Hacker News Reader

Comment by maerF0x0 | Hacker News Reader

Of course they do! China has 4x the people. I don't understand these kinds of articles when they dont adjust per capita.

IMO this is the meat of the article:

  The U.S. can’t continue to look inward and expect the high
  rates of growth we have seen in the tech sector over the 
  past two decades. Only new, global markets are going to be
  the driver of prosperity, and right now, China has its 
  money where the action is.

View on HN

I don't think it makes sense to adjust per capita. The biggest startup hubs used to be Silicon Valley, New York, London and Berlin. Germany and the UK might just come out ahead of the US because their startup hubs are in smaller countries than SV.

Why would population be the correct normalizer? Would we expect Nigeria to have 57% of the startup funding that the US does?

Funding is a lagging indicator -- I do expect that Nigeria (population ~190 million) has ~57% of the human potential of the United States (~330 million).

Assuming everyone is as capable, yes.

I guess the premise of the parent comment is that China, at least in the tech sector, is considered as "developed" as the US. If that assumption holds true, what the parent comment isn't far off. But that's an assumption that may or may not be true, depending on who you ask at least.

Sure, that's reasonable. I guess my point was there are likely better naive correlates for amount of startup funding than population. Perhaps number of STEM or college educated adults, perhaps levels of general economic growth, perhaps GDP, perhaps levels of business freedom, perhaps population (I'm not ruling it out).

Also Nigeria was a particularly bad example because they're developing spectacularly well, should have picked a large population country with a poor business climate.

Nigerian immigrants to the US seem to do even better than Asians!

Not surprised. Scamming is HUGE business.

By the way, we are looking for a money receiver. Please inquire!

Bloomberg article that references how Nigerians are kicking ass in income and education:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-10-13/it-isn-t-...

I once had a business partner from Nigeria and somehow I have a feeling where the money is coming from.

Lesson learned: Sometimes a little bit Racism is healthy. No kidding!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com