The elephant in the room here is immigration. I built a data science team in Singapore for a two year old company, and out of the 6 people here, we have 5 natio

The elephant in the room here is immigration. I built a data science team in Singapore for a two year old company, and out of the 6 people here, we have 5 nationalities (FR, UK, US, DE x 2, VN). All the visas were approved in a day or two. No Singaporeans - the whole team was imported (5 more work remotely). No Australians, either - 2% of applicants came from there but none made the cut so far. Now let's imagine that I, as a non-Singaporean citizen or PR, wanted to start a business and was choosing between Singapore and Sydney. Both countries have an entrepreneur visa of sorts. That's my primary consideration - all the talent I know is foreign as far as both countries are concerned. I'm an entrepreneur, so I don't care that much for tax rates (if it was absolute dollars I wanted, I'd stay in corporate). From a quality of life perspective, Sydney wins. SEA and Australia are similar markets in terms of potential revenue - only 60 million people are connected in SEA (10% of the population) and order values are much smaller, so potential balances out. In Singapore, I just need to raise 75,000 SGD and then apply for matched SPRING funding with a 7 page form. If I get it, my newly seeded company is now eligible for an EntrePass for anybody with > 30% equity. In Australia, for a Business Talent (subclass 132) visa, I need to raise... 1 million AUD. Or have a net worth of 1.5 million AUD. How many first time entrepreneurs do you know with that kind of net worth? How many not-yet-incorporated companies do you know who get a term sheet for a million? And of course, the US is out. Of the people we interviewed, only 20% were American. I'm not going to restrict my talent pool to 20% of the market, or take a punt on the April H1B circus. But that discussion is for another day.