5 ms·

Will Silicon Valley remain the best hub of tech in the next 10 years?

35 points by FahadUddin92 9y ago

I want to move to the valley as its the hub of tech. Costs are high and moving to the US is difficult. Will US remain the hub of tech in the next 10 years? Do we have other options like Singapore?

Huhty 9y ago
Hard to predict based on Trump alone.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  It's important to be substantive if you raise a political point. Otherwise it's just Trump graffiti.
touchofevil 9y ago
You could consider Silicon Beach (Los Angeles) instead. Rents are cheaper and google and snapchat are located there.
- ojbyrne 9y ago
  Google's headquarters are located in Mountain View (Silicon Valley). They have satellite offices all over the world, so the presence of one in LA doesn't really support your point.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  The rents by the beach are not cheaper than the Bay Area. Venice the area you referred to as Silicon Beach is the most expensive neighborhood in Los Angeles now: http://www.laweekly.com/news/how-venice-became-the-most-expensive-neighborhood-in-los-angeles-7831779 http://www.laweekly.com/news/how-venice-became-the-most-expe...
matchagaucho 9y ago
(Disclosure: I live in SF Bay area with a bias towards it's long-term success) It's difficult to predict anything 10 years out. But when projecting industry trends within a geography I look to Financial Services (FS) as a comparable. Both Tech and FS sell "virtual goods and services" with a distribution model that does not necessarily lock them down to a location. But even after the great depression of 1929 and repeated stock market collapses, New York is still a major FS hub. So, it's really the people and local supporting infrastructure in a region that keep an industry going; not the distribution model. I assume Silicon Valley will remain a leading tech hub in both consumer and enterprise tech in 10 years. The supporting infra is taken for granted. Same thing can similarly be said about L.A. and the movie making business. Nothing prevents other locations from making movies, but it's hard to beat a century of built-up supporting infrastructure.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  >"But even after the great depression of 1929 and repeated stock market collapses, New York is still a major FS hub." I don't think that a very good indicator. There is a difference between the tech industry and financial services. Financial services depend on markets that have a well known and established opening and closing time. In the US the markets are very much tied to 9:30AM to 4:00PM in the Eastern time zone. How would that work if Wall Street were to move to US Central Time or Pacific Time? Would workers be expected to get up in the middle of the night?
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    I don't think a time difference of a couple hours would be that insurmountable, but that doesn't explain why they wouldn't move to, say, Atlanta or Miami.
  - matchagaucho 9y ago
    That's pretty much the definition of a "hub". Wall St doesn't need to relocate. Global markets have adapted to operate on EST. Not the other way around.
    - bogomipz 9y ago
      I'm not really understanding your argument I guess. My point was that hub of finance for the U.S is largely dependent on co-locating where the sun rises first in the U.S. and Silicon Valley has no such analog. So while the hub of finance could move somewhere else on the East Coast its very much limited to the 17 states in EST and then further limited by states with cities and infrastructure that can support it all. The finance hub has actually moved a bit. Tt was in Philadelphia before NYC and "Wall Street" moved away from the area around the actual Wall Street after the Sept 11th attacks. Wall Street is largely in midtown Manhattan now and New Jersey. But still on the East Coast.
  - gumby 9y ago
    > I don't think that a very good indicator. There is a difference between the tech industry and financial services. Financial services depend on markets that have a well known and established opening and closing time. In the US the markets are very much tied to 9:30AM to 4:00PM in the Eastern time zone. That hasn't really been the case for quite some time. A majority of option and equity trading now happens directly rather than on open exchanges and is thus immune to "market hours". Forex is 24 hour. And London is still the finance powerhouse despite not being in the largest economy (and not being in the Euro, but manages the vast majority of Euro bond trading) and in fact being in a country the rest of whose economy is a basket case. But physical propinquity still matters, it seems, for the human intangibles.
jy1 9y ago
10 years is not too long. You should think about what you think are game changers in the next 10 years. I think self-driving cars, on-demand everything, VR, crypto-currencies, video will be the future. Thus, Silicon Valley is unlikely to be dethroned.
MrQuincle 9y ago
What will be the underlying factors? + The move towards more embodied intelligent machines, be it home automation systems, internet of things, autonomous cars, or robots, makes it likely that location is still gonna be important and we will still see hubs indeed. Remote work for software is one thing, for hardware or hybridware it's more difficult. + Ten years might not be long from a technical point of view, but this is about people migrating to other places. Population dynamics might not as fast-paced as tech. + One thing is inevitable: a financial downtime between now and then. How the Valley will react, depends... It means fewer venture-backed new vultures on the market, a less crazy search for personnel, etc. + Economies of scale will always apply. High densities of companies, people, universities, homes, and other entities, will lead to higher and higher productivity. If you really want to compete with the Valley you'll have to work on these metrics as a region. Check https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/12/why-denser-cities-are-smarter-and-more-productive/4049/ https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/12/why-denser-cities-are-s....
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Jabanga 9y ago
I think without a doubt it will remain the best tech hub in the world. The change that may occur is that Silicon Valley, while remaining in the lead, will see its centrality diminished by the emergence of decentralized funding using ERC20 tokens, aka the token sale model, which is quickly approaching traditional venture capital volumes [1]. I don't believe this would hurt SV's economy, as the decline in funding friction, while having very geographically distributed direct benefits, will have the second order effect of expanding the tech sector, and with it, tech companies operating in sectors not currently amenable to these new nontraditional enterprise structures and funding models. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest_funded_crowdfunding_projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest_funded_crowdfu...
shmerl 9y ago
These things should spread.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
refurb 9y ago
A great analogy might be the biotech industry. The Bay Area was dominant for most of the first 30 years. Much of the original research was done at UCSF and Genentech was the first biotech company. SF is still doing well, but it's no longer #1 when it comes to biotech VC dollars. That title goes to Boston now. And I can say that working in the industry, Boston has much more buzz when it comes to biotech than SF at this point.
- mhermher 9y ago
  Where does San Diego fall in that list? Just curious.
  - refurb 9y ago
    San Diego used to be a hot-spot for Biotech. Back in the early 2000's, nearly every major biopharma company had a site in San Diego. Most of them closed. Pfizer still has some R&D there. There are a couple mid-sized biotechs there, but it's be a rough last few years. Similar to Seattle.
Temasik 9y ago
Singapore? Really? LoL The culture there is cheap the only good thing here is the tax
- urlwolf 9y ago
  Agreed. I did my research and SG is not sustainable for my vertical (data science)
crispytx 9y ago
It seems like the local governments are intentionally inflating housing prices which I think will end up driving companies out of town. I know I sure as hell don't want to move there.
infiniteparamtr 9y ago
The boom in Silicon Valley is largely because of the internet. This has resulted in much of the world connecting and becoming capable of equal economic input/output - therefore the next "place like Silicon Valley" could ironically be anywhere and everywhere, since information is now far less exclusive.
SirLJ 9y ago
The VCs are the driving force I would say...
andrewmb 9y ago
To provide more of a direct answer, I think that Shenzhen has really great long-term prospects as a tech/innovation hub. Very large number of investors, existing and large tech/innovation/industry cluster (consumer electronics), and long-term government incentives. You can already start to see the momentum building. I've seen major changes since first doing business there (Feb 2012) and even over the past ~2years that I've lived there. However, the prospects of moving there are not significantly better than the US. China is opening up new classes of visas and making certain business licenses more accessible, but my general impression from being in the ecosystem and talking with locals and foreigners is that it's difficult to get a sustainable business off the ground. The immigration situation (if that is a goal) is bleak.
cykosyc 9y ago
i live in Phoenix, AZ and tech start ups and companies are relocating here and somewhere I hear that Phoenix will be the next Silicon Valley and tech hub
- cykosyc 9y ago
  oh and cost of living is not that high either :)

35 points by FahadUddin92 9y ago

I want to move to the valley as its the hub of tech. Costs are high and moving to the US is difficult. Will US remain the hub of tech in the next 10 years? Do we have other options like Singapore?

Huhty 9y ago

Hard to predict based on Trump alone.

sillysaurus3 9y ago
It's important to be substantive if you raise a political point. Otherwise it's just Trump graffiti.

touchofevil 9y ago

You could consider Silicon Beach (Los Angeles) instead. Rents are cheaper and google and snapchat are located there.

ojbyrne 9y ago
Google's headquarters are located in Mountain View (Silicon Valley). They have satellite offices all over the world, so the presence of one in LA doesn't really support your point.
bogomipz 9y ago
The rents by the beach are not cheaper than the Bay Area. Venice the area you referred to as Silicon Beach is the most expensive neighborhood in Los Angeles now: http://www.laweekly.com/news/how-venice-became-the-most-expensive-neighborhood-in-los-angeles-7831779 http://www.laweekly.com/news/how-venice-became-the-most-expe...

matchagaucho 9y ago

(Disclosure: I live in SF Bay area with a bias towards it's long-term success) It's difficult to predict anything 10 years out. But when projecting industry trends within a geography I look to Financial Services (FS) as a comparable. Both Tech and FS sell "virtual goods and services" with a distribution model that does not necessarily lock them down to a location. But even after the great depression of 1929 and repeated stock market collapses, New York is still a major FS hub. So, it's really the people and local supporting infrastructure in a region that keep an industry going; not the distribution model. I assume Silicon Valley will remain a leading tech hub in both consumer and enterprise tech in 10 years. The supporting infra is taken for granted. Same thing can similarly be said about L.A. and the movie making business. Nothing prevents other locations from making movies, but it's hard to beat a century of built-up supporting infrastructure.

bogomipz 9y ago
>"But even after the great depression of 1929 and repeated stock market collapses, New York is still a major FS hub." I don't think that a very good indicator. There is a difference between the tech industry and financial services. Financial services depend on markets that have a well known and established opening and closing time. In the US the markets are very much tied to 9:30AM to 4:00PM in the Eastern time zone. How would that work if Wall Street were to move to US Central Time or Pacific Time? Would workers be expected to get up in the middle of the night?
- emodendroket 9y ago
  I don't think a time difference of a couple hours would be that insurmountable, but that doesn't explain why they wouldn't move to, say, Atlanta or Miami.
- matchagaucho 9y ago
  That's pretty much the definition of a "hub". Wall St doesn't need to relocate. Global markets have adapted to operate on EST. Not the other way around.
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    I'm not really understanding your argument I guess. My point was that hub of finance for the U.S is largely dependent on co-locating where the sun rises first in the U.S. and Silicon Valley has no such analog. So while the hub of finance could move somewhere else on the East Coast its very much limited to the 17 states in EST and then further limited by states with cities and infrastructure that can support it all. The finance hub has actually moved a bit. Tt was in Philadelphia before NYC and "Wall Street" moved away from the area around the actual Wall Street after the Sept 11th attacks. Wall Street is largely in midtown Manhattan now and New Jersey. But still on the East Coast.
- gumby 9y ago
  > I don't think that a very good indicator. There is a difference between the tech industry and financial services. Financial services depend on markets that have a well known and established opening and closing time. In the US the markets are very much tied to 9:30AM to 4:00PM in the Eastern time zone. That hasn't really been the case for quite some time. A majority of option and equity trading now happens directly rather than on open exchanges and is thus immune to "market hours". Forex is 24 hour. And London is still the finance powerhouse despite not being in the largest economy (and not being in the Euro, but manages the vast majority of Euro bond trading) and in fact being in a country the rest of whose economy is a basket case. But physical propinquity still matters, it seems, for the human intangibles.

jy1 9y ago

10 years is not too long. You should think about what you think are game changers in the next 10 years. I think self-driving cars, on-demand everything, VR, crypto-currencies, video will be the future. Thus, Silicon Valley is unlikely to be dethroned.

MrQuincle 9y ago

What will be the underlying factors? + The move towards more embodied intelligent machines, be it home automation systems, internet of things, autonomous cars, or robots, makes it likely that location is still gonna be important and we will still see hubs indeed. Remote work for software is one thing, for hardware or hybridware it's more difficult. + Ten years might not be long from a technical point of view, but this is about people migrating to other places. Population dynamics might not as fast-paced as tech. + One thing is inevitable: a financial downtime between now and then. How the Valley will react, depends... It means fewer venture-backed new vultures on the market, a less crazy search for personnel, etc. + Economies of scale will always apply. High densities of companies, people, universities, homes, and other entities, will lead to higher and higher productivity. If you really want to compete with the Valley you'll have to work on these metrics as a region. Check https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/12/why-denser-cities-are-smarter-and-more-productive/4049/ https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/12/why-denser-cities-are-s....

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Jabanga 9y ago

I think without a doubt it will remain the best tech hub in the world. The change that may occur is that Silicon Valley, while remaining in the lead, will see its centrality diminished by the emergence of decentralized funding using ERC20 tokens, aka the token sale model, which is quickly approaching traditional venture capital volumes [1]. I don't believe this would hurt SV's economy, as the decline in funding friction, while having very geographically distributed direct benefits, will have the second order effect of expanding the tech sector, and with it, tech companies operating in sectors not currently amenable to these new nontraditional enterprise structures and funding models. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest_funded_crowdfunding_projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest_funded_crowdfu...

shmerl 9y ago

These things should spread.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

refurb 9y ago

A great analogy might be the biotech industry. The Bay Area was dominant for most of the first 30 years. Much of the original research was done at UCSF and Genentech was the first biotech company. SF is still doing well, but it's no longer #1 when it comes to biotech VC dollars. That title goes to Boston now. And I can say that working in the industry, Boston has much more buzz when it comes to biotech than SF at this point.

mhermher 9y ago
Where does San Diego fall in that list? Just curious.
- refurb 9y ago
  San Diego used to be a hot-spot for Biotech. Back in the early 2000's, nearly every major biopharma company had a site in San Diego. Most of them closed. Pfizer still has some R&D there. There are a couple mid-sized biotechs there, but it's be a rough last few years. Similar to Seattle.

Temasik 9y ago

Singapore? Really? LoL The culture there is cheap the only good thing here is the tax

urlwolf 9y ago
Agreed. I did my research and SG is not sustainable for my vertical (data science)

crispytx 9y ago

It seems like the local governments are intentionally inflating housing prices which I think will end up driving companies out of town. I know I sure as hell don't want to move there.

infiniteparamtr 9y ago

The boom in Silicon Valley is largely because of the internet. This has resulted in much of the world connecting and becoming capable of equal economic input/output - therefore the next "place like Silicon Valley" could ironically be anywhere and everywhere, since information is now far less exclusive.

SirLJ 9y ago

The VCs are the driving force I would say...

andrewmb 9y ago

To provide more of a direct answer, I think that Shenzhen has really great long-term prospects as a tech/innovation hub. Very large number of investors, existing and large tech/innovation/industry cluster (consumer electronics), and long-term government incentives. You can already start to see the momentum building. I've seen major changes since first doing business there (Feb 2012) and even over the past ~2years that I've lived there. However, the prospects of moving there are not significantly better than the US. China is opening up new classes of visas and making certain business licenses more accessible, but my general impression from being in the ecosystem and talking with locals and foreigners is that it's difficult to get a sustainable business off the ground. The immigration situation (if that is a goal) is bleak.

cykosyc 9y ago

i live in Phoenix, AZ and tech start ups and companies are relocating here and somewhere I hear that Phoenix will be the next Silicon Valley and tech hub

cykosyc 9y ago
oh and cost of living is not that high either :)