Re:Most Billion-Dollar Startups in the U.S. Founded by Immig...
by pyuser583 on Sunday July 31, 2022 @06:47PM
(#32299593)
But its not just America. Immigrants who migrate for opportunity tend to do better regardless of where they go.
Thomas Sowell (arch-conservative) wrote about this.
Germans who immigrated to Imperial Russia, Indians in South Africa, Chinese in Malaysia, Japanese in Brazil, etc. all do much better than “natives.”
When people spy opportunity elsewhere, and have the money to move, and snatch the opportunity- it turns out well.
Re:Most Billion-Dollar Startups in the U.S. Founded by Immig...
by lapcat on Sunday July 31, 2022 @09:14PM
(#32300699)
Well, there's heavy survivorship bias in the linked article, which talks about 582 startups founded in the US that are worth $1 billion.
Meanwhile, another comment here noted that there are about 45 million immigrants currently residing in the US. Only a tiny number of those are founders of the aforementioned startups. The article says nothing about how immigrants are doing overall financially compared to native born US citizens.
Re:Most Billion-Dollar Startups in the U.S. Founded by Immig...
by pyuser583 on Sunday July 31, 2022 @09:56PM
(#32301007)
That’s fair. But it’s worth pointing out that there are some extremely successful immigrant groups in America. Ukrainians come to mind.
Re:Most Billion-Dollar Startups in the U.S. Founded by Immig...
by yucky on Sunday July 31, 2022 @10:20PM
(#32301194)
>If "talent" is approximately randomly distributed among the world's population — a reasonable assumption IMO
Why do you think this is a reasonable assumption? Is there any evidence of it?
What % of the world's $1 billion startups are founded in the United States?
If the best economic opportunities are in the US, then it makes sense that a lot of people would come here for them.
2020 stats: World population 8.8 billion, US population 330 million (4% of world population)
If "talent" is approximately randomly distributed among the world's population — a reasonable assumption IMO — then you wouldn't expect Americans to be founding much more than 4% of the world's $1 billion dollar startups... unless economic opportunities are not randomly distributed geographically, of course.
If the US is "the land of opportunity", so to speak, the US allows significant immigration, and the US population is a tiny minority of the world's population, then it's not surprising that immigrants — in other words, the best that the entire rest of the world has to offer — would do well relative to Americans.
The story starts with Tomas Gorny moving from Poland to the US, and becoming successful. But... how many Americans move to Poland for economic opportunities? My intention is not to diss Poland (which has a population of only 40 million), but rather to point out that the opportunities in the US attract a very broad world talent pool, so there's simply more competition.
Immigrants to the US are not randomly distributed. We're not just randomly rounding up people in other countries and dropping them here. Ambition and a desire to improve one's situation dramatically is a common trait. Otherwise it might not be worth moving from one's homeland.
The tech industry is "centered" on the west coast of the US (or was, pre-pandemic). But most people in tech are not native born Californians. That's not surprising. It would be surprising if native born Californians were naturally more talented than everyone else. The reality is that people around the country, and around the world, moved to California for the economic opportunities that happened to be in California, for historical reasons. It would be kind of silly to say the explanation is that native Californians are naturally lazy, and other people not born in California are harder working.