Wow. We often wonder how the Bay Area would be unseated as startup capital of the world. Maybe it'll be the US's immigration problem.
I've spent most my adult life in Asia and have lived in several countries and cities that claim to be very serious about becoming the next tech hub. None of them have very liberal immigration policies. All have visas for highly skilled workers, all have visas for entrepreneurs and all have visas for investors. I have yet to see a single case where a founder could get a visa without either significant revenues or significantly more funding than YC originally gave. It's also pretty hard for mid-stage startups to hire foreign workers, even in places with exceptional government-driven startup initiatives such as Singapore.
In my perception, Silicon Valley's most critical weakness is housing prices and its most likely true competitor is Beijing—not due to openness of immigration by any means, but due to a larger base of technically educated citizens and access to what is becoming the largest market in the world.
If you look at Fortune's list of unicorns, 3 of the top 10 are in Beijing. As they build, they're strengthening the founder/techie/investor ecosystem in the city even further.
Just having the talent, a silicon valley doesn't make. Its about the culture of collaboration and openness.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/the-valley-of-my-dreams-wh...
Automotive and related tech is quite small even with Tesla in the bay area. The number of automotive technology jobs is quite small. Automation technology from cars is picking up, but I doubt the number of jobs is very high in comparison to Detroit, Stuttgart, or Nagoya
There are a lot more aerospace outside of Silicon Valley with Aerobus and Boeing having little presence in California.
Google is #3 in cloud technology compared to Seattle/Redmond with AWS and Azure with significant marketshare advantage.
Amazon is 45% marketshare in US for online commerce. Logistics technology for them is mainly built in Seattle and Boston. Not much for Amazon going on in Silicon Valley. Alexa not made in Silicon Valley.
I'm still quite surprised people still believe Silicon Valley + SF lead in technology.
I can walk around and pay for everything with my cellphone nowadays in China, but can't really do that in Bay Area.
Is this really that interesting though? Tell me when they have self-driving cars that are affordable enough for ride sharing.
As for self-driving cars, Chinese companies like Baidu are not unlike Google, and they are investing/researching heavily in these fields. The only twist is that self-driving in China would be a lot harder to solve because the roads are a lot messy there :) At the same time, many of these companies directly invests in US companies as well
Because it's not a technical problem. Nobody cares about the ability to pay with their phone in the US when a credit card works so well and doesn't have a battery that dies.
Android and Apple pay work perfectly fine but almost nobody in my tech circles feels the urge to use them, let alone normal citizens. The credit card infrastructure in the US is so prevalent and reliable that there needs to be some serious perks to unseat the dominance.
Facebook and EA have presence in Vancouver, and Amazon has some there, too. But I get the impression that Facebook and Amazon are merely interested in using Vancouver as a 'feeder' office for getting candidates long run into their Seattle offices.
In any case, the wages are lower here which means talent still continues to emigrate. Also -- the weather. I work for Google Waterloo and I suspect there are far more Canadians working for Google in Mountain View than there are here in our largest Canadian office.
I don't see Vancouver "happening" (at least not more than it already is). Being similar to places like Seattle or SF isn't a good thing if you want to compete with them, because you'll always end up behind them in a comparison.
As the other child comment on your post said, I think it would be wise to consider how important Vancouver's more mild weather and being in the same timezone as SV would be beneficial for those looking to move out of the US.
This is actually the biggest advantage for me. I moved to the Bay Area after school because I am a technical person, but stayed because of the culture (capital and lowercase) and the large numbers of very smart people. Have lived in NYC and Bremen, but the Bay is home. While the money and weather are great, it really is ready availability of top-tier folks. (In a coffee shop on Mission St., I literally tripped over a person I later came to realize is probably the single most accomplished programmer in a particular domain, not to mention a great person to talk art with.)
Have you been in the area in the last 30 years? There hasn't been a homicide anywhere in Menlo Park since 2012.
(Has not looked for an apartment in Vancouver in the last 10 years)
You're right that it's not easy to come by though, and if you want to live within a 30 minute transit commute of downtown and have a single bedroom, it's unlikely you'll find anything for less than $750 that's not an SRO
If you mean housing cost relative to salary, however, that's perhaps a different story.
I've had some trouble finding closely comparable values but it seems like the median SF detached home price is ~$1 million. Even considering the exchange rate, it seems like Vancouver is more expensive.
Certainly when one compares typical incomes Vancouver is dramatically less affordable than San Francisco.
Here's a pretty typical example: https://www.realtor.ca/Residential/Single-Family/17409318/55...
Before you ask, no that's not even in a really desirable part of Vancouver.
That will cost you another million. See this as an example: https://www.realtor.ca/Residential/Single-Family/17850427/31...
And that's CAD, not USD. In USD it's $1,092,000. Still very expensive but not $1.76mln.
[1] http://news.buzzbuzzhome.com/2017/03/metro-vancouver-home-li... [2] http://www.vancourier.com/news/sales-average-detached-home-p...
http://www.rew.ca/news/benchmark-vs-average-vs-median-what-s...
Vancouver's market had a reputation of being driven by Chinese cash... and whether that's true or not, perception is reality when it comes to markets.
Sure, they'll remain outside the US as a nucleation site for new startups that could have in theory challenged US dominance in technology startups. But the US controls the financial energy. They won't get anywhere.
Startups will survive large-scale institutional bigotry just fine. In fact: some of them will even profit from it.
Sleep well!
Not sure what the reasoning is here. How is YC doing anything to block people from starting companies? You don't lose anything by getting rejected from YC, other than the few days spent applying.
To be a bit simplistic, I think Thomas' point is that the likelihood of tech startups outside of the traditional US-centric startup ecosystem succeeding is very low, due to lack of funding and the general consequences of being an Outsider to the Silicon Valley elite.
YC's role in it is, of course, being one of the most influential players that control which ideas get funded/attention, and which do not.
Even physically outside of the US, the startup ecosystem is still overwhelming reliant on US money. Which is to say even if there is an appetite for funding founders in these disfavored countries, regulations (or simple politics) may prevent it.
That said, I do disagree somewhat - US/European money is not the only source of venture capital dollars. I suspect at least some of the founders we're losing here will be able to start their companies with Chinese money. The loss of this talent pool will contribute - in a small way right now, but snowballing as time goes on - to the loss of US-centric economic hegemony.
If you're able to interact with the smartest people in the world - and not just your own country - you end up forming more effective and larger companies. Which in turn create jobs.
If you shut out your country to the rest of the world, the next Google will be founded somewhere else.
And I'll dispute your claim that the US has enough talent. There was a submission on HN recently about the top deep learning papers. Go through it. Count the number of American-born people. Geoff Hinton? Yann LeCun? Russ Salakhutdinov? Demis Hassibis (of Deep Mind)? Virtually everyone on there was born somewhere else. They're not Americans, but they're mostly working for American companies and contributing their talent to YOUR economy.
[0] https://github.com/terryum/awesome-deep-learning-papers/blob...
But so what? That doesn't demonstrate that the US doesn't have enough talent. It just shows that some people from out of the country were working on something. Maybe if the situation was different then that paper could be exclusively written be Americans. The majority of the worlds most intelligent people reside elsewhere, but the US has nearly 400 million people. It's fine with or without immigrants. Japan is fine isn't it?
Many papers are written exclusively by Americans, but they're often not the best. That's what you're going to have to be content with, if you shut off immigration. Being okay, but not the best.
Imagine that those researchers couldn't go to the US. Imagine instead of Google DeepMind beating Lee Sedol it was a Canadian or Chinese company. Imagine if the first company to roll out mass self-driving cars would be Didi instead of Tesla. It's an inevitability, once all the top minds in the world go to companies outside the US. And as I said, it's not horrible for America, the country will surivive and do okay, but there'll be jobs lost and innovation will go somewhere else.
Reading the news, I would not bet too much money on that either.
Most likely not next year.
In Germany and many other European countries, when the government resigns (or the government is mistrusted by parliament), there is the possibility of immediate new elections.
Is this totally impossible in the US?
The system we have here is quite different from the parliamentary system you may be more familiar with.
For all the reverence the 'founding fathers' get they could have done a much better job setting things up. America got rid of royalty, then brought it back in by electing them, and not in a ceremonial function either. It's a huge problem (that, and the 'two party system').
Technically the two party system could change but things are set up in such a way that no third party will ever gather enough votes even if you were to say pit two un-electables against each other.
Presidential elections happen on schedule. If Trump should leave that gives you Pence, if Pence should leave that will give you Ryan. And likely by that time it will be 2020 and you'll have those new elections but until then you'll be stuck with a Republican as president, like it or not.
Maybe I am wrong and there are visa holders feeling absolute confidence at the moment, but I would like to hear why from even one before considering your "a few people" categorization as anything but spin.
It's so far out of line of reason to believe that the US is going to basically end all - or any meaningful portion of - legal immigration, as to be nearly impossible to reply to. Where to start?
The US will switch, if anything, to a merit based system. Canada already uses just such a system. Nobody seems to be outraged about it, or proclaiming the end of Canada because of it. There's far too much emotion in this thread.
But all Europeans that would like to get visa are on hold right now. People that already have one are in limbo, worrying about how the coming ruling will affect them.
On the longer term, other factors dictate the government, but they are still only indirectly linked to change.
We'll see if we still have that mechanism in 4 or 8 years, but in the meantime, I'll remain cautiously optimistic. The U.S. has had terrible presidents & strong political leaders before, ones who drove the country down a terrible path, and they've usually been forced out of power and their policies reversed within a decade. That's the great strength of democracy: it's not that it governs efficiently (it doesn't), but it provides an escape hatch so if a government is seriously going down the wrong path and everyone realizes it, the government doesn't last long.
I just don't think a government having a big impact is surprising.
Because they were the only ones pointing out the economic collapse of rural and interior America.
Liberals should have been in front of this issue but they ignored it, preferring to hide in coastal urban bubbles and navel gaze. So they opened the door to a bunch of demagogues.
Immigration may not be a major cause of these problems but it makes a convenient scapegoat.
American politics is in a terrible state right now.
Also, what do you mean by "visa"? There are many different sorts, depending on whether you come to interview, work, be an entrepreneur, etc.
Personally, I am ambivalent (and technically I am a Californian).
Good grief.
The lunacy is bipartisan.
So, you support states rights? Tell me why abortion is a federal issue then?
Sanctuary cities don't change anything about international borders or who can enter the country, because international borders are federal issues with federal staff. Sanctuary cities refuse to make their local staff spend time and money reporting on immigration status every time they issue a parking ticket. It's not even a states rights question - nobody even suggests that city officials should check if you have paid your federal taxes every time you take to them, but that's not because (normal) people are objecting to a federally run tax system.
I do, however, think sanctuary cities (which are so fuzzily defined legally...) create an incentive for illegal immigration. It sends a message that one need only get through the border to make it permanent. My family immigrated legally. They should too.
If states choose not to enforce federal law, I think they need to clearly establish a legal position as to why.
As for sanctuary cities, when your state is sitting on territory that was formerly part of Mexico, its major cities still carrying Spanish names, its labour force overwhelmingly dominated by Latinos, it doesn't seem crazy at all to question the rationale of the US immigration system and borders and try to accomodate to the realities of the actual real world demographics.
Not to mention from my understanding sanctuary cities have their origin with the migrant fallout created by the central American wars that the United States was directly involved in.
As for "overwhelmingly", you make it sound like we're living in Mexico but have the indecency of calling it the US. As for the current state of population, LA is around 50% Latino at most. That isn't illegal immigrants. Those aren't people that identify as Mexicans in America. Those are Americans. Some even voted for Trump.
All territory was formerly part of someone else's territory. Borders move and people along with them. I feel no moral burden to accommodate previous inhabitants, nor would I expect any if the table was turned. That said, if states truly moved to nullify federal law based on a tenable legal position, I'd listen. However, they'd have to make such an argument, as opposed to a philosophical one (like yours, which I don't agree with).
As for your "understanding" of the origin of sanctuary cities, you've been reading fake news.
In our two party system, the lesser parties normally never get included in the legislative process. (those primaries effectively exclude them) In a parliamentary system any party that gets enough votes will get some seats.
If we adopted that sort of system you'd immediately see some greens and libertarians involved in the legislative process, and presumably you'd see an end to jokey pseudolibertarians in the Republican party, since everyone would just vote for the real thing. The "you're just throwing your vote away" disincentive would no longer exist. (based purely on how often that topic comes up in conversation during elections, I assume you'd see some big changes in the ideological makeup of the legislature)
I hate the Alt Right and the Ctrl Left pretty equally.
True, the Democratic Party is basically a coalition where the two main factions are the dominant center-right neoliberal faction (the "Third Way" that reached its peak under Bill Clinton and his since lost some ground in the party while still remaining dominant, if barely so) and the secondary center-left progressive faction.
The Federal government has to enforce its own laws. The States may voluntarily assist, but the Federal government has no authority to mandate that states, or subdivisions thereof, enforce federal laws.
Indeed, Roe v. Wade or Gay marriage too. I mean, my state voted in gay marriage willingly, but I imagine some more religious states may want to determine the laws in their own state, like California does with weed and immigration
Also, not allowing abortions desperately increases the tax burden.
You get the entire Los Angeles basin. You get most of the Bay Area: the area served by BART, Berkeley, things west of Berkeley, and Marin County. You also get everything in the middle. Generally the border runs along the ridge of the coastal mountains.
The USA keeps San Diego, Eureka, Davis, Fresno, etc.
You get exclusive rights to the "California" name. The USA will split the leftover bits into at least 3 states.
In case it isn't: the war that would follow an attempted Calexit might be slightly detrimental to startups in the Bay Area.
Edit: I obviously don't think a Calexit will happen but I'm just curious why you think it would result in a war.
There'd be a war because of ports, military facilities, oil, and, because, politically California may on average be more slightly liberal than the rest of the US, but overall it looks a lot like the US as a whole, with very liberal coastal enclaves and an ultraconservative inland agricultural heartland, and much of the latter would revolt from California to stay in the US in the event of an attempted Calexit.
The legality of California seceding is dubious[1]
There is a history in the US of attempted secession leading to war
Around the world attempts are at secession are often associated with violence
There's probably more, but I don't think any of these are particularly controversial.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secession_in_the_United_States...
In the same way that secession allowed the Confederacy to do that.
The US has no equivalent of the EU's Article 50, and until it does, "Calexit" means a war that California is in no position to win.
And because of that (and the leverage the central government would have because of that), there'll be no peaceful divorce of California from the Union.
If California does split it'll probably just employ a live-and-let-live policy with their wild eastern frontier. Leave the hillbillies alone and they'll leave you alone.