Slashdot Mirror
Why Forbes Says Immigrants Make Better Entrepreneurs
An anonymous reader writes "Romanian emigre Christian Gheorghe is running a Silicon Valley software company now (Tidemark Systems) after getting started in the U.S. hauling plywood on a construction site. Forbes summarizes his path to the top and sees a wider story about immigrants' edge as entrepreneurs."
The story dwells on one person's story. There are any number of people (both Americans and immigrants) who take any available job and try to work their way up, but opportunities never appear.
Of course, being an immigrant is, in itself, a filter. Leaving your native country for better opportunities is a strong sign of entrepreneurship. When will journalists learn?
... make excellent entrepeneurs as well. You know what they all have in common? They're willing to pursue their goals and prefer to beg forgiveness rather than ask permission. That's the #1 thing that all the current crop of silicon valley companies have in common. Not all of them following this formula still exist, but that's what they all have in common, questionable legal standing that they didn't allow to get in the way of making profits hand over fist, and low infrastructure costs to get in the way of rapid expansion.
And if I know this, why am I not rich? Something to do with not doing the crime if you're not willing to do the time. Also I'm lousy with people :)
Immigrants are a self-selecting group. It's quite obvious that an entrepreneurial individual would be more likely to do something risky and ambitious like immigrating to another country.
I lived in Taiwan for a while. I was told, and it fits with what I've seen, that while children in America are raised on the dream of getting a secure high paying job, children in Taiwan are raised on the dream of owning their own business. I suspect that dream doesn't go away just because they move to America.
Americans are used to the options of 1. always being able to find a job (McDonald's is always hiring) and nearly always a decent job (English is the ticket) and 2. having welfare as an option if they're too lazy or "too good" to take the jobs that are available. Immigrants are often raised in places where those options don't exist and starting your own business is the only way to survive. Starting a business is risky and takes a lot of work. Why do it if you have other options for a secure prosperous future?
An immigrant is likely to see opportunities an American would miss because growing up in another culture they know there is another way to do things. For example, if I were more entrepreneurial, artistic and less risk-averse, I would start a business taking wedding photos like I saw in Taiwan and marketing this service to American women. There is more than one way to do wedding photos but living only in America you might not see it.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Since the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 set in motion the process of electing a new people, there has been a collapse in the middle class. Since the ramp-up of "skilled" immigration, there has been a collapse of the economy itself.
This supports the theory that the older cultures that have been taking up positions of trust and authority in government, academia and business are, unsurprisingly, more sophisticated in playing the rent-seeking and zero-sum games required to gain access to resources necessary to "succeed". However, due to the kinds of games that must be played to acquire these resources, the effect on the overall human ecology has been to deprive the traditional American people -- the folks who invented the airplane, computer, transistor, planar integrated circuit, etc., -- of the resources to express their historic ingenuity. As a consequence, fundamental technological innovation hasn't occurred for decades.
Seastead this.
My own experience is that "lucky breaks" come to those who seek them out and are willing to take risks, and under the right conditions, can capitalize on them.
Colonel, if you feel you haven't gotten your share of "lucky breaks", maybe you ought to try harder. It's amazing what can be accomplished if you try.
TFTY. Not to knock your argument, I agree with it. But I think in the form you presented, it is incomplete. You need an innate talent, and a drive to seek the opportunity. And the lucky break (which in great part is a factor of society and government), and then being at the right economic period (up or down depending on the nature of the lucky break), to capitalize it.
Coming from a dirt-poor country that was plagued for much of its existence by warlords, generalissimos, nepotism and a lack of the rule of law, you can work your ass off and be the next Sergey Brin/Einstein and still never get anywhere (if you are lucky, or robbed/killed at worst.)
Being in a developed country where the combination of government, the rule of law, society with developed institutions and a robust economy (even when in a recession), that gives you a fair, fighting chance AND the ability to mingle with like-minded people, AAAAAAAAND the opportunity to reap benefits proportional or greater than the effort put behind the plow.
The combination of all that is what makes success (and recovery from failures) a possibility.
Financial success is not 90% people skills. It's education or industry experience.
Not true. Purely anecdotal experience. When my family and I came from Nicaragua to the US in 1989, we paired with lady, also from Nicaragua to work from home making paper wraps for florists. This lady was the one with the contacts, and my family and I were the muscle. My family and I are/were decently educated and had a working knowledge of English (we couldn't speak it well yet, but we could read it.)
This other lady on the other hand, barely spoke any English, she could barely read in Spanish, and she needed a calculator to do simple math. She couldn't multiply without it. But you know what, she was the one getting the jobs, she had her own business. My family was one of the several local "offshore" employees she had in the Miami area. She would come and pick the finished product, pay us and bring more raw material, all while driving a dirt-poor car.
Penny earned, penny saved. She was already making an absurd amount of money. Some of her clients would berate her because of her lack of English language skills. It was painful to hurt to hear how she was treated, but she would simply shrug her shoulders. She would go on making sure everything was done and delivered on time, making contacts by simply knocking on flower shops' doors.
I don't know where she is now. Last time we saw her was in 1993. But she was already well off, this without significant reading ability in her native language, no English language skills, and almost zero-arithmetic skills. Zero education, and zero contacts.
Wherever she is, I hope she is still doing well.
Having family and a good number of friends as immigrants I've noticed two significant patterns:
1) Arrive in the US and take fairly menial work due to lack of education or language abilities. They're extremely frugal and manage to save a good deal of money. They work hard, but smartly moving up to the point that they start a small business which leads to further success. Many get involved in real estate investment further increasing income. By the time they're middle-aged they're living comfortably. They tend to pool resources with family members to increase odds of success.
2) Arrive in the US and take menial work for the same reasons. Never become motivated enough to move beyond low-paying employment. They manage to get by, some even to the point that they eventually buy their own home, but never really thrive.
This group tends to branch off into two subsets. There are those who are extremely frugal and manage to accumulate a little bit of money by the time they hit retirement. Then there's the other group that is less careful with money and becomes overly reliant on family members or social security in retirement. But a consistent theme with this group in general is that although they might live within communities comprised of the same ethnic group they tend to be more isolated and less likely to pool resources.
I've noticed another essential dynamic is how immigrant raise their kids. In both cases, but especially the first group, they stress education as essential. They don't tolerate anything less than excellence. This tends to lead to their children going good schools. And because their parents have instilled more pragmatic tendencies in them they tend to favor careers that lead to better employment and higher incomes. Nowadays that means finance, but when I was younger engineering, computer science and medicine tended to be popular. Those who don't end up in top schools still tend to have that work ethic instill in them and generally thrive, enjoying a higher standard of living than their parents.
Amongst the parents who didn't get involved in their children's education, who didn't instill that work ethic, their kids tend to struggle later in life not being any better off than the parents were. More often than not, they end up screwing themselves but not having clear long-term plans and goals.
The interesting thing is that I've generally found foreigners to be far more optimistic about opportunities in America than Americans themselves. They're a lot more willing to sacrifice than Americans are. I've been surprised many a time by friends and family who've manage to save so much money with such relatively low incomes.
The entitlement thought of many of the US's population prevents us from our own success. Being your own boss and then employing others to work for you takes discipline and hard work. A business owners who starts from virtually nothing but an idea and makes the dream a reality has a stronger grasp on the value of a company and the people who work within its doors. This isn't to say that people in the US have no drive, but when the world flip flops, many just throw up their hands and quit.
Just look at the number of people who just quit paying their loans because they were under water, so many that it's destroying our economy. A home is more than an investment, it is something that needs love and care and needs constant attention, and just quitting when times are tough is not the right way to do it. Too many feel entitled to walk away from a house and loan and don't expect to receive the ass end of the consequences. Building a business takes the same work and pride, and those that really understand struggle make some of best business owners.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.