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Comment by ak_111 | Hacker News Reader

Am surprised PG gave this talk at a UK school without mentioning an important assumption that they will need to migrate to the US in his opening paragraph.

All the examples he mentioned Google, himself and the Irish Stripe founders had to do the same for their startups.

Sadly in the UK all the current unicorn "startups" are a bit iffy: XTX (high frequency hedgefund), betfair (betting company), tripledot studios (Zynga like company).

Unfortunately mega success in startups doing soemthing innovative is non-existent in Europe and UK in particular. Mistral stands out to how exceptional it is to the rule, and the closest other one I can think of is BioNtech.

Sadly the highest expected route to fortune in the UK remains quant trading in finance. Including starting your own hedge fund.

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Yes, and of course you cannot just move to the USA especially if you're a young guy in the UK. I know, I faced the same issue. 2006, recruited by Google before I'd even graduated. I wanted to go to California but... they hit the H1B cap that year and I wasn't important enough to get one. So I ended up in Switzerland.

If Google in 2006 wasn't powerful enough to get someone as culturally unthreatening as a Brit into the USA, it cannot be easier to do so as a startup founder.

That said I did know someone later who was able to make it in and become a startup CTO there (a German guy). Hilariously he did it by making a viral YouTube video. And by "make" I mean he hired an agency to make it. This was sufficient to get him in on an artist visa, which was easier than getting in on an H1B.

Not anymore, London is the biggest startup hub in Europe and top AI companies like Google Deep Mind and Stability AI were founded and HQ is based in London. These days all you need is talent and funding, once you have that you can do it from anywhere.

> Am surprised PG gave this talk at a UK school without mentioning an important assumption that they will need to migrate to the US in his opening paragraph.

Seems kinda reasonable for a motivational speech not to mention it (even assuming it's entirely true.)

No I think it was so obvious to him that he forgot to mention it, or he doesn't think it should be a problem for many young people to move to the US.

It would be dishonest if he intentionally left it out since for some (arguably a minority of young people) it is a deal breaker.

You say all this like it's a bad thing, but maybe it's ultimately better for a society if there isn't a financial lottery that enables a small number of people to become insanely wealthy and powerful.

I'd rather a government that enables a thousand mid-sized companies with moderately well-paid executives and employees than one that enables a single monopolistic mega-corporation with billionaires whose power rivals states and whose incentives are not aligned with most of the world.

This. It's the US system that is broken, not the European ones.

Of course it is a monumentally bad thing for the UK economy it doesn't have any big tech companies! I actually don't understand your point at all.

To say nothing of the lost revenue from tech export do you think it is better for the UK that it depends on AWS cloud for running the majority of its public services, Apple for almost 70% of the phones used by it's citizens, Google for the other 30%?

Which midsize company is going to be able to compete with AWS on offering cloud computing services, Apple on developing smart phones or Nvidia on GPUs?

Actually the UK has the worst of both worlds: US big tech opens office here leading to well-paid executives and engineer, while all revenue (and none of the taxes) from selling the products these engineers develop goes to the US.

Is there truly nothing you can imagine that might be more important than maximizing revenue?

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