7 ms·
VC per capita, Europe: $7, U.S.: $72, Israel: $144.
- ajju 15y agoI want to see this number for just Silicon Valley.
- pchristensen 15y agoWell, the SF bay area 2.5% of the country's population (7.5M/300M) and ~50% of the VC, so 25x$72 ~= $1800/person.
- ajju 15y agoThanks, an order of magnitude larger per capita than Israel, as expected. I wasn't aware of the 50% number and too lazy to Google it!
- c2 15y agoI don't think that's surprising is it? Silicon Valley is known to be the best place for VC in the world. I'm sure if you draw arbitrary lines around the hottest investment communities in Israel the numbers would also be much more even. That Israel as a country beats us in per capita investment is an interesting figure which we should all consider.
- ajju 15y agoIt is not surprising, which is why I said "as expected". I would like to see how the numbers compare for hot cities in Israel vs. the U.S., and I also think we should obviously try to raise the national number. I am not in the valley myself, so that would certainly help me!
- highfreq 15y agoOn the other hand the population of the bay area is quite comparable to that of Israel. Smaller countries tend to have more specialized and targeted economies. If Israel were to attempt to play in all the industries that the US does, they would do very poorly at almost all of them. Much of the US economy is in large established technology and manufacturing companies, where VC no longer has a role. I would expect that for every possible region of Israel, it is possible to find a region of similar population in the bay area that has a higher per capita VC investment.
- Peaker 15y agoBut Silicon Valley is still far more specialized than Israel. Most Israelis are not in hi-tech industries, so it is unfair to compare SV to Israel.
- endtime 15y agoWell, what's the VC per capita for Haifa? Why do you think it's interesting to compare the area with the highest concentration of startups in the US to another entire country? Either compare country-to-country or highly concentrated startup area-to-highly concentrated startup area. I doubt there are more startups in Eilat than there are in Boise.
- ajju 15y agoWhat is the number for Haifa? I genuinely would like to know. Separately, I am not trying to be a valley-partisan, just noting that the number for silicon valley is much higher than for the country of Israel, as you would expect. I don't even live anywhere near the valley.
- endtime 15y agoYes, but it's a silly comparison. Israel has areas like the Valley too.
- pchristensen 15y agoThe number for the valley would be even higher if you just took the counties from San Jose to SF, and excluded all of the East Bay, Marin, etc.
- Tyrant505 15y agoDo you happen to know how NYC compares?
- alnayyir 15y agoPoorly, unless you really like facebook apps.
- amalcon 15y agoThe denominator in NYC is very high, so poorly on that metric. It might be closer (though I suspect not particularly close) if you compared VC$/square foot, or VC$/engineer. All these metrics are but approximations of the impossible-to-measure VC$ available/VC$ sought number that actually matters to startups. I suppose we could compare VC$/GDP$, to get some idea of how much of a nation's economy is based on startups.
- ansy 15y agoI wonder how much of Israel's VC money is domestic and how much pours in from the US.
- nandemo 15y agoThere's some info here but the relevant part seems garbled. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital_in_Israel#Characterization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital_in_Israel#Chara... Israel’s venture capital industry has about 70 active venture capital funds, of which 14 international VCs with Israeli offices. Additionally, there are some 220 international funds, including Polaris Venture Partners, Accel Partners and Greylock Partners, that do not have branches in Israel, but actively invest in Israel through an in-house specialist. In 2009, the Life Sciences Sector led the market with $272 million or 24% of total capital raised, followed by the Software Sector with $258 million or 23%, the Communications sector with $219 million or 20%, and the Internet sector with 13% of capital raised in 2009. [6] roughly 78%-88% of investments that reached Israeli high-tech companies in 2001-2008 were done either by Israeli VC firms (the 38%-49% above) or by foreign or other entities in syndication with Israeli VC firms: 37%-50%.
- beagle3 15y ago> Greylock Partners, that do not have branches in Israel I'm not sure when that was last updated, but Greylock has had an active Israeli office for more than two years now.
- thelonecabbage 15y agoFor what it's worth, I've personally met with 3 European angel funds in the past 2 weeks. One of which was actually government backed corporation (that had been given explicit permission to enter Israel)
- imjustatechguy 15y agoAnnual US Aid to Israel is $382.97 per Israeli and going up.
- tkahn6 15y agoI'm not sure where you're getting your numbers from. At $30 billion over the next 10 years, per year, US aid to Israel is $412 per Israeli [1]. And of course, that will go down with population increases. And another thing to note is that that money is in the form of military contracts with American companies. It is not used to pay for Israeli infrastructure or social services AFAIK beyond a separate chunk of money ~$40 million to help pay for Israel's immigration problem [2]. 1. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3+billion%24+%2F+population+of+israel http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3+billion%24+%2F+popula... 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_aid_to_Israel.gif http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_aid_to_Israel.gif (note that economic aid to Israel was stopped in 2007)
- imjustatechguy 15y agoI got my numbers from the bottom of this page which shows that US Aid to Israel is increasing through til 2013: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/foreign_aid.html http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/foreig... I got my population number of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel So to sum up... my comment above is correct.
- tkahn6 15y agoIt appears you are correct, though my second point still stands.
- maayank 15y ago"And another thing to note is that that money is in the form of military contracts with American companies" This. People are usually oblivious that it's another way of transferring money from the government to the military industrial complex, not just supporting the single democracy in the middle east.
- leyfa 15y agoI have no doubt that VC money is the lowest in Europe of those three. I wonder though how significant this metric really is, especially if the large developping countries of eastern Europe are included. Wouldn't a VC money per startup/founder be more interesting?
- imjustatechguy 15y agoDepending on definition Europe can have more than 700 million people and it often includes Turkey and Russia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Europe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Europe But I would think that they are referring to European Union nations??? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Europe,_EU,_candidates,.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Europe,_EU,_candidates,.pn... Also does the VC numbers for Israel include the population of the Israeli occupied territories or just those who have full Israeli citizenship?
- johnarleyburns 15y agoRemember that a huge chunk of VC funding in the US comes from Europe. Milner, anyone? Not to mention I know of at least three Austin area startups that began solely from capital raised in the EU. Europe is flush with cash, it just doesn't have so many people willing to work past 4pm.
- ig1 15y agoWhat the article misses is that London with roughly 1% of Europe's population get's 30-40% of the VC financing in Europe. So based on those figures London's VC per capita is in the region of $200-$300 (London has a similar population size to Israel).
- enjo 15y agoWhat does that look like if we just do the valley?
- ig1 15y agoCan't find the data for the valley but I imagine it would be in the $1500-$2000 range.
- sien 15y agoThe flipside of this is that Europe should probably not be compared to single countries like the US or Israel. The comparable entities are North America, the Middle East and Europe. Then things would change. Individual countries in Europe, particularly the Scandanavians, have loads of small IT companies funded from VC capital and as others have said government grants. The Dutch, the UK and Germany would probably also do reasonalbly well.
- abbasmehdi 15y agoThe comparable entities are North America, the Middle East and Europe. Then things would change. <-- No, here is why, if you're in Israel you have access to all that it has to offer, same for the US, and same for Europe (EU). The point is 'how much money is there to go around / potential recipient.'
- ig1 15y agoEurope is far less a single economic block than the US or Israel. An American VC is far more likely to invest in a London based startup than one in say Germany, purely because of cultural and language barriers.
- tomx 15y agoIs MS's European chairman genuinely concerned about the European economy and education system? In that case, he might have more success at these goals, by becoming a politician instead. Or... are these economic observations somehow self serving? Perhaps the lower levels of VC investment in Europe (per capita) are inconvenient for him: Implying European investors should greatly increase their investment levels. Would he be happy if VC levels did increase 10x to US levels... But funds were largely directed at companies that MS did not have involvement with?
- rdl 15y agoMicrosoft BizSpark is definitely genuinely concerned about the European startup ecology and education system, and Microsoft itself is large enough that the only way for it to grow/sustain sales is by growing the market as a whole, so yes, the European chairman definitely cares about the European economy and education system. Any big-company executive does. The whole point of capitalism is that it's both self-serving and public good.
- vetleen 15y agoThis doesn't quite capture the picture because Europe often have public subsidies as well. For instance the publicly owned "Innovation Norway" in Norway has a budget of NOK 1,5 billion, which translates to about US$60 per capita. Most of this is spent on subsidising entrepreneurial ventures.
- _delirium 15y agoI definitely see this in indie games. Things like the Nordic Game Fund are really nice compared to what's available in the U.S., although Canada is also pretty generous with funding small videogame startups (especially Quebec, which has additional province-level funding). In the U.S., you can only really make it if you: 1) bootstrap; or 2) target social games or "gamification", which are the only things VCs care about. Companies more in the Playdead (Denmark) vein rarely get funding, although the U.S. does have quite a few bootstrapped success stories--- just looking at Santa Cruz, CA, alone, both Gaijin Games and Team Meat, makers of bit.trip and Super Meat Boy, respectively, are recently bootstrapped and successful. For early-stage seed funding, there are also all sorts of target-agnostic entrepreneurship programs in Europe, which will kick $20k or something your way if you have anything approximating a reasonable business plan; makes it much easier to just strike out on your own without having to do consulting work to fund it. On the other hand, the fact that the U.S. has more than its share of successful bootstrapped indie-game companies suggests that either the culture or ecosystem is doing something positive there even with VCs being absent.
- RandyHelzerman 15y agoIn the future, every startup will be funded for $15.