Why are entrepreneurs leaving the U.S.?

Edit: Same reporter! This is hilarious.

http://www.inc.com/magazine/201106/doing-business-in-argenti...

I'm an immigrant. I'm considering heavily to go back home and start a business there (online, offline, doesn't matter). Reasons? cheaper workforce, more power, more connections, cherry picking, bigger pond, more people (consumers), etc.

I'll be using North America to include both US and Canada for the rest of my comment.

Here are a few more detailed examples (all of them are of course anecdotes to me):

Managing westerners that believe that they're entitled for everything such as perks, private offices, their choice of programming languages, their choice of best practices are often a time consuming activity. Back home, I can drive the workforce to do the best practices that I believe without having to have long discussions. Give them laptop, give them work, they're happy. This is because their mindset, perspective, and standard are different than here in North America. They're also cheaper.

After working with many programmers throughout my careers, I kind of grow a belief that I can train the less "creative" developers back home to be at the same level at most of the programmers in North America. They might not reach the level of superstar engineers, but they will reach the level of more than good enough at where I will be.

Connection is a big thing. It's harder to have a connection in N.A., especially when you're an immigrant (maybe it's just me). Where I come from, hooking up with people who have excess money is very easy. Especially when you graduate from a pretty good N.A. university (doesn't have to be Wharton or Harvard, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine is enough). They look at you as someone who has something "more" (whatever more that is).

In Iowa, you're nobody. In the [Capital City of your ancestor's land], you're something. Imagine that.

Overall, I find that the majority of large Asian cities are probably more alive than some well-known (but not necessarily large) N.A. cities.

Again, all of these are anecdotes.

If they are leaving because the US has become an unfriendly place to new businesses, especially in high tech, that's bad.

If they are leaving because opportunities overseas are exceptional, and it's easier to capitalize on those opportunities for people with strong cultural or linguistic ties to a particular region, that's not necessarily bad. Having grown up in SF, I see the tech boom as a mixed bag. It's of course phenomenal to have so much wealth here. But I've also seen a lot of displacement. It's hardly a crisis that we can't cram every single tech startup in to this small peninsula, and I don't think it's a bad thing that people might actually want to live somewhere else either, in the US (Austin, Seattle, Boulder...) or overseas (Seoul, Bangalore, Copenhagen...).

That said, I do think these sort of stories do underscore why it's so important for the US to have a steady and reliable stream of STEM graduates come up through our own educational system. It's great to be open to talent from the rest of the world, but becoming excessively reliant on it long-term seems like folly to me.

(Except maybe Canada :-) I'm not from there, though, so I wouldn't know.)

Are either of those necessarily trends? Not unless you can come up with some numbers to support the anecdotes, which this story doesn't seem to have. We don't know if entrepreneurs are leaving at a greater rate than before, or even if there's a net loss (lots of people come to the US and end up starting small businesses.) If it's in the story, I missed it.

As a side note, the Shin in the article is a family member of the “big brother” Chaebol, Samsung Group, which has close knots with big conglomerates such as CJ Group, Joongang Ilbo, Shinsegae, and more, almost to the extent of their aggregate revenue reaching almost a half of South Korea GDP, so he earned attractive deals from big local brands so easily. Shin wan’t irrational enough not to exploit his family connections to build a business based on a totally unprofitable model, a feat only possible at the right moment and right place. Definitely, he’s a smart guy, smart enough being ready to return if he no longer sees his advantages here in Seoul, which I think would be quite unlikely though, due to his superb “Zuck status” in S. Korea.

I posted before in the context of SOPA: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3265961

What would it take for you to leave the place you are based now and try your luck somewhere else?

I was born in the USA, and worked for startups for nearly 2 decades in the USA, but when it came time to do my own startup, I left the USA. There are many reasons for this, and further, when I come back to the USA, I'm reminded of some of the nice things we've given up.

The biggest reason we left is that the cost of living is high in the west coast of the USA, compared to most of the rest of the world. If we could travel around the world and actually save money while getting to do something we've always enjoyed doing, then that's great. Going to europe is more expensive than the USA, but not that much, well worth it. In fact, berlin was such cool city, that if germans were more supportive of the idea that we might want to stay there for an extended period we'd be working on residency permits.

But behind this reason is another one- The USA is going in the wrong direction. Pick whatever examples work best for you- SOPA, domain seizures, an increasingly baroque tax code, increasing regulations all over that, even though they don't yet effect small businesses much, would be a burden if we are at all successful, even dealing with the TSA when I want to fly, and the thought that my tax money is being used to kill afghani, iraqi, pakistani and other children.

When I was young, I was brought up to believe that the USA was great because it believed in human rights. That the bill of rights protected us from an out of control government. Over the years, I've seen those rights be violated, one by one, and the supreme court claim that it was "legal" in their rulings. I've come to believe that there is no effective restraint on the US government by the legal system, and I've been shocked to see, how rapidly these transgressions are accelerating.

For instance, I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that at ever airport adults and children have a choice between being photographed nude by government agents and being molested by same. This is a violation of state laws in probably all 50 states, yet no charges have been filed. Worse, while many americans protest, there has been no action. I take this as evidence that americans will put up with any rights violations. Many of them will get mad, but they have no method to resolve the situation. While Obama was president when these scanners were put in, only a couple of the people wanting to run against him want them out. And while Bush was president when the TSA was created and the PATRIOT act was passed, Obama has expanded both. Despite the majority of people opposing various bits of legislation (like the bank bailouts) they still get passed. So, I see no way for things to turn around until things get bad enough to make people really unformfortable.

Also, I've studied economics and been watching the economic situation. I've come to understand the real nature of the federal reserve and the fiat currency of the USA. The USA benefited greatly from Bretton Woods alls these decades, but a side effect of that is that the inflation that has existed in the dollar supply has been exported to other countries, giving americans an artificially better standard of living. This in itself is not bad, but it and our debtor economy are dependent on that money being kept out of the system by being locked up in vaults and pocketbooks and accounts of foreigners who want it because they think the dollar is a strong currency. Given the fact that our economy is faltering, but more importantly our government is spending like crazy (obama is worse than bush who was worse than clinton who was worse than bush who was worse than the very bad reagan who was worse than carter, it just goes on...) eventually they are going to be inflating so fast that the dollar loses its reserve status, and at that point, it won't matter that the US government is inflating because people will start dumping their dollars. We'll start seeing the effect of all those previous years inflation that was exported realized in the dollars in a rather short time. This is not a black swan event, it happens regularly, just not often enough that people remember its possible. But because of bretton woods, it will be much worse for the usa than, say, argentina.

Its pretty much impossible to do business in the USA and not be tied up in the dollar economy.

Meanwhile, because I have been a traveller, I've been to other countries and seen how in some ways at least many of them are better than the USA. Chile for instance, has a culture that is more instinctively capitalist. New Zealand, while its more socialist on the surface has a much less corrupt government. So the question becomes, of all these countries, which provides the best protections of the rights I care most about and is also going in the right direction? I've not yet decided, I'm still traveling.

There's a lot to commend the USA. One surprising thing is how convenient having amazon and walmart is. Especially compared to europe. You can just order anything you want from amazon or go to a walmart and buy most anything you want. In europe, the retail stores are generally very tiny, and with the exception of an astounding chain of 3 story electronics shops we found in berlin, its often very hard to find obscure things. And when you do, of course, the prices are often almost doublet the USA due to tariffs and on top of that you've got %20 VAT.

One downside of running a startup this way is that traveling involves spending a fair bit of time on the traveling part. This gets in the way of the startup part, and it is also a bit disruptive. Each time we go to the next country we have a bit of time figuring out where the grocery store is, arranging the apartment to suit our needs, etc. We're staying in AirBnB places almost exclusively and AirBnB has totally solved a lot of the hassles of having to find apartments. But we're going to try staying linger- getting permits to stay a year or so in each country.

Finally, its a hell of a lot of fun to run a startup this way.

So, I'm sure most on hacker news disagree with at least something I've said, and this post is by its nature political because it is a questions whose answers, for me, are politically motivated. I'm not looking for a debate. If you disagree with my perspective on any of these things, that's fine, but I took a long time to reach them, and a lot of consideration, and there's really not much point in trying to persuade me (nor am I trying to pursuade you. I'm just answering the question.)

I am up for answering followup questions if anyone's concerned about mechanics etc.

I didn't quite get why the guy in the story left for Korea though. It was just a story of an entrepreneur who left the states and is now S. Korea's Zuckerberg. So? I mean, it's impressive but so what if he left? Maybe his particular business would fair better there but again this the exception and not the rule.

There are other countries like China and India that have exploding GDP but the great thing about the U.S. is that while we are decently regulated those regulations don't do much to Hirt the founding of a business and allow businesses to expand easily. For example, India until recently has been chock full of mom and pop shops but not many larger, expanding businesses. This is because they didn't allow you to open a store in more than 2 location until just recently. That means no corporate franchises and the like. Over here you can pretty much do what you please within reason. Not sure why I got off track with the India anecdote but I just learned about it and thought it was very intriguing.