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I completely agree that visas are a problem but I disagree that they will be "the problem" to unseat Silicon Valley as the world nexus of startups. I've spent

by xiaoma 10y ago

I completely agree that visas are a problem but I disagree that they will be "the problem" to unseat Silicon Valley as the world nexus of startups. I've spent most my adult life in Asia and have lived in several countries and cities that claim to be very serious about becoming the next tech hub. None of them have very liberal immigration policies. All have visas for highly skilled workers, all have visas for entrepreneurs and all have visas for investors. I have yet to see a single case where a founder could get a visa without either significant revenues or significantly more funding than YC originally gave. It's also pretty hard for mid-stage startups to hire foreign workers, even in places with exceptional government-driven startup initiatives such as Singapore. In my perception, Silicon Valley's most critical weakness is housing prices and its most likely true competitor is Beijing—not due to openness of immigration by any means, but due to a larger base of technically educated citizens and access to what is becoming the largest market in the world.

khuey 10y ago
I agree that the most critical weakeness of Silicon Valley is real estate costs. I find it hard to imagine Beijing as a serious competitor though. If it were going to be anywhere in China I would expect it to be Shenzhen.
- briandear 10y ago
  Beijing? Right with the Great Firewall, it's a ridiculous place to run a tech company. With the air pollution it's a ridiculous place to live. I lived for many years in Shanghai but ultimately moved because it was nearly impossible to do anything tech related that relied on standard tools such as Github or marketing venues such as Facebook, etc.
  - echevil 10y ago
    Well there are tons of interesting tech work done in China, targeting only Chinese market though :) its a self contained market I can walk around and pay for everything with my cellphone nowadays in China, but can't really do that in Bay Area.
    - fdsfsafasfdas 10y ago
      > I can walk around and pay for everything with my cellphone nowadays in China, but can't really do that in Bay Area. Is this really that interesting though? Tell me when they have self-driving cars that are affordable enough for ride sharing.
      - echevil 10y ago
        That's just an example that i find interesting enough, that quite a few US companies tried to solve, but still have a long way to go. As for self-driving cars, Chinese companies like Baidu are not unlike Google, and they are investing/researching heavily in these fields. The only twist is that self-driving in China would be a lot harder to solve because the roads are a lot messy there :) At the same time, many of these companies directly invests in US companies as well
        hueving 10y ago
        >That's just an example that i find interesting enough, that quite a few US companies tried to solve, but still have a long way to go. Because it's not a technical problem. Nobody cares about the ability to pay with their phone in the US when a credit card works so well and doesn't have a battery that dies. Android and Apple pay work perfectly fine but almost nobody in my tech circles feels the urge to use them, let alone normal citizens. The credit card infrastructure in the US is so prevalent and reliable that there needs to be some serious perks to unseat the dominance.
        throwaway743824 10y ago
        Spoken as the incumbent. Of course it's a technical problem, as least as much as other SV companies. Hard tech hasn't been the edge for SV for many decades and it's getting even less important today. All the big companies has tried to tackle payments, but with lackluster results. What's "perfectly fine" for the US isn't in most of the rest of the world. Some of the more prominent startups in the UK, Germany and Sweden are payment related exactly because SV is weak in this area. There's a great opportunity for Chinese companies here if they ever decide to go outside their own borders.
- xiaoma 10y ago
  Shenzhen is a very different thing. It's important but not a challenger to SV. Huge startups come out of Beijing because it's the hub where the top students, founders, investors and regulators are. If you look at Fortune's list of unicorns, 3 of the top 10 are in Beijing. As they build, they're strengthening the founder/techie/investor ecosystem in the city even further. http://fortune.com/unicorns/ http://fortune.com/unicorns/
  - keepper 10y ago
    By that logic, Boston's Route 128 would have continued to be the "tech alley" of America. [1] Just having the talent, a silicon valley doesn't make. Its about the culture of collaboration and openness. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/the-valley-of-my-dreams-why-silicon-valley-left-bostons-route-128-in-the-dust/ https://techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/the-valley-of-my-dreams-wh...
    - ghaff 10y ago
      And yet Boston has some of the highest real estate prices in the country these days. (Fortunately you can commute out of it easier than in the Bay Area.) The Tech world doesn't begin and end with web/social/mobile.
      - fffernan 10y ago
        I'd say the Research Universities, Medical Technology, Robotics, and Travel Technology that comes out of Boston is significantly ahead of Silicon Valley. Automotive and related tech is quite small even with Tesla in the bay area. The number of automotive technology jobs is quite small. Automation technology from cars is picking up, but I doubt the number of jobs is very high in comparison to Detroit, Stuttgart, or Nagoya There are a lot more aerospace outside of Silicon Valley with Aerobus and Boeing having little presence in California. Google is #3 in cloud technology compared to Seattle/Redmond with AWS and Azure with significant marketshare advantage. Amazon is 45% marketshare in US for online commerce. Logistics technology for them is mainly built in Seattle and Boston. Not much for Amazon going on in Silicon Valley. Alexa not made in Silicon Valley. I'm still quite surprised people still believe Silicon Valley + SF lead in technology.
- echevil 10y ago
  Real estate costs in Shenzhen rose dramatically as well. It's not much better than Beijing now
- echevil 10y ago
  Real estate costs in Shenzhen rose dramatically as well. It's not much better than Beijing now
drc511 10y ago
What YC has to do - is classical very very early Symptom Ecosystem dissolution.i.e. SV (i know its too early to say so). Its very hard to disrupt such woven ecosystem due to inherent resiliency and there is higher chances it will survive but this is unprecedented . I checked few VC twitter feeds, they are leaning towards Canada ,very early ,very slow but still unprecedented.Networks are strong as long as the inflection point. One can watch this video i attached here to understand how ecosystem fails without the participation from value serving members and how quickly it may :by the way this is all facts checked. Here is vedio how ecosystems are fragile : http://bit.ly/2mqDdjf http://bit.ly/2mqDdjf .
- cmrdporcupine 10y ago
  If there is a move of any importance into Canada (doubtful to me as a Canadian) it will not be to Vancouver with its outrageous real estate prices, and very few tech companies, but to the Greater Toronto/Hamilton area, which is where 90% of these types of businesses are. Amazon, Google, and IBM are all already here or around here [Google is in Kitchener/Waterloo]. Apple is here for sales/marketing only (at least when my worked there 6-7 years ago). Facebook and EA have presence in Vancouver, and Amazon has some there, too. But I get the impression that Facebook and Amazon are merely interested in using Vancouver as a 'feeder' office for getting candidates long run into their Seattle offices. In any case, the wages are lower here which means talent still continues to emigrate. Also -- the weather. I work for Google Waterloo and I suspect there are far more Canadians working for Google in Mountain View than there are here in our largest Canadian office.
  - foota 10y ago
    I wouldn't underestimate the advantage that being on the West Coast provides.
    - throwaway743824 10y ago
      Because? I don't see Vancouver "happening" (at least not more than it already is). Being similar to places like Seattle or SF isn't a good thing if you want to compete with them, because you'll always end up behind them in a comparison.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
fdsfsafasfdas 10y ago
When adjusting for average income, Beijing is the most expensive city in the world.

by xiaoma 10y ago

khuey 10y ago

I agree that the most critical weakeness of Silicon Valley is real estate costs. I find it hard to imagine Beijing as a serious competitor though. If it were going to be anywhere in China I would expect it to be Shenzhen.

briandear 10y ago
Beijing? Right with the Great Firewall, it's a ridiculous place to run a tech company. With the air pollution it's a ridiculous place to live. I lived for many years in Shanghai but ultimately moved because it was nearly impossible to do anything tech related that relied on standard tools such as Github or marketing venues such as Facebook, etc.
- echevil 10y ago
  Well there are tons of interesting tech work done in China, targeting only Chinese market though :) its a self contained market I can walk around and pay for everything with my cellphone nowadays in China, but can't really do that in Bay Area.
  - fdsfsafasfdas 10y ago
    > I can walk around and pay for everything with my cellphone nowadays in China, but can't really do that in Bay Area. Is this really that interesting though? Tell me when they have self-driving cars that are affordable enough for ride sharing.
    - echevil 10y ago
      That's just an example that i find interesting enough, that quite a few US companies tried to solve, but still have a long way to go. As for self-driving cars, Chinese companies like Baidu are not unlike Google, and they are investing/researching heavily in these fields. The only twist is that self-driving in China would be a lot harder to solve because the roads are a lot messy there :) At the same time, many of these companies directly invests in US companies as well
      - hueving 10y ago
        >That's just an example that i find interesting enough, that quite a few US companies tried to solve, but still have a long way to go. Because it's not a technical problem. Nobody cares about the ability to pay with their phone in the US when a credit card works so well and doesn't have a battery that dies. Android and Apple pay work perfectly fine but almost nobody in my tech circles feels the urge to use them, let alone normal citizens. The credit card infrastructure in the US is so prevalent and reliable that there needs to be some serious perks to unseat the dominance.
        throwaway743824 10y ago
        Spoken as the incumbent. Of course it's a technical problem, as least as much as other SV companies. Hard tech hasn't been the edge for SV for many decades and it's getting even less important today. All the big companies has tried to tackle payments, but with lackluster results. What's "perfectly fine" for the US isn't in most of the rest of the world. Some of the more prominent startups in the UK, Germany and Sweden are payment related exactly because SV is weak in this area. There's a great opportunity for Chinese companies here if they ever decide to go outside their own borders.
xiaoma 10y ago
Shenzhen is a very different thing. It's important but not a challenger to SV. Huge startups come out of Beijing because it's the hub where the top students, founders, investors and regulators are. If you look at Fortune's list of unicorns, 3 of the top 10 are in Beijing. As they build, they're strengthening the founder/techie/investor ecosystem in the city even further. http://fortune.com/unicorns/ http://fortune.com/unicorns/
- keepper 10y ago
  By that logic, Boston's Route 128 would have continued to be the "tech alley" of America. [1] Just having the talent, a silicon valley doesn't make. Its about the culture of collaboration and openness. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/the-valley-of-my-dreams-why-silicon-valley-left-bostons-route-128-in-the-dust/ https://techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/the-valley-of-my-dreams-wh...
  - ghaff 10y ago
    And yet Boston has some of the highest real estate prices in the country these days. (Fortunately you can commute out of it easier than in the Bay Area.) The Tech world doesn't begin and end with web/social/mobile.
    - fffernan 10y ago
      I'd say the Research Universities, Medical Technology, Robotics, and Travel Technology that comes out of Boston is significantly ahead of Silicon Valley. Automotive and related tech is quite small even with Tesla in the bay area. The number of automotive technology jobs is quite small. Automation technology from cars is picking up, but I doubt the number of jobs is very high in comparison to Detroit, Stuttgart, or Nagoya There are a lot more aerospace outside of Silicon Valley with Aerobus and Boeing having little presence in California. Google is #3 in cloud technology compared to Seattle/Redmond with AWS and Azure with significant marketshare advantage. Amazon is 45% marketshare in US for online commerce. Logistics technology for them is mainly built in Seattle and Boston. Not much for Amazon going on in Silicon Valley. Alexa not made in Silicon Valley. I'm still quite surprised people still believe Silicon Valley + SF lead in technology.
echevil 10y ago
Real estate costs in Shenzhen rose dramatically as well. It's not much better than Beijing now
echevil 10y ago
Real estate costs in Shenzhen rose dramatically as well. It's not much better than Beijing now

drc511 10y ago

What YC has to do - is classical very very early Symptom Ecosystem dissolution.i.e. SV (i know its too early to say so). Its very hard to disrupt such woven ecosystem due to inherent resiliency and there is higher chances it will survive but this is unprecedented . I checked few VC twitter feeds, they are leaning towards Canada ,very early ,very slow but still unprecedented.Networks are strong as long as the inflection point. One can watch this video i attached here to understand how ecosystem fails without the participation from value serving members and how quickly it may :by the way this is all facts checked. Here is vedio how ecosystems are fragile : http://bit.ly/2mqDdjf http://bit.ly/2mqDdjf .

cmrdporcupine 10y ago
If there is a move of any importance into Canada (doubtful to me as a Canadian) it will not be to Vancouver with its outrageous real estate prices, and very few tech companies, but to the Greater Toronto/Hamilton area, which is where 90% of these types of businesses are. Amazon, Google, and IBM are all already here or around here [Google is in Kitchener/Waterloo]. Apple is here for sales/marketing only (at least when my worked there 6-7 years ago). Facebook and EA have presence in Vancouver, and Amazon has some there, too. But I get the impression that Facebook and Amazon are merely interested in using Vancouver as a 'feeder' office for getting candidates long run into their Seattle offices. In any case, the wages are lower here which means talent still continues to emigrate. Also -- the weather. I work for Google Waterloo and I suspect there are far more Canadians working for Google in Mountain View than there are here in our largest Canadian office.
- foota 10y ago
  I wouldn't underestimate the advantage that being on the West Coast provides.
  - throwaway743824 10y ago
    Because? I don't see Vancouver "happening" (at least not more than it already is). Being similar to places like Seattle or SF isn't a good thing if you want to compete with them, because you'll always end up behind them in a comparison.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

fdsfsafasfdas 10y ago

When adjusting for average income, Beijing is the most expensive city in the world.