
For These Young Entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley Is, Like, Lame - johnwheeler
https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-these-entrepreneurs-silicon-valley-is-like-lame-1516270601
======
leroy_masochist
I thought from the title that this would be about how up-and-coming founders
think the stereotypically SV way of doing things is bad (equity-rich comp,
expensive catering for lunch, homogeneity of political views, etc).

Instead, it’s about how young Chinese entrepreneurs are underwhelmed by the
lack of penetration of new technologies into daily life on the Peninsula. The
whole thing reads like a submarine article artfully placed by the Shenzhen
Economic Development Committee, especially given its ending quote: "China is
like a startup. The U.S. is like a big corporation”.

One point within the article strikes me as especially bad. The author notes
that, “Especially for those in their 20s and 30s, last week’s visit largely
failed to impress. To many in the group, northern California’s low-rise
buildings looked shabbier than the glitzy skyscrapers in Beijing and
Shenzhen.” The clear implication here is that California’s relative
backwardness is evidenced by the shabbiness of local buildings.

But that’s entirely the wrong conclusion to draw! The story here is that rich
people don’t like new construction near where they live, and a lot of wealth
has been created on the Peninsula in the last few decades. The NIMBY-zoning-
driven damper on new office construction in the last few years has resulted in
a lack of office space relative to demand, which means that it’s a seller’s
market, which disincentivizes landlords from renovating buildings....and the
onerous zoning makes it virtually impossible for property developers to build
new ones.

~~~
qiqing
> expensive catering for lunch

Having lunch at work is not at all unusual in China, though usually at a lower
budget.

> a submarine article artfully placed...

I dunno man, I haven't been to Shenzhen, but the last time I was in Shanghai
was mid-2017. I felt like Silicon Valley was some remote backwater. It's not
just about shining new buildings. The Shanghai subways are new and shiny, has
advanced adtech, and most importantly, does not smell at all like pee (Bart
riders know what I'm talking about), and it runs every 2-3 minutes. It takes
3-ish hours to go from Beijing to Shanghai by high speed rail, which is also
shiny, new, and has a really nice business class. Anything you need with
2-hour shipping, not 2-day shipping. Not just the limited selection Amazon
deigns to put on Prime Now (which typically does not include hardware
components).

When I work on an Arduino hobby project, and I suddenly need a component my
local Fry's doesn't have, I don't have to wait 2 weeks for shipping. In China,
I'd be able to walk to the market and get it the same day.

Look, I still choose to live in Silicon Valley, but admittedly, in Shanghai,
there were zero people pooping in the streets, and during the entire time I
was there, I was ranted at or yelled at by a complete stranger exactly zero
times. And number of times I have been followed by a creepy stranger in
Shanghai who might do me harm: zero.

~~~
masonic

      The Shanghai subways are new and shiny, has advanced adtech, 
    

... And most comforting of all, you can _see_ the air you're breathing!

~~~
qiqing
Actually, during most of my trip, the PM2.5 daily forecasts were in the good
(green) category, and it dipped into fair (yellow) for only one day.

For a more intuitive comparison, the 'fair' day was clearer than Black Rock
Desert on a non-windy day before Burning Man gets set up.

------
noetic_techy
Mobile payments I think will take off in the US, its just going to take a
generation to catch on. I'm 33 and most of the 20 somethings are all using
Venmo and other payment apps. Give it time.

We're a car culture. US cities and suburbs were designed for cars long ago.
Hence the focus on the next iteration of cars: self driving. Plus, isnt the
bike sharing thing turning into a disaster in China with stolen bikes?

Really, facial recognition when you walk into work is sign of our lagging
technology? Sounds more like over engineering a trivial thing.

We've got rockets landing themselves, electric cars driving themselves, the
re-emergence of VR with augmented reality on the way, blockchain technology
(started in the US), and were still leading in AI by the way.

The big stuff on the near-horizon are sea-steading communities experimenting
with governance, quantum computers, lab grown meat, exoskeletons, and more
useful household robotics.

The long term R&D bets are whats paid off for us and there is no reason to
assume they wont continue too. China can copy us 6 times over due to their
population, but if their emphasis is always on "get it out the door now!" then
they will just be waiting around looking for the next thing to copy from
California.

I'm getting kinda tired of this anti-US sentiment articles.

~~~
Zarath
Do you have a source on the bike stealing in China? I was in Shanghai and
there were practically more bikes on the sidewalks than people, I don't think
people even bother stealing bikes.

~~~
noetic_techy
Ask and ye shall receive:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/02/world/asia/china-
beijing-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/02/world/asia/china-beijing-
dockless-bike-share.html)

"But their popularity has been accompanied by a wave of misbehavior. Because
the start-ups do not use fixed docking stations, riders abandon bicycles
haphazardly along streets and public squares, snarling traffic and cluttering
sidewalks. Thieves have taken them by the tens of thousands, for personal use
or selling them for parts. Angry and mischievous vandals hang them in trees,
bury them in construction sites and throw them into lakes and rivers."

[http://www.businessinsider.com/china-bike-sharing-frenzy-
col...](http://www.businessinsider.com/china-bike-sharing-frenzy-
collapsing-2017-11)

"Bike-sharing companies – with their capital-intensive, cash-burning, ride-
subsidizing business model – were among the hottest startups in China. ... But
this is how quickly a frenzy can deflate... On Thursday, Chinese media
reported that Mingbike, with operations in major cities, had laid off 99% of
its staff, after consumers had complained that they’d been unable to get their
deposits..."

------
icobaron
> To many in the group, northern California’s low-rise buildings looked shabby
> ... They didn’t see the shared bikes ... can’t believe Americans still use
> credit cards and cash

I too was shocked about how unappealing Silicon Valley was. I'm an American.

It was like "wow they don't know they are imagining solving problems that
aren't a problem for the rest of the country"

Pull off to any random gas station on the peninsula? Sorry you need cash at
the pump. Already in the line to the carwash? TOUGH LUCK! better get out your
car, run to the attendant and get cash! Don't mind that the bank freezes your
debit card at this location because its sketchy af, further inconveniencing
everyone in the carwash line waiting for you. Where is the apple or google
pay? Nonexistent.

I digress, that has almost nothing to do with anything. It is just the reality
of whats in Silicon Valley, distinct from more cosmopolitan areas.

Silicon Valley's real inconveniences are partially California administrative
problems. And as the article points out, the US is like a big corporation,
lots of things in your way before change.

~~~
stass
I have not seen a single gas station in California that does not accept credit
or debit cards for 10 years, let alone in the Bay Area. If they do exist, it’s
most certainly a tiny minority.

~~~
0800
In China, even the beggars accept cards and cryptocurrency. In South-America,
street vendors accept cards.

FinTech revolution is happening in China, not so much the US/SV.

~~~
jxramos
I'd have to see this on YouTube by several independent sources. Sounds pretty
wild, when living standards rise so high the definition of "poverty" becomes
more and more absurd.

~~~
qiqing
I haven't seen a beggar accept cryptocurrency (yet), but I've seen them accept
mobile payments. Along with informal farm vendors (e.g., guy on the corner
with a bag of oranges on his shoulder) accepting mobile payments.

------
staplers
Condescending title aims to portray youth opinion as shallow

~~~
stcredzero
Youth opinion is shallow? Nah. When I was 5, I thought I knew it all. How
could my parents be such dolts? However, when I was 10, I realized how stupid
I was before, but I had a pretty good handle on everything. How could my
parents be so clueless? On the other hand, when I was 15, I finally realized
how much of a dummy I'd always been, but by then I had it all figured out.
Also, what's up with my parents!? But that was just nonsense, of course! When
I turned 20, I realized how much of a dumb teen I had been, but then I had all
of the essential truths of how the world works pretty much figured out...

Kids are genius. However, youth opinion is uninformed by experience.

~~~
nostrademons
If you live a fulfilling life, the process continues up through 25, 30, 35,
and presumably onwards though I haven't gotten there yet.

Unfortunately a large number of people get to 25 or 30, figure "I'm an adult
now", and then their mental model of the world gets stuck at however it was
when they were that age even as the world changes around them.

~~~
jrs95
And if you’re lucky you might have actual realizations instead of just
adopting the ones society tells you to. Do kids think their parents are stupid
because of genuine observation, or is it because we tell kids to think their
parents are stupid?

~~~
stcredzero
Mostly the latter.

~~~
nostrademons
I'm not entirely sure of that. Kids have excellent bullshit detectors, because
a.) they haven't been socialized to keep their mouth shut when they see
bullshit and b.) they don't have incentives to keep their mouth shut when they
see bullshit. (cf. Emperor's New Clothes)

On one level kids think their parents are stupid because they don't have
experience with the constraints their parents live under (eg. getting a job,
keeping a job, putting a roof over your heads), but on another level the
parents _are_ stupid because they've let themselves internalize those
constraints beyond what's rational (eg. working so hard that you're unhappy
all the time and don't have time for the kids, not looking for another job
when you hate your current one). I've seen a number of instances - mostly
surrounding racism, classism, overwork, violence, corruption, or misaligned
incentives - where kids will say something both profound and naive and I'll
think to myself "Yes, you're absolutely right, and unfortunately humanity is
filled with idiots."

~~~
dragonwriter
> Kids have excellent bullshit detectors

I don't think that's particularly true, moreover...

> because a.) they haven't been socialized to keep their mouth shut when they
> see bullshit and b.) they don't have incentives to keep their mouth shut
> when they see bullshit.

Neither of those indicate that they have excellent bullshit detectors, nor are
they plausible reasons why they would do so; instead, those are reasons why
“kids generally provide third parties with more transparent insights into the
output of their own bullshit detectors than adults generally do”, but the fact
that adults are more circumspect in _announcing_ that they have detected
bullshit than kids are does not mean that adults aren't _fat better_ than kids
at detecting bullshit. (Being circumspect is also defensive mechanism against
bullshit; a bullshitter who knows that they have triggered your B.S. detector
will fine tune their approach to in response.)

~~~
stcredzero
_I don 't think that's particularly true,_

In all societies, there are certain things _you can 't say_ and often some of
these things are the truth, so sometimes people become so practiced at
papering over such things, that they become confused about what the truth
really is.

Kids just don't have as much exposure to that.

(Sometimes those there are things you have to say, which the society wishes
were true, and people become so practiced at acting as if they're true, people
even start to convince themselves.)

------
balls187
The optimist in me wants to say "Good, rising tides raise all ships."

Having multiple loci of major innovation can help alleviate some of the
problems of Silicon Valley's monoculture.

------
platz
Those pesky Chinese and their great firewall. GAFAM would love to make inroads
there but they can't even get a toehold. The China model destroys the
Calinfornian model. What you do with the internet now in this age (walled
gardens), are things the Chinese are doing at a national level.

i digress.

TLDR:

“China is like a startup. The U.S. is like a big corporation... China runs
very fast, tweaking along the way. The U.S. runs at a steady pace, doing a lot
of research and development. It’s hard to tell who will win in the end.”

~~~
qiqing
In contrast to GAFAM, consider the counterexamples -- Western companies who
have done well in China. Including: LinkedIn, Coursera, Evernote, Starbucks,
McDonalds, KFC, Coach, Airbnb, GM, Coca-cola, Flipboard, Pocket, ... list goes
on.

There's something really interesting about connecting with your customers and
understanding how they use your products as opposed to assuming they are the
same as your North American customers. The ones who succeed tend to do a good
job on localization, not just translation but local product market fit
research. (McDonalds, Starbucks, and Evernote are great examples.)

------
tengbretson
I can't access the full article, but is anyone else seeing the teaser for
"China’s Great Leap to Wallet-Free Living"?

It seems awfully distasteful for an organization like the WSJ to make a
dismissive play on the Great Leap Forward.

~~~
aj_g
Under the title on the HN post, click "web", then click the link from Google.

~~~
seangrogg
Doesn't work anymore.

------
iamcasen
If face recognition all along every city street, and face recognition as a
requirement to enter all buildings is cool, then I don't ever want to be cool.

Between the face recognition, and the "social credit score" shit going on in
China, I really hope their vision for the future does not catch on.

~~~
0800
Their vision of the future is fully inspired on, if not outright copied from,
the US. China doesn't care about "keeping up appearances", but it is very much
doing the same as the US, only more blatantly.

And where in China it may be the government, in the US it is EvilCorp or some
other entity not bound by the constitution.

~~~
TomMarius
How can there be an entity that isn't bound by the constitution?

~~~
0800
You have no right to free speech or right to assemble on Facebook.

My face is recognized, tagged, and stored in Facebook servers, shared with
intelligence agencies, and cross-referenced with all other photo's. And I
don't even have a Facebook account (leading some employers to distrust me --
"what do I have to hide?" \-- and lower their "social credit score" of me).

In contrast, I am relatively safe against China's spying apparatus.

~~~
TomMarius
Having "free speech" on Facebook would break Facebook's constitutional rights.
Facebook doesn't owe you anything, it was not done for public money. It's
private property. If you believe they use your personal information
maliciously and/or without consent, you can (in the EU at least) sue.

~~~
0800
Companies don't have constitutional rights nor obligations. If wrong, please
correct me on this.

As it is private property, it is free to set its own rules, even if those
rules impede on my free speech. If Facebook was a government, it could not
make those rules as per first amendment.

You can still sue of course.

Look, I feel AI-powered surveillance is scary, and think China is going too
far (perhaps showing us a glimpse of the future) in this. But where it is
state-run surveillance in China, it is capitalist-run surveillance in the
West. That Europe needs to step up and protect its inhabitants is a sign of
what happens if you give companies free reign in handling (private) data: A
big privacy mess.

~~~
TomMarius
Let me rephrase. If you'd force Facebook to allow "free speech" (you want to
force someone to let you do something on _their_ property and you call that
free?), you'd break Facebook owners' constitutional rights to private
property.

Not having "free speech" on Facebook isn't because the constitution doesn't
apply to companies, it's because Facebook is like someone's house - private
property - first amendment doesn't apply in my grandma's house as well.

They still have to oblige to your right of privacy etc, as I said, in Europe,
you could sue (FB can't even use the photo tagging feature in EU because it'd
be against the laws).

The constitution is just a basic law, it applies to corporations as well, it
just doesn't speak about them much.

BTW, I don't really think you guys in the US should believe that your
government will or will not do something because of something like the
constitution - remember NSA? Remember Kim Dotcom?

------
usaar333
There are areas where China's entrepreneurship is outperforming the US, but I
find all the focus (that this article and others make) on e-commerce and
mobile-payment transactions lacking.

e-commerce is larger in China not so much because it is better, but because
retail commerce is so underdeveloped. I'm not convinced it is per se better
either. (cheaper, yes, but that's a COL issue)

Mobile-payments solve a problem the US doesn't have; China never had the well-
developed credit card system the US had. Having used both extensively, mobile
contactless payments are only marginally better for a consumer than using a
physical credit card - and mobile QR code based ones are worse.

Cheap dockless bikes for rent are something I consider China to be solidly
winning; that's blocked in the US by government regulation. US has plenty of
meal-delivery options; lacking support at "any hour" is due to structural
differences (lower density, higher COL)

~~~
contingencies
Your take: China's retail is underdeveloped, China lacks a well-developed
credit card system. Implication: credit cards are a foregone conclusion in a
developed society.

My take: China's retail is fine, and from some perspectives the most developed
in the world. Credit cards in particular but arguably bank cards in general
are a broken system that needs to die.

~~~
usaar333
> Implication: credit cards are a foregone conclusion in a developed society.

No, it's that in a society that already has an effective solution that is tied
together by network effects (credit cards), there is little incentive for a
marginally superior system (contactless payments via mobile phone) to take
off.

> Credit cards in particular but arguably bank cards in general are a broken
> system that needs to die

What are you comparing them to? Mobile-phone contactless payments linked to my
credit account? I don't see the newer tech as that superior -- and I think the
market generally agrees by having such little adoption.

> China's retail is fine, and from some perspectives the most developed in the
> world

I probably expressed this a bit wrong. At the time of the e-commerce boom in
China, China's retail was far less developed than the US. This means there was
more relative value for a customer to use e-commerce.

Another driver (that may be larger even) is a reduced car culture in China
which means the cost of shopping at stores is higher.

(Regardless, from my comparison of being in Shanghai vs. the SF Bay Area, I
would put the SF Bay Area's physical retail as superior. e.g. I recall being
unable to buy a very basic computer adapter at a physical store in China. And
I don't see online availability/shipping speeds as strictly greater in China
either).

------
jdblair
Classic Silicon Valley, meaning Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, and Mountain View,
_is_ lame. Its mile after mile of drab, functional single and 2 story
buildings.

~~~
DrScump
... with lots of yards and parks. _Losers!_

------
adreamingsoul
As a "young entrepreneur", I have no interest in Silicon Valley. In fact, I'm
more inclined to be a farmer who moonlights as an engineer.

~~~
balls187
Talent, investment, innovation culture, mentorship, and meetups are just a few
of the reasons why Silicon Valley is a great place to be an entrepreneur.

Yes, the downsides are well enumerated and discussed ad nauseum, and there are
other interesting locations to run a startup, but dismissing it out right is
rather silly.

~~~
QAPereo
Squandered talent, exceptional investment, buzzword, buzzword, partial-
buzzword, connections.

It’s a great place to be young and wealthy, with minimal affect and empathy.

~~~
balls187
> It’s a great place to be young and wealthy, with minimal affect and empathy.

Is it though? The article makes a point that SV doesn't have the glitz and
glamor, so if you're truly young and wealthy wouldn't you be better off
somewhere else?

I don't know if there is any correlation to age and relative wealth with
regards to success as an entrepreneur, but I do know that actually being an
entrepreneur is a lot of hard work, regardless if you were raised with a
silver spoon or not. There is a lot of hustle, and a lot of grind. Maybe if
you're rich you can immediately just use your own money to pay others to do
the hustling and grinding, but at that point aren't you really just an
investor?

------
hiram112
This extension is, like, not lame:
[https://github.com/njuljsong/wsjUnblock](https://github.com/njuljsong/wsjUnblock)

------
yarrel
Needs "(1993)" in the title going on that use of "like".

------
abhinavkulkarni
Non-paywalled/archive link?

~~~
bilkoo
[https://outline.com/dtqTfg](https://outline.com/dtqTfg)

