I think, though know this is anecdotal, US startup success is based largely on its market size of both consumers and venture capital.
Is Peter Thiel comically uninformed?
Incidentally, you probably don't want to drag body counts into a conversation that's teetering on the brink of a larger critique of capitalism. Unless, that is, you'd like to review deaths world-wide from preventable illness due to lack of access to healthcare? In the US alone it's estimated to be 45,000 deaths annually. Meanwhile Texas (in all it's staunch conservative glory) has 3rd world infant mortality rates.
Regarding collapsed leftist economies, what percentage of these are attributable to inherent failures of socialist policy vs simple economic sabotage and regime tampering by the US and it's allies? Would you like to review what the CIA has been up to since the 1950's?
Or would you rather simply review the number of times conservative legislators have run afoul of the constitution just in the last 5 years? We can start with the electoral maps of North Carolina getting chucked over illegal racist gerrymandering, and a thick stack of executive orders that have died in a judge's trash can this year.
There are definitely principled conservatives that are highly informed.
But the strategy the Republican party and media uses to win elections, includes a lot of disinformation and caters to the uninformed.
People like to believe their own tribe is the exalted one, but exploiting the uninformed isn't a partisan strategy.
[1] https://www.politico.com/blogs/ben-smith/2011/04/more-than-h...
Whether comparing very large and very small populations is reasonable is a separate question mind you, but that aside, the comment stands.
I think that's slowly changing. Dutch startups are told to think big nowadays and access to venture capital is also improving.
Even international by default aka pure internet companies like Facebook start as English only and tend to stay that way for a long time.
Uber on the other hand is only useful inside specific cities.
Remember they where .edu only for 2 years even thought they had significant funding. Their core problem was if nobody in Australia signs up then it's boring for the first users in Australia. However, by starting with an EDU focus they could leverage word of mouth to grow a network by location.
The path was starting a Harvard, then other ivy's, then other US collages, then US high-schools. That's clearly designed to leverage exclusivity.
How long was Facebook English only after they got VC?
Nordic startups that focus too much on their local market die. The whole point of startups is to SCALE. This cannot be when the country you live in has less population than greater LA.
What actually happens is that the startups here are "Global-first". They immedietly start talking about branching overseas and meeting with investors that can help them do so.
It's actually the SV startups that can huddle in their bubble for years of time, before doing an easy US wide launch, that already is a huge market.
[1]http://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2017/jan/20/...
Since I moved to San Jose, it's only rained a handful of times, and this place's harsh colds of winter have reached such dreadful temperatures as I'd witness on a mild fall day in my former country of residence.
That certainly can't help those numbers, even if I do think the absurd costs of living are quite bad, depressing the QOL for everyone outside of the engineer class here.
In San Jose it is 7.8x.
Nationally, it is 3.8x (5.8x in NYC metro).
http://www.burbed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/SFvNational...
And of those homeless, a fraction of them create the 'bad experience' chronic homeless with drug or mental problems that make most people dislike the homeless.
Nations are not isolated systems. Comparing national policies as though they didn’t interact gives wrong answers.