I know I will probably be down-modded for this, but I will add my $0.02 here. The more I travel and live overseas, the more I think the US is a lousy place for

I know I will probably be down-modded for this, but I will add my $0.02 here. The more I travel and live overseas, the more I think the US is a lousy place for startups. Why? The regulatory climate in the US is fairly anti-small-business. Taxes are high but worse, they are complicated. The tax system is designed around the idea that people get paid fixed amounts. Those with variable incomes or the self-employed have a horrible time with estimated quarterly taxes esp if income fluctuates significantly. Compare this with Singapore: For the wealthiest, the taxes approach 30% of income and instead of a tax bracket system, you have a series of compounding taxes (something like 5% of income over 40k + 5 % of income over 50k etc). Every additional dollar you make puts something in your pocket. No nasty "I moved up a tax bracket and so I took home less this year!" surprises. Additionally the taxes aren't owed in the year assessed. They are owed the following year, and the government accepts monthly payments on those. Your income has to fluctuate terribly before that can be the end of it. Most other countries outside the US and Western Europe have much simpler tax codes, and the codes are more friendly towards small businesses (and even Western Europe is more friendly towards small businesses). In the US, however, multinational corporations can use the complexity to avoid paying taxes at all, and small businesses are heavily burdened. When you add new laws like PPACA, things just get worse. PPACA is based on the idea that employers are the primary means of supplying health insurance, so when you are trying to hire your first few employees, you are going to have to get an expensive plan since you can't likely get into the larger pools, but more to the point, this is the case even if you don't have to offer the insurance by law, since if you don't offer it, your employee has to buy it him/herself. Since health care in the US is phenominally expensive, this is a dramatic drag on startups (compare the cost of having a baby in the US to anywhere else in the world and explain why it costs so much to me here. It's not just the standard of care. It's because our system is broken and geared towards an ecosystem of big businesses making a ton of money off it, and the PPACA makes this worse, not better). Add to this the fact that the economic downturn has not created a major glut of high tech workers (in fact, quite the opposite), and it's just not the place I would say to work with right now. So my list of countries to startup businesses in right now include: Singapore Colombia Malaysia Indonesia Ecuador Chile Ghana These countries all have issues of their own but aside from Singapore, one thing they all have in common is a surplus of educated people, good education systems, and sufficient infrastructure. They also have some semblance of stability (even Colombia is slowly getting there). I don't think one is going to see superstars like Facebook coming from any of these countries. However I do think one will see a lot of good, solid businesses that will grow well, and prosper.