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Comment by zarzavat | Hacker News Reader

> The US and the UK have 5.22 AI startups for each 100,000 inhabitants; Germany has 1.9

It’s cute when journalists try to do things with numbers. This is a very weird sentence. Firstly, what is number of AI startups per capita a metric of? Some AI startups are more important than others.

Secondly why are US and UK lumped together? I assume they don’t each have precisely 5.22 AI startups per 100k inhabitants, so is this the combined total of their populations? Why combine those two countries? Why not combine US and Canada, or UK and France, or US and Japan?

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> what is number of AI startups per capita a metric of?

General population's resistance to bullshit new tech?

It's the silly joke, "bill gates and I have a combined net worth of 154 billion", this is how journalism is done these days.

> what is number of AI startups per capita a metric of?

A ratio of the number of startups and a certain amount of people. It definitely shows that founding a startup in Germany is not as easy as in other countries.

By lumping the UK together with the US it says absolutely nothing about either the UK or the US.

It doesn't necessarily show that at all as an isolated statistic - it could be telling us that Germany has less people who are convinced an AI startup is a sensible business decision, or any other number of population based factors

It definitely does not show that, it's just a number and you're interpreting it. But other interpretations are just as valid, e.g.

- Germans founding less because they're more risk-averse - having less AI startups because other types of companies are founded more often - Less wish to found because of a strong job market that gives you excellent jobs with decision power/money/whatever it is you seek in founding yourself - People have more families and don't want to quit their current jobs

I probably could come up with more. Is it a hassle to found a new company in Germany? Sure. But I've found that for people who do want to start something, that's not a showstopper. Personally, I would attribute low startup numbers to cultural risk aversion of Germans

> I would attribute low startup numbers to cultural risk aversion of Germans

Which is literally one aspect of how easy or hard it is to create a startup and get it somewhere. Can't fire people quickly enough since market is changing daily? Well it will be a nightmare for the owners to become or remain relevant enough to stay afloat.

I am not bashing EU just to be clear, having more job stability has tons of long term positive consequences on population's mental state and 2nd and 3rd order positive effects (the usage of various 'mental' medication in US seems to be ridiculously high compared to 3 countries in Europe I've lived in for example), but good environment for agile fail fast startups it ain't.

The thesis of the article is broadly correct but the reasoning it uses to get there is questionable.

Every country has its quirks. The US has a very high cost of living and consequent high salaries. No wonder it’s important to be able to fire workers quickly. The high wages are also more than balanced by the amount of capital available.

In Germany it’s harder to fire workers but they also get paid a fraction of their counterparts in the US, so there’s not such a rush.

I wouldn’t start a startup in Germany either, because of the insane dysfunction of German bureaucracy. The money is not even a factor when dealing with the system is already such a pain.

In Germany specifically, but I'd guess it applies to most other countries as well, these strict rules apply once you have 11 employees. A lot of startups work with contractors anyways. And you can always fire people if your company needs it to survive.

As far as I'm aware, California has some of the strongest labor protection laws in the US, yet lots of startups. There's clearly more factors involved than labor protection laws, e.g. VC money, culture, etc.

Sure, stronger labor protection might be a result of cultural risk aversion. But I'd be very hesitant to call it "literally one aspect of how easy or hard it is to create a startup and get it somewhere"

I didn't say its the only aspect, just one of key ones. Bureaucracy must be another critical aspect, one reason why ie France or Italy are literally centuries behind with very little to no hope to ever catch up given its population priorities.

I agree with what you say, SV culture and sheer amount of startup-compatible talent plays a massive role too. Its a momentum that would take half a century of dedicated effort to even catch up.

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