
Switzerland's Answer to Silicon Valley - wslh
https://www.credit-suisse.com/ch/en/news-and-expertise/publications/bulletin/editions/current-issue.article.html/article/pwp/news-and-expertise/2013/12/en/switzerlands-answer-to-silicon-valley.html
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antr
> The Arc Knows No Borders

says the Swiss bank of Switzerland, the country that has closed its boarders.
Last week's immigration referendum has certainly closed any hopes of
Switzerland benefiting from a diversified, thriving tech industry. Europeans
will go to London, Berlin, Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, etc before going to
Switzerland.

~~~
disputin
London is too expensive. Low budget start-ups contribute to thriving tech
industry, and London not only excludes them but is increasingly expensive.
It's experiencing something similar to SF, from what I read about SF, a
hollowing out of the middle class who want some quality of life but can't
compete with the multi-millionaires. A European country with sun, sea, sandy
beaches, mountains, lots of space (Spain, I'm looking at you) would be
attractive if it went out of its way to encourage start-ups. It would have to
highlight a multilingual location so that people can fumble through beginner
Spanish confident with a fall back, but I for one would race over. More
foreign entrepreneurs attracted, more local jobs created.

~~~
omegant
I guess you are thinking in Mallorca. Sunny, better connected by flights with
Europe than with the Iberian peninsula, lot´s of European expats living here,
proportion of locals speaking at least English quite high compared to other
parts of Spain... If only we could have some better entrepreneurship laws...

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kyboren
I moved from California to Lausanne and I highly recommend it. Quality of life
is truly outstanding, and the high level of infrastructure development makes
living here very convenient.

The biggest problem is, as the article gently suggests, housing, which is
almost impossible for foreigners to find (even with asset sheets in the
hundreds of thousands of USD). Affordable housing is essentially nonexistent.
Every now and then voter initiatives crop up to change the situation (remove
building restrictions, reduce bureaucracy, etc.), but the problem only seems
to get worse.

Fortunately, an all-Switzerland unlimited travel card is only ~$4k/year for
adults and ~$3k/year for <25yo's. Given the reliability and extensive reach of
the public transport network here, it's definitely possible (and even fairly
regular) to live in somewhat 'remote' villages and towns and still commute to
work in <1hr. It's pretty cool to have the ability to live in, say, Saint-
Maurice (with Bronze Age roots) and still be in the door at work within 1h15m.

This is made more palatable by the extensive fiber network available in
Switzerland: multiple providers are now offering 1Gb/s connections in Lausanne
proper, and the reach continues to expand. Some more-remote locations are
still only served by the Swisscom state pseudomonopoly, but service is usually
still reasonably cheap and line rates still reasonably high.

The mobile offerings here offer real competition, and along with the small
size of the market, make cell service cheap and fast.

Finally, EPFL itself is highly ranked and has some top talent, not only in
faculty (among others, includes Arjen Lenstra, Martin Odersky, Ed Bugnion,
George Candea, and Katerina Argyraki), but also in PhD and MS students. EPFL
also has regular workshops for entrepreneurship and actively encourages
commercialization.

There's a lot of uncertainty about the new immigration mandate, which will
almost certainly hurt Switzerland's attractiveness to entrepreneurs, but the
ETH/EPF domain will probably not be affected; if you're a prospective graduate
student interested in entrepreneurship, EPFL is definitely worth a look!

~~~
cyphunk
commute >1h is one of the main reasons most move away from the valley. I agree
though, moving away from the US is a breath of fresh air on living standards
when it comes to culture and public transport. But you can pick other cities
and countries to get this. Cities that have comparable burgeoning tech scenes
of their own. Berlin comes to mind. All the scrappy push of a high tech
culture without all the fascist government baggage of say a US, CH or Israel.

~~~
kyboren
That's fair, but it is still possible to find something closer.

And a 1hr commute is a lot different stuck in traffic on the 680 or 101 than
working on your laptop in a train.

~~~
cyphunk
i'm just saying: the commuters paradox (described by two swiss) is known to
have a high(est) negative effect on happiness:
[http://brunofrey.com/articles/C_481_08.pdf](http://brunofrey.com/articles/C_481_08.pdf)

~~~
collyw
I am amazed that people are saying that < 1.15 hour is good for commuting, yet
think fibre optic is great. How much time do you actually spend waiting for
downloads?

I live ten minute cycle from work. Central Barcelona. OK, my apartment is
small and expensive relative to wages, but I can't stand commuting. It really
does seem like a waste of your life.

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DrJokepu
Brought to you by the same country whose people have chosen last week to limit
the right of free movement of European citizens. This is not a good time to
start a technology business in Switzerland.

~~~
patrickaljord
It is still a million times easier to establish a business and get residency
in Switzerland than in the US for Europeans. So by that standard, it would be
an even worse time to start a technology business in the US. And the limits
that were voted last week are minimal and temporary.

~~~
DrJokepu
In the United States, businesses have access to a workforce market of 340
million people educated to a high standard. In the European Union, businesses
have access to a similar workforce of over 507 million people.

Without access to the EU workforce, Swiss businesses have access to a
workforce market of 8 million people.

~~~
_delirium
The overall technical/scientific ecosystem of Switzerland also looks like it
will be at least somewhat damaged by this closure. US startups often start off
as university spinoffs from NSF or DARPA-funded research (Sun Microsystems,
Google, etc.), or as partnerships between universities and industry (a number
of machine-learning/data-mining startups fit that category). The same is often
true in Europe, just replace NSF/DARPA with the EU research framework (keeps
changing names, but essentially the same). It gives large grants to multi-
national consortia of universities and companies. Switzerland was part of the
2007-2013 "FP7" program, but they're being suspended from the 2014-2020
"Horizon 2020" program, at least for now. Existing funded projects will be
allowed to complete (funding is usually for 3 years), but Swiss institutions
and companies won't be allowed to be part of 2014 applications. That's causing
a bit of turmoil around here (not Switzerland) right now because people had
planned to submit proposals with Swiss partners who are suddenly ineligible.

It's possible Switzerland will cover some of the damage by pulling the money
they would've contributed towards the EU research framework, and using it to
increase domestic research funding instead. Will have to wait and see how that
goes.

~~~
chli
Too bad EU is playing that card since it's obviously a lose/lose situation.

"Switzerland's contribution to the total budget of Horizon 2020 of about EUR
81.6 billion sums up to around CHF 4.4 billion, over a seven-year period. The
corresponding budget appropriation was approved by the Federal Assembly on 10
September 2013."

[http://www.sbfi.admin.ch/themen/01370/01683/index.html?lang=...](http://www.sbfi.admin.ch/themen/01370/01683/index.html?lang=en)

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gavanwoolery
A lot of hate for Switzerland, but honestly I don't blame the Swiss from
wanting to keep the rest of Europe out (so to speak). I think Switzerland has
the sanest government in the world, and the balanced budget to prove it.

~~~
collyw
They get a lot of their money from hiding corrupt people's money from everyone
else. Not exactly the most honest way of achieving a balanced budget.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Englishmen do that too (Post-soviet oligarchs) but it doesn't help them that
much.

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nirnira
Maybe someone could do a startup to teach the Swiss how to paragraph break...

