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Ambitious entrepreneurs don't move to SV because they just want to raise money or have access to a bigger market. It's because they can be among like minded ind
by tinbad 13y ago
Ambitious entrepreneurs don't move to SV because they just want to raise money or have access to a bigger market. It's because they can be among like minded individuals in a competitive and inspiring environment.
As a European entrepreneur that moved to Silicon Valley I can only say culture, culture, culture. You can look at VC activity, amount of startups, even bring on Skype all you want but this is the one thing you can't change and unfortunately The European culture is not as flexible nor open to new ideas, innovation, risk taking, etc.
I do agree with the author that Nordic and new European states have a much better environment for successful tech startups to flourish.
- presty 13y agoExactly. It's not <just> the money, it's the culture.
- mjn 13y agoMy impression of Scandinavian startups (though I could be wrong) is that those who move to the U.S. really are mostly concerned about the business side of things (investment, customers, vendor/partner relationships, and at strategic times, capital-gains taxes). You can see that in the fact that they often do a half-move, where they move everything except the technical part of the company. Unity3d is one prominent example: the headquarters officially moved from Copenhagen to San Francisco, and any kind of announcement that makes headlines comes out of the SF office, but the core engine devs are all still in Copenhagen. If it were about the technical culture, you'd expect them to want to move the actual technology work to Silicon Valley too, but it was mainly the business side.