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Why Startups Condense in America
bariswheel writes "The controversial genius developer/writer/entertainer Paul Graham writes an insightful piece on Why Startups Condense in America. Here's the skinny: "The US allows immigration, it is a rich country, it is not (yet) a police state, the universities are better, you can fire people, work is less identified with employment, it is not too fussy, it has a large domestic market, it has venture funding, and it has dynamic typing for careers. Inquire for details within."
But I don't agree with all of it: That's odd, all the studies and anecdotal evidence presented to me suggest otherwise. I don't think the universities themselves are better, you're just more likely to make better contacts here than abroad. And the only reason for that is because Americans have money and a lot of them use it to invest (as Paul pointed out).
I've been through undergrad and grad schools in the US and I have to say that there were more than a few courses where I didn't learn anything.
Why is he asking about Universities in Europe? What about Eastern Europe or the Ukraine or Russia? What about the results to the programming challenge that everyone made a big fuss about? What about China's Universities?!
I'm not as confident about the US as Mr. Graham is. In fact, I'm kind of afraid when someone like him writes an article like this because it feels like we're creating a false sense of security as an industry leader.
My work here is dung.
Duh! It's because American companies can negotiate better deals with the Coca-Cola Co. (or PepsiCo if they prefer it), which enables them to have those free drink machines. Free drinks draws in the geeks, which results in heavily caffeinated smart people. Wrangle a few MBAs together to lord over them and you have a successful startup.
As a European I find the article rather America-centric. Here for example in the UK about 10% of people are self-employed. Yes, technically those are pretty much all "startups". Here however most people don't have the desire to chase VC funding, float on the stock market or found an international company (as a number of US startups have).
Of course part of the problem (both in the US and over here) is that a lot of businesses tend to have a blinkered restricted view of just selling/dealing with their domestic market (which of course in the US is larger) rather than doing business globally (which in a lot of businesses is the best way to grow).
Video Game cheats, hints a
The guys evidence that there aren't any good Universities in Europe, is that American professors can't name any aside from Cambridge?
Does this say more about higher education in Europe or the US?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
But the US style has it's problems. US companies wind up as slaves to the markets and often damage their engineering skills. The problems in the US car industry show this. While the German car industry has come up with fuel injection, ABS braking and constant four wheel drive over the past 20 years the US industry has invented the cupholder and the SUV.
Likewise, somehow the Japanese are great craftsmen. This skill is reflected in the quality of Toyota's manufacturing and the remarkable qualities in Japanese portable electronics. Apple may have invented the ipod, but the walkman and the transistor radio all came out Japan.
It's good that the world is like this. Countries specialise. But presuming that one companies system is superior for everything to all the others is silly. The best is what is created when the systems work together - as in the computer industry where the parts are made in Asia and the software comes from all over the world, and in particular from the US.
One more reason could be that US has fewer bureaucratic barriers comparing to that in Ukraine or Russia for example.
It's much easier to find investors in USA than in Europe (i'm speaking as a french entrepreneur who tested the both side of Atlantic to run it's own business).
Biais.org : Python, art and chicken pie.
lots of bitter, negative opinions on this one. To add to the discussion instead of criticizing (which is fine - in small doses), I believe government (or lack thereof) is key for innovation. If you have an oppressive regime luring over you, there will be minimal startups; people will have little incentive to innovate, or fear to innovate. What he's trying to do in this article is to find commonalities within the 'American persona' to find out whether Silicon Valley is clonable. I believe That's the root of his thesis. He addresses personality traits such as Americans being free spirited risk takers, and it's a point well taken. "Startups are the kind of thing people don't plan, so you're more likely to get them in a society where it's ok to make career decisions on the fly." - P. Graham
Insinct is stronger than Upbringing - Irish Proverb
Illegal immigration is a whole other story, we still allow millions of legit immigrants every year.
Regards,
Steve
In America you can put a rock in a box, give it a name, and make millions. Why would you not want to start a company in a nation with that level of purchase discretion? "Now with more sodium -- Sweet Jesus!!!"
And this survey demonstrates what, other than the parochialism of the American computer science professors with whom Graham happens to be acquainted?
To start a corporation in America all you have to do is file out a simple form and mail in a cheap fee. I started mine for a whole $100 in costs to the gov't. While it is more than I want to pay, it isn't bad. I pay less in taxes than foreign counterparts, so I have more to actually invest into my company to grow it, another great reason why it is easier to start a small business in America. Employment laws as well. In France it takes 2 years to fire someone. If someone is destroying my small business, they can be out the door that day (well, depends on the state really). THere are tons of other reasons, but ease of doing business, ability to put your own capital into your business is def up there. Look how many businesses are started by those w/o college educations, it isn't the schools.
Yes, it's easier to get slave workers (well, not really slaves, you have to shelter and feed slaves while with "normal" workers you can pay them less than shelter&food would cost you), it's easier to get investors, it's less bureaucratic hassle and so on. It's easier to get the biz rolling.
But with the patent laws and the legal system around it, opening a biz in the US is risky. As soon as you're actually starting to make money, some corporation will cover you with suits 'til you hand it over for a nickle or a dime because some harebrained patent they got offers them a foot into that door.
In other words, startups are the risk-free way of "innovation" for corps. If it doesn't fly, it doesn't cost them money. If it does, hand it over!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Decades ago, companies stayed where they were started. They certainly stayed in the country where they started and they often kept their headquarters or a major plant where they started.
Movie producers run out to California, mostly to escape legal process servers because a patent cartel wanted to price-gouge them for the unlicensed cameras they were using, stayed, and founded Hollywood.
A guy named Chesney starts up a business in Pittfield, MA and GE ends up headquartered there, and employing tens of thousands of people prior to Neutron Jack Welch.
Digital Equipment Corporation starts up in Maynard because the guys who founded it were connected with MIT, and there was cheap space in an old mill there... and grow in that location to a multi-billion-dollar company.
But I can easily see an unstable state in which the United States continues to be a good place for startups, for the reasons mentioned, but all of the really economically important activity gets moved overseas just as the company begins to take hold. Over time, of course, that will undermine all the things that make the U. S. a great place for startups, but not immediately... just as U. S. researchers continue to win Nobel prizes for work performed under conditions that existed in the U. S. decades ago.
Tangentially, New England is a great place for startups because of the existence hundreds of small, independent machine shops that can do prototype work. I believe those shops are a long-lived legacy of a century or two ago when New England and its mills were the most sophisticated industries in the U. S. I wonder whether anyone in the state government is paying attention to the care and feeding of those small businesses?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
With an attitude like that, I can understand why you'd favor more protection.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I am not sure american universities are better, but they certainly are different. I have had the opportunity to take a few classes at KUL in Belgium (the "best" and largest university in the country). I would say students here LEARN the same things we do at universities in America, but they don't DO anything. In the US, courses consisted of a lot of work....exercises/homeworks, multiple tests/exams/quizzes in a quarter/semester, and labs + lab reports (often as frequent as one per week). In Belgium, you attended classes, perhaps there were optional exercises (in class, not at home, nor graded), and the only grade you get is the final exam, which is often about 15 minutes long and oral. Coming from US universities, you get a wealth of knowledge combined with hands-on experience that many places in Europe don't seem to be offering. Additionally, students here are not allowed to work during university (only allowed to work 2-3weeks per year), and their internships are usually severely limited (you think an intern job in the US is crap....here it can consist of just pushing a button). This has a huge effect on the job market and the prospects of what you will be doing in a job after you graduate. IMO, US students leave university much more prepared than their counterparts in Europe (well, maybe only Belgium?)
That's odd, all the studies and anecdotal evidence presented to me suggest otherwise. I don't think the universities themselves are better, you're just more likely to make better contacts here than abroad. And the only reason for that is because Americans have money and a lot of them use it to invest (as Paul pointed out).
.. I do not like the way the article was written. I wish he had used more statistics and numerics than just, for example "half the people in silicon valley have accents". How about showing us the stats of how productive they are etc. The numbers can't be that hard to find. Just because you have references at the end of an article doesnt really boost the usefulness much. Reason i am saying this is that without facts and numerics people who sort of disagree haven't really anything tanglible to be convinced by. And those who already agree, well they don't have reinforcing data they can use in convincing others.
Differing from your opinion, I agree with the entire article 100% (including the assertion that our universities are better), BUT
That said it's a good article in that it puts things to forefront that maybe people (especially those in other countries) will research or utilize.
The faulty logic in this article is a good reason just to pass it up
From the article:
"it is not (yet) a police state"
Why is it there are people in this country are screaming and yelling about their imagined "police state", yet want to leave the other countries in the world to people who want to turn the whole world into a police state?
- Immigration: The US has a great immigration policy, but it's not really that much different from a lot of advanced Western countries, esp. when it comes to skilled workers (researchers, college graduates, etc). E.g., the UK has a much larger talent pool it can draw from for immigrants (esp. Commonwealth citizens) yet there have been very few successful UK startups. Same could be said for Germany, the Nordic countries, and most of Southern Europe.
- The US is a rich country: so is most of Western Europe, Australia, NZ, Southeast Asia, Japan, etc. Arguably the latter regions have even better infrastructure than the US.
- The US is not a police state: again, neither is any EU member or the rest of Western Europe. Still, the only big European startup as of late has been Skype, and even that was US-funded.
- American Universities are better: absolutely, but not for the reasons stated. American universities are just more free to make money from their R&D, unlike most say European ones. Since they can run research for profit they can also hire the best professors and researchers they can find and that creates a virtuous cycle. In Europe for example, most research schools are state institutions and thus professor salaries are set to a nationwide scale. Plus it's much harder to profit from R&D.
- You can fire people in America: labor mobility is not a US invention. If you are faced with stifling labor laws, you can work around them. You can use contractors, bankruptcy law, subsidies, the list goes on. Plus, Anglo-Saxon countries with liberal labor laws (UK, Australia), still haven't fostered startups that well.
The rest of the list is even more wooly than these bits. Here's my take as to why the US does startups better:Don't forget about unions. They are all about letting the cream rise to the top... Wait a second, no they aren't. Oh well.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
Excellent! I've been looking for a new career! I dynamically type 65-180 WPM.
$ touch
Don't forget that, for many years, the USA have been at the forefront of technology and science because the US Governement -- meaning you, Happy American Tax-Payers! -- has been very happy to sign big, fat juicy checks to US corporations, US Universities, US Think Tanks, etc. Also, the US Governement was able to do this because, right after the end of WWII, the USA were one of the very rare country in the world with industries left intact and a lot of natural resources.
Now that the US Governement is pretty much anti-science, and that the US debt is soaring to ever more dangerous summits, I am not so sure the USA can maintain their advance on the rest of the world. But we'll see.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Also many of those Japanese cars with such great quality are built...in the US. Toyota and Honda both have several plants in the US.
Two childhood friends both struck it big (20+M and 300+M) starting software companies, so the American dream does happen.
o ur-own-business.html) but only if you do it for the right reasons.
However, the statistics are against you if your goal is to become very rich - but it is the possibilty that motivates people.
Here in the USA, we have an interesting cultural/political phenomenon: many lower middle class people strongly support the republican party whose policies are very biased towrads helping the very rich. I think that part of this phenomenon occurs because people dream of having a great idea and striking it rich.
I think that having one's own business is a good idea (http://mark-watson.blogspot.com/2006/04/owning-y
As a European I find the article rather America-centric.
As an American I find this article to be Bay Area-centric. Silicon Valley ceased being an engine of significant economic growth after the dotcom bust. It is unlikely to return to its former glory. It is kind of humourous that pundits like Paul Graham are still taking victory laps for an era of growth in Silicon Valley he had little to do with. In the US the economies of the southwest and southeast are much more vital.
an ill wind that blows no good
I hate to say this, but the US is in deep troubble at least for the next 2-8 years. With fiat money, way over extended housing debt, heavy bond debt, an account deficit of 7%, and now the carry trade unwinding behind 100's of trillions (with a T) in derivatives contracts - it won't be long before all freakin satanic hell breaks loose in US financial markets.
The bad news, is that I don't think there is anything that can stop an economic collapse, the good news is that I think after the collapse the US has the highest potential of any country in the world for a spectacular recovery assuming that people don't panic and impose all sorts of controls that take away economic freedoms.
(PS, those people who have written off gold and silver as barbaric immature monitary systems are going to be in for a very rude awakening, he he)
" it is a rich country, it is not (yet) a police state,"
I am going to hazard a guess that the person who stuck "ye"t in there has lived his or her entire life in a free western country and has little or no understanding of what a police state really is. All this person knows is 1. bush bad , 2. bad is police state, therefore bush = police state. This reminds me of every college kid who knows 1. bad 2. bad is nazi, therefore if you disagree with me you are a nazi.
Idiotic use of extreme terms like this just erodes any meaning they may have. Its is about as effective in conveying meaning as the F-word if you use it as almost every other word.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Startups happen in clusters. There are a lot of them in Silicon Valley and Boston, and few in Chicago or Miami. A country that wants startups will probably also have to reproduce whatever makes these clusters form.
While I agree with the overall tenor of his presentation, starting with a number of begged questions weakens his argument.
1) Startups happen ALL OVER THE COUNTRY. He maybe right about 'clustering' when you're talking about certain industries, but in a country where The above paragraph makes a LOT more sense (and is factually more supportable) if instead of "Startups", you read "The cool trendy startups that we like to talk about". In fact, Raleigh-Durham and Austin are (like SFO) in the top quartile of VC investment but he doesn't seem to think they are "cool" enough to discuss.
2) "The US allows immigration, it is a rich country, it is not (yet) a police state..."
Please. I'm sure the horse is dead, so you can stop beating it with your non sequitur stick. Anyone who connects the "US" and "police state" in a sentence merely illustrates how little they know about an actual police state. I understand it's very important to continue the shtick so PERHAPS your side has a chance to win an election sometime in the next half-dozen years, but you'd be much more persuasive if you left your political baggage at home with your pom-poms.
3) (Paraphrasing) "German Universities suck because there are no Jews there." That's just plain stupid. Aside from the overt racism of the statement, then why aren't we all heading pell-mell for the universities in Israel? Perhaps there's only a certain 'dose' of Jewishness that we need, and too much is somehow poisonous (hands waving dramatically)?
4) "You can fire people in America" - I think he's absolutely right, but isn't using our academic system a particularly BAD example? If he's willing to venture into the speculative fiction of the US becoming a police state, his omission here is the deletorious effect of Affirmative Action, and a litigious society where where a woman or minority is fired, their first thought is "hm, I wonder if it was my race/sex/preference/etc." and not "What did I do wrong?".
5) "In the US it's ok to be overtly ambitious, and in most of Europe it's not. But this can't be an intrinsically European quality; previous generations of Europeans were as ambitious as Americans. What happened?" They left Europe and came to America?
5) "Silicon Valley is too far from San Francisco....The best thing would be if the silicon valley were not merely closer to the interesting city, but interesting itself.... (The suburbs are) the worst sort of strip development...The kind of people you want to attract to your silicon valley like to get around by train, bicycle, and on foot." No projection there, no sir. Funny, I'd think that the people you'd want to attract people that are interesting, intuitive, hard working, conscientious people...not just smarmy, self-important, elitist black-clad coastal urbanites. I didn't realize Greenpeace membership is required for this job sir, would donating to the Nature Conservancy be enough?
Pssst, Paul: there are a lot of interesting startups in what you'd call boring, flyover country. Telecommuting means that you can have outstanding information-based companies in Granite Falls, MN, Paragould, AR, or even Nampa, ID. In fact, a lot of people may even PREFER rural or small-town life, but they probably drive pickups or something (shudder).
6) Immigration - this is just utopian and thus nearly valueless. The US already has the most open immigration system (even in these days of leather-clad jackbooted thugs summarily executing everyone trying to enter the country). He spent the previous ten paragraphs talking about how the US system is unique, particularly because of its poor educational system compared to other countries, and then when discussing the US's requirement of a college degree for entry he uses examples of....Americans. Circularity anyone?
-Styopa
What do you get when you take the very few best students out of a nation of 300 million people and put them in a university where you've bought the very few best professors by offering more money (because of huge tuitions) than anywhere else? A very small number of very good universities. Also, when you say a state university can be top in its field, remember you're talking about the professors, NOT the students. (From my experience, these professors are often foreign and have come to the US because of better pay.) Also remember to include technical schools when you talk about the community college system in Europe. From what I've seen in the US, there's almost always a place for you in some (possibly not-so-good) university no matter how poorly you've done (or unmotivated you've been) in high school, especially if you're willing to pay enough for it. In Europe, a lot of these people, I think, would be off to a technical school instead.
Aside from Graham's tendency to extrapolate wildly from a sample size of one: "I felt oppressed as a geek/nerd in high school therefore America oppresses geeks/nerds in high school", "I was successful in a computer tech startup using LISP therefore successful computer tech startups should use LISP", "I now have enough money to indulge my eccentricities and a stage on which to let the stream of my ego's consciousness spew forth without worry about the consequences, therefore I must be a public intellectual". Like Chomsky, I'm sure Mr. Graham is certifiably brilliant within his chosen field of study. Like Dr. Chomsky, Graham tends to mistake brilliance within one field with the capability to achieve deep understanding and useful insight on a variety of unrelated topics.
As a simple counterexample to the current topic I'd offer India's IT sector. Although India has a few world class schools they are nowhere near as numerous as in the US, India does not have a large immigrant population, India's red tape while improving is still closer in style to "in Soviet Russia" than the Rand's libertarian paradise etc. However start up businesses in India are booming, mostly as spin offs of subsidiaries of American tech companies. Likewise Taiwan's semiconductor and electronics manufacturing industry has largely shed its foreign owned component and can be considered a startup success story. Not all start ups form in little red barns, or unkempt Cambridge, MA apartments; Intel formed from disgruntled Fairchild employees, as did Zilog and in a generation or two similar stories are likely to be common in the Indian tech sector.
However the above is not a rigorous counterargument, and is not meant to be. My larger point is merely that if one narrows one view enough the world can seem remarkably simple. And then one starts to believe any story that can explain that simple world. Fortunately most of us have enough of a sense of shame to keep those stories to ourselves. Perhaps Mr. Graham, and Dr. Chomsky and many other public intellectuals should spend their efforts looking into what particular combination of genetics and environment lead to a pathological inability to refrain from espousing cranky theories in public.
I don't know about Asia or other regions, but these are my thoughts about the relative difficulty of starting business in Europe:
#1 reason: Government is an obstacle rather than help or even better: JUST DON'T MESSING TOO MUCH. Bussinesses in Europe has to comply with municipal, state, country and european community regulation. Municipal laws are often vary a lot whithin even the same province. The local government has to give permission and get taxes (not cheap) just to open the company's door. Also the nation's government. And guess what? They are not exactly very fast nor cheap. The high costs of starting a bussiness make it very difficult for people who is not already rich or other bussiness who have already a lot of money! Paradox of social-democracy? Government as reverse Robin-Hood?
Other:
- the "progressive" taxes system doesnt award personal effort and risk. The taxes for businesses are as high as 30% or 35% of profits, even higher for wealthy individuals (Social Security not included). Where does this force capital to go? Easy question: any other place.
- Public workers are impossible to fire. Once they pass their exams they can even just not go to work and they will keep their salary and benefits forever. Not the best to stimulate efficiency and speed. They also have higher salaries than private companies employees. Young people here dream about working for the government.
- Trade unions degenerated to political parties. Their leaders and representants are too busy doing nothing and helping #1 in their labor to increase regulation.
- We spend about 40% of the E.U budget subsidizing the low-margin, low-innovation, low-tech agricultural sector. This money should be better in their legitimate propietaries' pockets thus lowering the high tax pressure on business and individuals. As a side effect we screw up emerging economies with our protectionism (OK, maybe also the USA)
- We have literally dozens of different languages. I dont think this is necessarily wrong, it's just a consecuence of our history. But the really stupid thing is the politicians are very busy trying to revitalize dead or semi-dead languages and dialects like galician, basque and catalan to have another more justification to fight with other regions, get local privileges, and keeping their positions. Of course these languages are studied in schools, diminishing the time young people should rather use studying maths, literature, economics, english or whatever. Mix this with governmet regulation and you get a lot more overhead for business.
- We dont fight strong enough against terrorism, instead we let the terrorists (convicted killers included) form political parties and negotiate with our governmets as equals. Shame on us. Insecurity scares the capital who tends to go away.
It's not that is easy to start a bussiness in the United States because they are rich: they are rich because is easy to start a bussiness.
There seems to be some kind of cultural bias (at least, amongst people like the author) that only sandal-wearing californians are capable of creating innovative IT. Linux was created by a Finnish student. The WWW was created by an Englishman working at a public institute in Switzerland. Yes, i'm typing this on an Apple. But there is no technological reason I'm not typing this on an Acorn instead.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
One of the reasons I believe Americans become insular is the large size AND homogenaity. Hop in a car, pick a random direction, drive for a day. There's a pretty good chance you're still in the US, with Canada similar enough to fool you. Hop out and you'll likely be able to speak to a local, in English, with accent variation significantly less than within the UK. If you really wanted to, you can probably find a job in a week or less (you might be at McDonalds, but you can get a job), get an apartment, watch the same tv shows, and so on.
My point is that most Americans, even ones who travel, have no concept of any other way of life. That's not a criticism, just an observation. If everyone in Europe spoke the same language, ate the same food, etc, etc, we'd be saying the same about them. We don't have a concept of neighboring countries, except Canada and Mexico, because we never bump into any.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
AES, the encryption algorithm, was invented at a Belgian university. A country like this, with less inhabitants than NYC cannot afford to have universities leading the world in all kinds of disciplines. This is a big problem for European universities: every country wants a silicon valley, AND a biotech center, AND nanotech,... But really they can't afford it, and therefore the money gets spread out too thin. If you work with small groups and good funding you can beat the world in a niche discipline, just like the AES guys did.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Mr Graham states that one driver of startups is the fact that America allows immigration. That's at odds with my own story.
When I was growing up, all I ever wanted to do was move to the USA. When I finished school, my parents could not afford to send me to university, so I had to start work straight out of school. I spent 5 years working my way from cable laying guy to networks guy to Unix guy, and then tried to move to the USA. After 2 years of trying, I gave up and moved to the UK.
Next year, I will _finally_ be eligible to apply for an H1B visa, but I won't be. Because I don't have a degree, I need 12 years work experience. The first 8 years of that experience are no longer technically relevant to anything I do today. Sure, it taught me a lot about dealing with people and integrating into the 'real world', but I don't see how that is relevant since I would have been eligible for entry fresh out of university with none of that experience.
Even if I did want to apply, I would have no guarantee of permanent settlement. I would have to 'emmigrate' to the USA knowing that if the company I was working for went under, or declared a loss for a number of years running, or laid off too many other people, I would have to pack my life back into boxes and go home. 30 is too damn old to be taking that kind of chance.
I took that chance coming to the UK at 25, and even then I was almost guaranteed permanent settlement when I moved here. It was certainly never tied to the company that I moved here to work for. At 25, I could take those risks, but not anymore.
So instead of adding to the US economy, I've got a successful life adding to the UK economy. Overall, the US immigration policy is NOWHERE near as friendly as many places in Europe.
The start-ups would all be happening in France except that they don't have a word for "entrepreneur".
No, really! Type that into Babelfish and ask for an English-to-French translation, and it spits the same word back at you. OK, maybe it's in French dictionaries, but it's obviously one of those words that they're always borrowing from other languages (e.g. the days of the week sound suspiciously like the Italian names).
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
You can't really teach this out of people. It's a cognitive heuristic which saves on brainpower, which is deeply embedded in the human psyche. The only way to escape it is with large doses of intelligence: larger than most people possess. The core issue is about compression as a way to aid comprehension: to make a sentence like "America has many of the world's top universities" tractable - easier to reason about and remember - it has to be translated into something simpler. The most obvious example is "America == top universities". There's an obvious loss of information here, but arguably, the main point has been retained. A lot of human silliness is explained by this trick.
I am an European, born and grown up in Italy and living in Norway.
In my experience I have not seen any country being so fiendish at visitors as the US. The mega-fence on the border with Mexico is one example. The continuous controls for what-the-hell-they-are-looking for at airports is another. Then again I have not been to Uzbekistan or Iran.
Comes down on how you define "rich". I was definitely not impressed (in fact, a bit disappointed) by American infrastructure. In 2004 I could not even call Europe from a public phone in Chicago airport (maybe I hit a streak of broken phones). The same year, a conference I attended in Austin, TX had 5,000 participants and not a single Internet connection available. Then again, Italy is worse, but America is not really so impressive.
See above for the requests of fingerprints, the queues when entering the country and the like. They gathered so much data about me they probably know me better than my mother.
That's why I am staying here, thanks. I prefer to be able to plan my life beyond this week. Of course you can fire people in Europe, only you cannot fire at a whim. If you don't have a good reasons you can get sued, which happens way more often in the US than in Italy (about 10 cases a year for 58 million people; not sure about the US but I suspect it's way higher).
Who said it is illegal to work in your garage? What laws should prevent it? Why would that swiss lady report to the police the start-up in the garage? Have you Americans this sort of laws? For I am totally unaware of such laws in Italy, Norway or elsewhere. Of course, if the start-up is a mechanic workshop that keeps the neighbourhood up all night, people have a right to protest, but it does not seem to be the case discussed in TFA.
This is the most ludicrous claim ever. Italy has been under foreign domination for 1,500 years (Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Franks, French, Northmen, Arabs, Spaniards, French, Germans, and a bunch of others I cannot remember), and we got at most a few words. Thinking that a country can shift language as often as a geek changes his underwear is patently insane. And changing for what, English? Wake up, you will all soon have to learn Chinese!
I do not know American or German law in much detail, but in Italy (and presumably in Germany as well) there are different levels of incorporation. To start a SpA ("shareholder society") you need about 100,000 euros in capital; if you cannot make it, you have to limit yourself to a Srl (limited-responsibility company). The difference is in practice small; the friend probably looked at the GmbH level in Germany and thought it was the minimum threshold; instead, that threshold is meant for investors to be sure they are investing in a company that actually has capital, and not an Enron of some sort. Then again, I am not much in the details.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
THe marriage thing will no longer work at all. Neither will the getting sponsored part if you've already moved in here illegally. During the later half the clinton administration, a new bill was added that barred illegal immigrants from legalizing themselves should they have spent any time here illegaly. If ti was fairly short, under a month or so they would be barred for a year or so. The next level they'd be barred from staying here for ten years.
Gaining illegal entry from foreign countries via airport is also quite difficult.
Hmmm... Pie...
However some of your points underestimate the differences between the two regions:
Labor mobility may not be an American invention but America is the place where it is currently practiced. Of course there are ways of "getting around" anti-mobility laws, as there are ways of geting around any laws, but law avoidance (like tax avoidance) is costly, difficult, and incomplete. Just saying that you can "work around" laws greatly understates the difficulty in so doing. In many countries of the EU, firing someone or laying them off is practically impossible.
There are far fewer large tech incumbents in Europe than in the US. Obviously every country has a phone company but most European countries do not have an IBM, Microsoft, or Cisco.
In my experience foreigners are as tolerant of failure as Americans. In fact foreigners are probably more tolerant of failure because career success is less important in most countries than in the U.S.
Furthermore, it has been my experience that many or most employees of silicon valley startups are Asian or European. Even some of the founders of companies in silicon valley are foreign. If foreign people were terrified of failure then they would not come to the US to fail, only to be sent slinking home. Bear in mind that many people working in silicon valley companies are employed using H1-B visas which means that if the company fails then their visa is revoked and they must return home immediately--implying to their fellows that they went to silicon valley, tried, failed, and were booted out of the place. If they were afraid of failure then they wouldn't take a risk like that.
Since foreigners are as likely as Americans to work at silicon valley startups, cultural differences between employees can't be the reason behind silicon valley's success. The fact that the employees are from all over the world, but the companies are American, suggests that the difference is economic not cultural.
I believe the primary reason there are more large startups in the US is because there is far more venture capital. It's natural that Europeans would be terrified of failing in Europe because the enterpreneurs there must bear the risk entirely by themselves. If you wish to raise money for a startup in Europe then you must risk all of your personal savings, and your house--and even then you really wouldn't have enough money to fund the startup. In America you use somebody else's money, and the risk to you is greatly decreased. Of course, if you accept venture capital then the potential rewards are also decreased, but if the startup succeeds then you'll be filthy rich anyway and you won't worry about the 33% cut of your massive fortune that must now be paid to ventu