small place. To the extent it needs top talent there is plenty available. People who want to make $300k shouldn't and largely won't move to Sweden anyways. This isn't a competition Sweden can win. Sweden is largely successful because it competes, or have competed, on its own terms. Not by trying to be a worse copy of something else.

Swedish society can, or could, attract people that wants things that are in line with what it is good at and not readily available in other places i.e. its unique selling proposition. Things like education, family and quality of life. There is a foundation to provide those things that has been lost in the last 10 years or so. A lot of people move for opportunities, making money is only one opportunity.

I think it is telling that you are also leaving the Netherlands as a significantly lower tax rate couldn't keep you there either. Note that I am not saying the Sweden is attractive at this point, just that I find it unlikely that taxes are the main problem.

Personally I don't like Hong Kong, but it will certainly be different. Don't miss out on going to Shenzhen.

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#52

Post by hal9000xp » Thu, Oct 11, 2018, 10:32 PM UTC

mhjas wrote: post #51

hal9000xp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 democra…

> "as to enforce equality of income". This is what puts me off of Europe! It is one of the few ways to have an equal society. With to large income inequality the welfare state becomes unsustainable. The poor can't pay for services performed by the rich and ultimately you get a society like the US or worse. Everywhere doesn't have to be the same, no one is forced to live in Sweden. Swedes have very good visa condition…

I acknowledge that Sweden has number of advantages and benevolent government with no corruption. It's certainly one of the top countries in the world in terms of development.

My guess is that Sweden might be popular choice among people who want to pursue PhD or something like that.

I fell in love with Hong Kong first time I visited it as a tourist in 2013.

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#53

Post by woolvalley » Thu, Oct 11, 2018, 11:45 PM UTC

bauerd wrote: post #6

debacle wrote: post #5

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.

What do you mean by eating the young?

In EU regulations, there is often a trend to not exclude small businesses from costly regulations. The GDPR is a recent example of this, with no carve outs for organizations under a certain size or revenue number.

In the US and other English speaking countries, there are often revenue, employee count and public vs private carve outs for various regulations.

By not excluding small business and startups from costly regulations, they often stunt potential new businesses from developing in the EU.

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#54

Post by woolvalley » Thu, Oct 11, 2018, 11:46 PM UTC

api wrote: post #8

bauerd wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by eating the young?

Highly regulated environments are heavily biased toward huge and/or old companies because regulation is a regressive corporate tax.

And regulations often have grandfathering clauses which favor old companies!

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#55

Post by NTDF9 » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 1:13 AM UTC

emiliobumachar wrote: post #39

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?

Singapore, Tokyo and Seoul comes to mind.

But other major asian cities like Shanghai, Shenzhen, Taipei, HongKong, Kuala Lumpur all have 70% or more of those.

You'll find some of those even in Vietnam, Thailand and India.

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#56

Post by NTDF9 » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 2:06 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #37

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,…

> 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.

I agree. But that's the difference between US until the last decade and today. Cloud providers here are mature because Amazon pioneered it in the last decade.

But AI on cloud is all Alibaba. We don't hear about it here in US media but US companies are playing catchup.

Same for charging stations. They don't need a charging station in whole foods because most people don't even drive as much. They order groceries on apps. Even if they do, charging stations are present in gas stations there. Their low cost cheap cars have features that rival Tesla (albeit at a lower quality and lower price)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92HoppERe2M

We here in the US just don't get this shown to us in media.

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#57

Post by shanghaiaway » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 4:35 AM UTC

100-xyz wrote: post #46

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.

There are an incredible numbers of funded startups in China. You can't make up stuff because you live in the country.

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#58

Post by zxcvvcxz » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 4:53 AM UTC

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…

The title: "America Is Losing Its Edge for Startups"

Based on the data they presented, this is true in a relative sense. Actually, based on your quote as well:

>Is American investment in startups decreasing? Not compared to China or whatever, but compared to itself? Or is it staying the same, or growing? Looking at Pitchbook data, the biggest year for US venture capital was 2015 ($82.2B), with 2017 close behind at $81.9B, and 2018 looking to be about on par. So stable, basically.

You've just shown that recent VC growth in the US is zero.

That, I would say, is 'losing an edge', when everyone else around you is growing.

Yes of course, others are playing catch up and realizing that the institution of venture capital can have big pay offs. But for the #1 contender to stop growing, does mean that they're becoming less dominant in a relative sense. And if trends continue, they will cease to be number 1.

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#59

Post by 100-xyz » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 9:27 AM UTC

shanghaiaway wrote: post #57

100-xyz wrote: post #46

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.

There are an incredible numbers of funded startups in China. You can't make up stuff because you live in the country.

http://www.startupsusa.org/global-startup-cities/

Look at Appendix 7 Top 50 Cities for venture capital deals Top 50 Cities for Pre-Venture Capital (Angel + Seed Stage) Deals

Especially the second one clearly shows it.

Re: Venture capital investment is growing faster outside the US

#60

Post by watwut » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 2:14 PM UTC

hal9000xp wrote: post #38

watwut wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

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

No. I was referring to "It's not suited for risk takers". I was curious about where you see risks. What is the danger, what is the valuable thing you might loose by the move. Excluding trade-offs - "legal time till citizenship will reset" is more of trade-off or cost because you know it will happen. It is uncomfortable and obstacle and challenge for sure, I don't want to deprecate the difficulties involved, but it is not what I wanted to ask about.