4 ms·

Its effects can't be that disastrous though. The US tech scene is still the best in the world. China is pretty close though.

jokethrowaway 5y ago
I think that's caused by the capital available to the US which made people adapt and learn how to use that capital to grow massively (see growth hacking). You also have generations of successful entrepreneurs staying in the US and teaching the next generation. Entrepreneurship in EU is mostly a joke, good entrepreneurs are hard to find. And still, despite of this, people working in Europe seems to be much happier (even if they're poorer) than in the US. My experiences with USA companies haven't been positive (very immature working culture of burning your employees) but I was always impressed at how the founders (some from the US, some immigrating from outside) managed to rake in a casual few millions at demo day just by saying they want to solve problems for a certain audience. My company got 10k€ for 10% after fighting for months (some more money came later thanks to an angel I sourced), which were not even enough money to incorporate a company in the country I was.
- adwn 5y ago
  > You also have generations of successful entrepreneurs staying in the US and teaching the next generation. Entrepreneurship in EU is mostly a joke, good entrepreneurs are hard to find. Uh, what? Wrong, at least for Germany, which is littered with internationally successful small and medium-sized companies. Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelstand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelstand . Edit: Unless you were refering to the kind of "entrepreneur" that burns millions of USD in VC money over the span of a couple years, fails to create anything that anyone is willing to actually pay money for, but produces a lot of insightful blog posts in that time. Yes, we don't have a lot of those here yet, but we're working on it.
  - jfengel 5y ago
    They probably did mean that, and believe it or not, Americans are actually OK with that. American entrepreneurial culture includes a strong dose of "It's OK to lose a million dollars a hundred times if the next one makes a billion dollars". Some think that's part of the reason the US is the country that generates the FAANG(M)s. They throw money at the wall and make big wins off of what sticks, if most of it doesn't. It's arguable whether that's actually beneficial for the world (is there any of the MANGAFs you don't feel uncomfortable about?), but it certainly accomplishes something. If only making the US rich.
- Radim 5y ago
  Look at the flip side of that coin too: The gap between bombastic marketing (esp. in the VC/startup world, but also self-promo) and reality must be mentally devastating. US has a serious, nationwide medication problem. Honesty has its upsides, the (financial) success of an "awesome amazing disruptive changing-the-world-again-this-week" mindset notwithstanding.
fnord123 5y ago
When metrics are you using?
- graderjs 5y ago
  I guess a whole bunch of my opinions and experience based on reading about the different tech scenes. I'm not factoring in things like "employee happiness as a separate vector" (in my opinion, in this argument, that's "second place consolation prize" for Europeans justifying why their tech scene is better). I'm assuming that however terrible the US scene is claimed to be, it's can't be bad in the sense that any badness has not destroyed its productivity. It's still no. 1. To me the point of a tech scene is to be large. As in dollar value. Generate capital in terms of valuations, market cap, revenue and funding for new ventures. Attempt to summarize the experiences, readings that contribute to my view: Number of startups in US. Size of tech companies. US tech scene companies ranking in world's largest organizations. Personal experience with those companies. Size of China market. Number of Chinese tech billionaires. Number of massive Chinese tech companies, and their ranking in world's biggest companies/tech companies. I don't think any hard analysis of the data is going to disprove my claim that world tech scene's are ranked: US, China (close second) But if it did that would certainly be very interesting and high value information to me! :p :) xx

jokethrowaway 5y ago

I think that's caused by the capital available to the US which made people adapt and learn how to use that capital to grow massively (see growth hacking). You also have generations of successful entrepreneurs staying in the US and teaching the next generation. Entrepreneurship in EU is mostly a joke, good entrepreneurs are hard to find. And still, despite of this, people working in Europe seems to be much happier (even if they're poorer) than in the US. My experiences with USA companies haven't been positive (very immature working culture of burning your employees) but I was always impressed at how the founders (some from the US, some immigrating from outside) managed to rake in a casual few millions at demo day just by saying they want to solve problems for a certain audience. My company got 10k€ for 10% after fighting for months (some more money came later thanks to an angel I sourced), which were not even enough money to incorporate a company in the country I was.

adwn 5y ago
> You also have generations of successful entrepreneurs staying in the US and teaching the next generation. Entrepreneurship in EU is mostly a joke, good entrepreneurs are hard to find. Uh, what? Wrong, at least for Germany, which is littered with internationally successful small and medium-sized companies. Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelstand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelstand . Edit: Unless you were refering to the kind of "entrepreneur" that burns millions of USD in VC money over the span of a couple years, fails to create anything that anyone is willing to actually pay money for, but produces a lot of insightful blog posts in that time. Yes, we don't have a lot of those here yet, but we're working on it.
- jfengel 5y ago
  They probably did mean that, and believe it or not, Americans are actually OK with that. American entrepreneurial culture includes a strong dose of "It's OK to lose a million dollars a hundred times if the next one makes a billion dollars". Some think that's part of the reason the US is the country that generates the FAANG(M)s. They throw money at the wall and make big wins off of what sticks, if most of it doesn't. It's arguable whether that's actually beneficial for the world (is there any of the MANGAFs you don't feel uncomfortable about?), but it certainly accomplishes something. If only making the US rich.
Radim 5y ago
Look at the flip side of that coin too: The gap between bombastic marketing (esp. in the VC/startup world, but also self-promo) and reality must be mentally devastating. US has a serious, nationwide medication problem. Honesty has its upsides, the (financial) success of an "awesome amazing disruptive changing-the-world-again-this-week" mindset notwithstanding.

fnord123 5y ago

When metrics are you using?

graderjs 5y ago
I guess a whole bunch of my opinions and experience based on reading about the different tech scenes. I'm not factoring in things like "employee happiness as a separate vector" (in my opinion, in this argument, that's "second place consolation prize" for Europeans justifying why their tech scene is better). I'm assuming that however terrible the US scene is claimed to be, it's can't be bad in the sense that any badness has not destroyed its productivity. It's still no. 1. To me the point of a tech scene is to be large. As in dollar value. Generate capital in terms of valuations, market cap, revenue and funding for new ventures. Attempt to summarize the experiences, readings that contribute to my view: Number of startups in US. Size of tech companies. US tech scene companies ranking in world's largest organizations. Personal experience with those companies. Size of China market. Number of Chinese tech billionaires. Number of massive Chinese tech companies, and their ranking in world's biggest companies/tech companies. I don't think any hard analysis of the data is going to disprove my claim that world tech scene's are ranked: US, China (close second) But if it did that would certainly be very interesting and high value information to me! :p :) xx