Why Startups Condense in America 565
bariswheel writes "The controversial genius developer/writer/entertainer Paul Graham writes an insightful piece on Why Startups Condense in America. Here's the skinny: "The US allows immigration, it is a rich country, it is not (yet) a police state, the universities are better, you can fire people, work is less identified with employment, it is not too fussy, it has a large domestic market, it has venture funding, and it has dynamic typing for careers. Inquire for details within."
Better Universities? (Score:5, Insightful)
But I don't agree with all of it: That's odd, all the studies and anecdotal evidence presented to me suggest otherwise. I don't think the universities themselves are better, you're just more likely to make better contacts here than abroad. And the only reason for that is because Americans have money and a lot of them use it to invest (as Paul pointed out).
I've been through undergrad and grad schools in the US and I have to say that there were more than a few courses where I didn't learn anything.
Why is he asking about Universities in Europe? What about Eastern Europe or the Ukraine or Russia? What about the results to the programming challenge that everyone made a big fuss about? What about China's Universities?!
I'm not as confident about the US as Mr. Graham is. In fact, I'm kind of afraid when someone like him writes an article like this because it feels like we're creating a false sense of security as an industry leader.
startups (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course part of the problem (both in the US and over here) is that a lot of businesses tend to have a blinkered restricted view of just selling/dealing with their domestic market (which of course in the US is larger) rather than doing business globally (which in a lot of businesses is the best way to grow).
Let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
Does this say more about higher education in Europe or the US?
Largely true but a flipside too (Score:5, Insightful)
But the US style has it's problems. US companies wind up as slaves to the markets and often damage their engineering skills. The problems in the US car industry show this. While the German car industry has come up with fuel injection, ABS braking and constant four wheel drive over the past 20 years the US industry has invented the cupholder and the SUV.
Likewise, somehow the Japanese are great craftsmen. This skill is reflected in the quality of Toyota's manufacturing and the remarkable qualities in Japanese portable electronics. Apple may have invented the ipod, but the walkman and the transistor radio all came out Japan.
It's good that the world is like this. Countries specialise. But presuming that one companies system is superior for everything to all the others is silly. The best is what is created when the systems work together - as in the computer industry where the parts are made in Asia and the software comes from all over the world, and in particular from the US.
Re:Better Universities? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only trouble with this is, it blinds us to what makes those empires really succesful -- natural resources, opportunism and good old blind luck, in the form of historical happenstance.
Innovation comes from freedom of expression (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oil and dollars (Score:2, Insightful)
Regards,
Steve
Re:Better Universities? (Score:3, Insightful)
Does he have extensive and long experience with foreign universities to ascertain this? Or is it simple chest-thumping of an American, just like the screaming about America having the "justice system in the world" during the OJ trial - I forget who started that, but it was repeated by some talking head on the news/talkshows almost everyday during that period. That is one scary thought! When I think of american (civil) justice, I know the winner, the man with deeper pockets.
Personally, I would say the system really depends where you go to. Overall, I would just rate them lower because of the cost as compared to other universities I could go to in Europe without bankrupting myself for years to come.
American Chauvinism (Score:5, Insightful)
And this survey demonstrates what, other than the parochialism of the American computer science professors with whom Graham happens to be acquainted?
Laws are it. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather not put a startup in the US (Score:3, Insightful)
But with the patent laws and the legal system around it, opening a biz in the US is risky. As soon as you're actually starting to make money, some corporation will cover you with suits 'til you hand it over for a nickle or a dime because some harebrained patent they got offers them a foot into that door.
In other words, startups are the risk-free way of "innovation" for corps. If it doesn't fly, it doesn't cost them money. If it does, hand it over!
Re:the Western nation that least protects its work (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with the entire article, BUT (Score:3, Insightful)
Differing from your opinion, I agree with the entire article 100% (including the assertion that our universities are better), BUT
That said it's a good article in that it puts things to forefront that maybe people (especially those in other countries) will research or utilize.
Faulty logic (Score:3, Insightful)
From the article:
"it is not (yet) a police state"
Why is it there are people in this country are screaming and yelling about their imagined "police state", yet want to leave the other countries in the world to people who want to turn the whole world into a police state?
Re:Better Universities? (Score:2, Insightful)
I learned it from YOU, dad. (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, We USAans are self-centered, self-absorbed, and generally think very highly of ourselves. Just like those in the European countries many of us came from.
In the realm of international relations, how many countries are riding the coat tails of long dead empires? Why should any outside of France have any care for what goes on inside of France? And what about the English? They're guilty more than anyone. Okay, at one time the UK was a big deal, but that time is over. Is Britain really a significant economic, political, or military power anymore? Certainly not to the extent you think of yourselves.
For a European to raise the charge of 'America-centric' seems the height of 'it takes one to know one.' I don't deny the charge, but when you point one finger at me, you have three pointing back at yourself.
Re:Largely true but a flipside too (Score:5, Insightful)
Mr Graham needs to travel more... (Score:5, Insightful)
One important factor... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget that, for many years, the USA have been at the forefront of technology and science because the US Governement -- meaning you, Happy American Tax-Payers! -- has been very happy to sign big, fat juicy checks to US corporations, US Universities, US Think Tanks, etc. Also, the US Governement was able to do this because, right after the end of WWII, the USA were one of the very rare country in the world with industries left intact and a lot of natural resources.
Now that the US Governement is pretty much anti-science, and that the US debt is soaring to ever more dangerous summits, I am not so sure the USA can maintain their advance on the rest of the world. But we'll see.
Re:Weak stereotyping (Score:4, Insightful)
American dream is a (partial) scam (Score:4, Insightful)
However, the statistics are against you if your goal is to become very rich - but it is the possibilty that motivates people.
Here in the USA, we have an interesting cultural/political phenomenon: many lower middle class people strongly support the republican party whose policies are very biased towrads helping the very rich. I think that part of this phenomenon occurs because people dream of having a great idea and striking it rich.
I think that having one's own business is a good idea (http://mark-watson.blogspot.com/2006/04/owning-y
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:4, Insightful)
Speaking as someone who works in one of the Oxbridge Colleges, I can tell you that what you see from the outside is nothing like what you see on the inside. If I were ever to have kids, I would strongly suggest they avoid either Oxford or Cambridge as a potential place of study.
The place is rife with incompetentence, and absolutely dogged with bureaucracy, politics and backstabbing. I can't understand how the word hasn't got out. It seems to be an extrordinarily well kept secret.
Re:Better Universities? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to read a story about how an economy is not a matter of resources or luck, but rather how little or much a government meddles in the economy, read about Zimbabwe.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2780775.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Economies are based on the decisions of its citizens... a million little decisions controls the tide of the economy. When a hands-off, rational minded government or political climate takes place, economies do better. When a meddling, irrational government takes seed, then that's what you get.
If natural resources take such a huge stance, why are most of the oil producing nations still 'poor'?
Your reference to the empires of 100+ years ago doesn't apply because the wealth of that period was 'exported', a.k.a. stolen and redistributed. The American 'exceptionalism' you quote was by large not built on Empire wealth but by the wealth of industry of its citizens. And that itself is pretty exceptional.
police state?huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
I am going to hazard a guess that the person who stuck "ye"t in there has lived his or her entire life in a free western country and has little or no understanding of what a police state really is. All this person knows is 1. bush bad , 2. bad is police state, therefore bush = police state. This reminds me of every college kid who knows 1. bad 2. bad is nazi, therefore if you disagree with me you are a nazi.
Idiotic use of extreme terms like this just erodes any meaning they may have. Its is about as effective in conveying meaning as the F-word if you use it as almost every other word.
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you've just described every institution of higher learning known to mankind.
Re:Largely true but a flipside too (Score:5, Insightful)
Not exactly... GM had fuel injection in the 1950s. All wheel drive was developed in Germany because Audi competed heavily in rally racing. A from of racing that isn't all that popular in the US. Not to mention that AWD isn't all the great of an addition to most cars. It eats more gas and is expensive to maintain. It is good for people that like to drive fast in really bad weather. As far as US contributions to the Automotive art? Pollution controls are a huge one. The US had pollution controls on auto decades before anyone else did. As such they paid for the majority of the development costs.
"Likewise, somehow the Japanese are great craftsmen. This skill is reflected in the quality of Toyota's manufacturing and the remarkable qualities in Japanese portable electronics. Apple may have invented the ipod, but the walkman and the transistor radio all came out Japan."
The transistor radio came out the US. The Transistor came out of the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor-Radio [wikipedia.org] "The first commercial transistor radio, the Regency TR-1, was announced on October 18, 1954 by the Regency Division of Industrial Development Engineering Associates of Indianapolis, Indiana".
Followed by, "Transistor radios did not achieve mass popularity until the early 1960s when prices of some models fell below $20, then below $10 as markets became flooded with radios from Hong Kong."
One of the big jokes about "Transistor radios from Japan" was the Transistor wars. Japanese companies would advertise how many transistors they put in the radios, so they would put in extra transistors that really did nothing. I guess they thought more was better even if it really wasn't. Honda and Toyota both build cars in the US now. According to consumer reports many US cars are now more reliable than most cars from EU countries now. Toyota, Honda, BMW, and VW all build cars in the US now. You may say that Toyota and Honda have a culture of high quality in automotive production how ever to make the claim that it is cultural sort of ignores Suzuki which really doesn't have that high of a reliability rating or Nissan which while makes some very good cars also has some that have gotten poor reliability ratings. the US does seem to have a remarkable history of innovation. Some countries like the UK has a great history of destroying innovation. Read about Frank Whittle sometime. The real key to the the success the US has is that is seems to be willing to adapt to change and to take the best of other cultures and allow it to become part of the US culture.
You are just repeating tired stereotypes that mean nothing and are frankly just not true.
weak (Score:2, Insightful)
While I agree with the overall tenor of his presentation, starting with a number of begged questions weakens his argument.
1) Startups happen ALL OVER THE COUNTRY. He maybe right about 'clustering' when you're talking about certain industries, but in a country where The above paragraph makes a LOT more sense (and is factually more supportable) if instead of "Startups", you read "The cool trendy startups that we like to talk about". In fact, Raleigh-Durham and Austin are (like SFO) in the top quartile of VC investment but he doesn't seem to think they are "cool" enough to discuss.
2) "The US allows immigration, it is a rich country, it is not (yet) a police state..."
Please. I'm sure the horse is dead, so you can stop beating it with your non sequitur stick. Anyone who connects the "US" and "police state" in a sentence merely illustrates how little they know about an actual police state. I understand it's very important to continue the shtick so PERHAPS your side has a chance to win an election sometime in the next half-dozen years, but you'd be much more persuasive if you left your political baggage at home with your pom-poms.
3) (Paraphrasing) "German Universities suck because there are no Jews there." That's just plain stupid. Aside from the overt racism of the statement, then why aren't we all heading pell-mell for the universities in Israel? Perhaps there's only a certain 'dose' of Jewishness that we need, and too much is somehow poisonous (hands waving dramatically)?
4) "You can fire people in America" - I think he's absolutely right, but isn't using our academic system a particularly BAD example? If he's willing to venture into the speculative fiction of the US becoming a police state, his omission here is the deletorious effect of Affirmative Action, and a litigious society where where a woman or minority is fired, their first thought is "hm, I wonder if it was my race/sex/preference/etc." and not "What did I do wrong?".
5) "In the US it's ok to be overtly ambitious, and in most of Europe it's not. But this can't be an intrinsically European quality; previous generations of Europeans were as ambitious as Americans. What happened?" They left Europe and came to America?
5) "Silicon Valley is too far from San Francisco....The best thing would be if the silicon valley were not merely closer to the interesting city, but interesting itself.... (The suburbs are) the worst sort of strip development...The kind of people you want to attract to your silicon valley like to get around by train, bicycle, and on foot." No projection there, no sir. Funny, I'd think that the people you'd want to attract people that are interesting, intuitive, hard working, conscientious people...not just smarmy, self-important, elitist black-clad coastal urbanites. I didn't realize Greenpeace membership is required for this job sir, would donating to the Nature Conservancy be enough?
Pssst, Paul: there are a lot of interesting startups in what you'd call boring, flyover country. Telecommuting means that you can have outstanding information-based companies in Granite Falls, MN, Paragould, AR, or even Nampa, ID. In fact, a lot of people may even PREFER rural or small-town life, but they probably drive pickups or something (shudder).
6) Immigration - this is just utopian and thus nearly valueless. The US already has the most open immigration system (even in these days of leather-clad jackbooted thugs summarily executing everyone trying to enter the country). He spent the previous ten paragraphs talking about how the US system is unique, particularly because of its poor educational system compared to other countries, and then when discussing the US's requirement of a college degree for entry he uses examples of....Americans. Circularity anyone?
Paul Graham = Young Chomsky? (Score:2, Insightful)
Aside from Graham's tendency to extrapolate wildly from a sample size of one: "I felt oppressed as a geek/nerd in high school therefore America oppresses geeks/nerds in high school", "I was successful in a computer tech startup using LISP therefore successful computer tech startups should use LISP", "I now have enough money to indulge my eccentricities and a stage on which to let the stream of my ego's consciousness spew forth without worry about the consequences, therefore I must be a public intellectual". Like Chomsky, I'm sure Mr. Graham is certifiably brilliant within his chosen field of study. Like Dr. Chomsky, Graham tends to mistake brilliance within one field with the capability to achieve deep understanding and useful insight on a variety of unrelated topics.
As a simple counterexample to the current topic I'd offer India's IT sector. Although India has a few world class schools they are nowhere near as numerous as in the US, India does not have a large immigrant population, India's red tape while improving is still closer in style to "in Soviet Russia" than the Rand's libertarian paradise etc. However start up businesses in India are booming, mostly as spin offs of subsidiaries of American tech companies. Likewise Taiwan's semiconductor and electronics manufacturing industry has largely shed its foreign owned component and can be considered a startup success story. Not all start ups form in little red barns, or unkempt Cambridge, MA apartments; Intel formed from disgruntled Fairchild employees, as did Zilog and in a generation or two similar stories are likely to be common in the Indian tech sector.
However the above is not a rigorous counterargument, and is not meant to be. My larger point is merely that if one narrows one view enough the world can seem remarkably simple. And then one starts to believe any story that can explain that simple world. Fortunately most of us have enough of a sense of shame to keep those stories to ourselves. Perhaps Mr. Graham, and Dr. Chomsky and many other public intellectuals should spend their efforts looking into what particular combination of genetics and environment lead to a pathological inability to refrain from espousing cranky theories in public.
biz in Europe (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know about Asia or other regions, but these are my thoughts about the relative difficulty of starting business in Europe:
#1 reason: Government is an obstacle rather than help or even better: JUST DON'T MESSING TOO MUCH. Bussinesses in Europe has to comply with municipal, state, country and european community regulation. Municipal laws are often vary a lot whithin even the same province. The local government has to give permission and get taxes (not cheap) just to open the company's door. Also the nation's government. And guess what? They are not exactly very fast nor cheap. The high costs of starting a bussiness make it very difficult for people who is not already rich or other bussiness who have already a lot of money! Paradox of social-democracy? Government as reverse Robin-Hood?
Other:
- the "progressive" taxes system doesnt award personal effort and risk. The taxes for businesses are as high as 30% or 35% of profits, even higher for wealthy individuals (Social Security not included). Where does this force capital to go? Easy question: any other place.
- Public workers are impossible to fire. Once they pass their exams they can even just not go to work and they will keep their salary and benefits forever. Not the best to stimulate efficiency and speed. They also have higher salaries than private companies employees. Young people here dream about working for the government.
- Trade unions degenerated to political parties. Their leaders and representants are too busy doing nothing and helping #1 in their labor to increase regulation.
- We spend about 40% of the E.U budget subsidizing the low-margin, low-innovation, low-tech agricultural sector. This money should be better in their legitimate propietaries' pockets thus lowering the high tax pressure on business and individuals. As a side effect we screw up emerging economies with our protectionism (OK, maybe also the USA)
- We have literally dozens of different languages. I dont think this is necessarily wrong, it's just a consecuence of our history. But the really stupid thing is the politicians are very busy trying to revitalize dead or semi-dead languages and dialects like galician, basque and catalan to have another more justification to fight with other regions, get local privileges, and keeping their positions. Of course these languages are studied in schools, diminishing the time young people should rather use studying maths, literature, economics, english or whatever. Mix this with governmet regulation and you get a lot more overhead for business.
- We dont fight strong enough against terrorism, instead we let the terrorists (convicted killers included) form political parties and negotiate with our governmets as equals. Shame on us. Insecurity scares the capital who tends to go away.
It's not that is easy to start a bussiness in the United States because they are rich: they are rich because is easy to start a bussiness.
Re:Better Universities? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, what about the laissez-faire free market that was instituted in Albania after the fall of communism? Answer: the whole economy collapsed under the weight of Ponzi schemes and Enron accounting. Go read "Eat The Rich" by P.J. O'Rourke (hardly anyone's idea of a socialist) and learn that your simplistic reasoning isn't actuall born out by studying a range of countries.
Re:Better Universities? (Score:2, Insightful)
What good does it do to have excellent professors, if 50% of your population can't afford to be educated at a decent college. How much does it cost for a three year undergraduate course at Stanford or Yale? Despite Grahams assertions of class mobility, the finest educations in America are largely (a small number of scholarships aside) the exclusive preserve of the upper middle classes and above.
Re:Better Universities? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Better Universities? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is mostly a sign of the abject level of the teaching of basic logic at schools around the world. In America, too, because most Americans will misread things in the same way.
Well, the resason for the confusion is because, if you read "Top University" as "Top 10" or something like that, the statements are basically synonymous. According to most rankings, America does have a near monopoly at the very top, though Oxford and Cambridge will always be there, and the best Asian universities are certainly improving very rapidly. According to this [sjtu.edu.cn], America has 8 of the top 10 and 17 of the top 20. So I'd forgive someone of the "error" of believing all the top universities are American. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it's not far off.
What I've always found especially curious is the mismatch of the American higher-education system with the open and blatant anti-education attitude of much of the American public.
That's a bit of an oversimplification. Pretty much the *entire* American public is pro-education. Some of them simply differ on *what should be taught*, which is a pretty significant distinction. And there are a handful of very conservative American universities - not many, but some - so even the most conservative Americans support education and send their kids off to college. And also, the Bible-thumping crowd is a very vocal minority, but a minority nonetheless. I believe the average American doesn't really care about the whole evolution thing to get very riled up.
signs of education and intelligence are carefully hidden by most American politicians, because they understand that this would be a major flaw to a huge fraction of the voters.
I'd say that's a little off too. It's more that the southern and rural voters I believe you're referring to - who may lack sophistication, but not intelligence - don't take well to condescending intellectuals *at all*. Like, say, John Kerry, who came off that way. Contrast that with Bill Clinton, who is brilliant but not condescending, and got on very well with voters of all classes.
To disclose, I grew up in the south, went to undergrad at a bottom-tier university, grad school at a top-10 American school, and now live in a major city on the east coast. So I've seen a few different perspectives on the whole "Education in America" thing.
greater fractioning (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Better Universities? (Score:3, Insightful)
France (Score:5, Insightful)
No, really! Type that into Babelfish and ask for an English-to-French translation, and it spits the same word back at you. OK, maybe it's in French dictionaries, but it's obviously one of those words that they're always borrowing from other languages (e.g. the days of the week sound suspiciously like the Italian names).
Re:Better Universities? (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, a hunger for resources has always been an essential ingredient for creating empires. Without it, it's easier and more comfortable to simply sit home and defend what you already have. That's one of the reasons why Europe launched expeditions while China didn't: European powers were searching for a sea route to better import spices from far east, while China lacked nothing.
Don't forget, the European colonial empires were created for getting resources, not for their own sake. And if it did not depend (or think it's about to depend - the whole peak oil thing) from foreign oil, would USA bother messing with the rest of the world ? Heck, the Japanese were happy to stay on their island until the US gave them a rude awakening, and then built an empire to compensate for a lack of native resources.
It isn't enough that you are capable of building an empire, you also need a motivation for doing so.
Human nature, not teaching (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't really teach this out of people. It's a cognitive heuristic which saves on brainpower, which is deeply embedded in the human psyche. The only way to escape it is with large doses of intelligence: larger than most people possess. The core issue is about compression as a way to aid comprehension: to make a sentence like "America has many of the world's top universities" tractable - easier to reason about and remember - it has to be translated into something simpler. The most obvious example is "America == top universities". There's an obvious loss of information here, but arguably, the main point has been retained. A lot of human silliness is explained by this trick.
Re:Better Universities? (Score:2, Insightful)
I assert that they want to avoid appearing "privileged". Of course, privileged and smart don't automatically go together. But, they appear to for the average American.
Everyone in America wants to be rich, but, one of the dominant American political parties has spent decades and tons of money enrolling people in the concept that rich people are evil. Politicians reasonably want to avoid appearing evil.
At a higher level of abstraction (Score:2, Insightful)
The US bias in the individual vs. society question is relatively more in favor of the individual than Asia and Europe.
Talking to my lovely German wife, I was shocked to discover that, if you own a bookstore in Germany, you can't be open whenever you want, or sell books at your desired price point.
Sure, there are restrictions on such activity in the US. You can't just offer books at next-to-nothing indefinitely, to break the market. My perception, however, is that the amount of government interference in the market is substantially lower in the US than elsewhere.
Government is the second oldest business. Can't have it stifling the rest.
Re:American Chauvinism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Better Universities? (Score:1, Insightful)
"Following the war, Sweden took advantage of its natural resources and lack of war damage, making it possible to expand its industry to supply the rebuilding of Europe, leading it to be one of the richest countries in the world by 1960. Sweden was part of the Marshall Plan but continued to stay non-aligned during the Cold War, and is still not a member of any military alliance. During most of the post-war era, the country was ruled by the Swedish Social Democratic Party that established a welfare state, striving for a "well being for all"-policy. Following a recession in the early 1990s some socialist policies were relaxed."
Even socialists need some time to ruin the economy of a country with natural resources as rich as that of Sweden, country unscarred by war, and one not participating in arms race of Cold War. But they still manage to do it: After war Sweden was 3rd country with best GDP per capita. Now it's 19th and still falling.
Greetings from another "socialist paradise" - Poland.
Re:Better Universities? (Score:1, Insightful)
Your understanding is outdated (Score:3, Insightful)
Gaining illegal entry from foreign countries via airport is also quite difficult.
Re:Bay Area-centric (Score:3, Insightful)
Silicon Valley ceased being an engine of significant economic growth after the dotcom bust. It is unlikely to return to its former glory.
I'm writing this from within walking distance of downtown Palo Alto, and I tend to agree. It's really discouraging. Five years after the dot-com crash, there are still empty industrial parks for lease. The big reseach centers are gone. Xerox PARC is gone. Interval Research is gone. IBM Almaden Research is emptying out. DEC SRL and DEC WRL are gone. HP's real business today is printer ink. Intel is still around, but the new fabs aren't here, and they seem to be out of ideas anyway.
Most growth seems to be in companies that deliver advertising - Google, A9, and their ilk. Startups tend to be "me-too" operations scrabbling for market share in crowded markets.
Yet there's so much to be done. How about producing a personal computer that just doesn't break? Something with hardware and software immune to attack. Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. Or electric cars with serious range. Or safe nuclear power plants. But that's not what people are working on.
Perhaps not (Score:3, Insightful)
However some of your points underestimate the differences between the two regions:
Labor mobility may not be an American invention but America is the place where it is currently practiced. Of course there are ways of "getting around" anti-mobility laws, as there are ways of geting around any laws, but law avoidance (like tax avoidance) is costly, difficult, and incomplete. Just saying that you can "work around" laws greatly understates the difficulty in so doing. In many countries of the EU, firing someone or laying them off is practically impossible.
There are far fewer large tech incumbents in Europe than in the US. Obviously every country has a phone company but most European countries do not have an IBM, Microsoft, or Cisco.
In my experience foreigners are as tolerant of failure as Americans. In fact foreigners are probably more tolerant of failure because career success is less important in most countries than in the U.S.
Furthermore, it has been my experience that many or most employees of silicon valley startups are Asian or European. Even some of the founders of companies in silicon valley are foreign. If foreign people were terrified of failure then they would not come to the US to fail, only to be sent slinking home. Bear in mind that many people working in silicon valley companies are employed using H1-B visas which means that if the company fails then their visa is revoked and they must return home immediately--implying to their fellows that they went to silicon valley, tried, failed, and were booted out of the place. If they were afraid of failure then they wouldn't take a risk like that.
Since foreigners are as likely as Americans to work at silicon valley startups, cultural differences between employees can't be the reason behind silicon valley's success. The fact that the employees are from all over the world, but the companies are American, suggests that the difference is economic not cultural.
I believe the primary reason there are more large startups in the US is because there is far more venture capital. It's natural that Europeans would be terrified of failing in Europe because the enterpreneurs there must bear the risk entirely by themselves. If you wish to raise money for a startup in Europe then you must risk all of your personal savings, and your house--and even then you really wouldn't have enough money to fund the startup. In America you use somebody else's money, and the risk to you is greatly decreased. Of course, if you accept venture capital then the potential rewards are also decreased, but if the startup succeeds then you'll be filthy rich anyway and you won't worry about the 33% cut of your massive fortune that must now be paid to ventu
Re:From an European... (Score:2, Insightful)
1) Re: the "megafence" on the southern border of the U.S.: remember, no such fence exists right now. There are fenced portions of the border, but most of it is basically freely passable (though the landscape itself is forbidding across West Texas and Arizona at least). Note, too, that even if there was a "perfect" (impregnable) fortress-fence stretching the whole way, and likewise keeping out those pesky Canadians, it would not contradict the claim that the U.S. allows immigration (and in healthy numbers!). Allowing immigration does not imply a freely permeable border. Mexico (perhaps in reaction to U.S. rules) has fairly stringent rules about Americans (and others) in Mexico, too; for more than border-area excursions (I think 60 miles / 48 hours), Americans are supposed to get paperwork done in advance to clear it. I have seen little complaint about this exercise of Mexican sovereignity. OTOH, at least in El Paso / Juarez, there is abundant foot- and car-traffic across the various official border crossing points, and the hassle is minimal in my limited experience (either direction, for people of American or Mexican citizenship). But you can't carry a gun from dangerous Texas into ultra-safe Juarez.
2) A 5,000-person conference in Austin with no Internet connection, in 2004?! That's hard to believe
Cheers,
timothy
Re:Mr Graham needs to travel more... (Score:1, Insightful)
- There is a culture of 'cooperation' and not standing out with a seemingly endless discussion about 'Australian' values. I put cooperation in quotes because it's very ethnocentric here - people who look different, act different or think different are shunned and ridiculed. When politicians talk about ethnic minorities, they use words like 'thugs' and 'grubs' - words that would get land an American senator in some very deep sh*t. In short, if you're anything other than a beer swilling, sports loving caucasian, you're going to be very uncomfortable in Australia.
- America is a meritocracy. Most Americans sill grow up believing that we can achieve our full potential, even though this might not be true. But it does create a competitive environment and we have role models who became something out of nothing.. Australians and Europeans do not have this advantage.. that's why European arguments about labor laws are always couched in 'them' vs 'us' terms, whereas Americans know that the 'them' and 'us' are very interchangeable.
- It is amazing how competent most American workers are even at the most mundane jobs. Travel elsewhere in the world, book train tickets, plane tickets, try to get your phone or car fixed and you'll realize what I'm talking about. Work elsewhere and you'll realize that we take our management skills for granted. It took 11 months for me two switch from one phone company to another here in Sydney... and over six months to resolve a credit card dispute.. I can't get a simple answer from my health insurance company about whether I'm covered for ambulances in other states... I could go on..
- Ambitious or creative Australians who want to make it know that they have to leave the country. Australia has the highest emigration rate in the developed world (something like 60,000 people a year leave, mostly for the UK and the US).
- You don't know the meaning of the word 'anti-intellectual' until you've lived in Australia.
I have nothing against Australia - I think the life here is great if you're not worried about not being creative or you're not ambitious and just want a good life. For me my entire sense of self worth rests on what I produce, so I know it's not for me.
I used to think that America has a thin margin on the rest of the world in terms of innovation and leadership, but travelling around and living in different parts of the world (including most of western Europe, India, China, Australia and New Zealand), I know now that we have nothing to fear in the near future. We're still a magnet for talented people, we treat our immigrants with respect, we have critical mass and a very strong skill base. It's easy to come down on America, because we don't have anything to compare ourselves to, but sometimes it helps to give ourselves a pat on the back. America is not perfect, but I can't wait to go back.