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I think its fair to say that they're growing for sure, as the government and corporations have been investing there. What I feel makes Silicon Valley unique (ba

I think its fair to say that they're growing for sure, as the government and corporations have been investing there. What I feel makes Silicon Valley unique (backed by the history as I understand it) is the proximity of things - The foundational organizations and proximity to an intense congregation of early innovation orgs, many of which started in Silicon Valley, or always had a large presence from the early days - Proximity to a delta of good universities (large hiring pool, of ready to work post grads helps a lot) - The incubation of VCs that despite many attempts to lure them, are still largely located in Silicon Valley I think these over arching factors are the biggest reason Silicon Valley is unique. They're also not often talked about in this way very often in the 'mythos' of SV, but are very much the bedrock It also doesn't make SV unique, per say (I think for medical device startups, states like Minnesota would be a good fit for your company, since they have a lot of investment in this area by multiple entities, as well as the same university graph so the pool of students you can hire is pretty good, and I feel this is pretty key to a lot of it)

onethought 6y ago
I’m guessing you haven’t been to Shenzhen. Where everything you mentioned is, and growing.
- throwaway2037 6y ago
  > Proximity to a delta of good universities What good unis are in Guangdong (GD) province? The most famous ones I know are in Shanghai and Beijing. From my limited experience with hiring in Shenzhen, almost no one was from GD, nor went to uni in GD. Most went to uni in Shanghai or Beijing. > The foundational organizations I think the OP is referring to big gov't research (DARPA, etc.) that is the backbone of technologies behind the Internet and integrated circuits. Do similar orgs (and history) exist in Shenzhen? Again, my impression is that most of those orgs exist in Shanghai and Beijing.
  - onethought 6y ago
    DARPA was based in Virginia... so not sure what SV history you are referring to. Yes Guangdong is the technology zone for China, it receives both state funding, state run incubators and special economic status. But in essence they have both highly skilled hardware engineers and software engineers which is like SV of old. Where as current day SV is dominated by software, where they ship the manufacture of things to Shenzhen or Taiwan. As far as universities, you have Sun Yat Sen University in GZ one of the top tier universities in China. And yes a whole lot of internal migration from the north to the south. Shenzhen growing from 70k to 10mil in 40 years is an insane population movement

onethought 6y ago

I’m guessing you haven’t been to Shenzhen. Where everything you mentioned is, and growing.

throwaway2037 6y ago
> Proximity to a delta of good universities What good unis are in Guangdong (GD) province? The most famous ones I know are in Shanghai and Beijing. From my limited experience with hiring in Shenzhen, almost no one was from GD, nor went to uni in GD. Most went to uni in Shanghai or Beijing. > The foundational organizations I think the OP is referring to big gov't research (DARPA, etc.) that is the backbone of technologies behind the Internet and integrated circuits. Do similar orgs (and history) exist in Shenzhen? Again, my impression is that most of those orgs exist in Shanghai and Beijing.
- onethought 6y ago
  DARPA was based in Virginia... so not sure what SV history you are referring to. Yes Guangdong is the technology zone for China, it receives both state funding, state run incubators and special economic status. But in essence they have both highly skilled hardware engineers and software engineers which is like SV of old. Where as current day SV is dominated by software, where they ship the manufacture of things to Shenzhen or Taiwan. As far as universities, you have Sun Yat Sen University in GZ one of the top tier universities in China. And yes a whole lot of internal migration from the north to the south. Shenzhen growing from 70k to 10mil in 40 years is an insane population movement