2. The probability of Unicornism is directly related to the size of the market you can access. US is the biggest single market on the planet.
3. Accessibility of markets: While EU is the second largest single market [0] US companies have entered european markets just fine. On the other hand, to operate in china, it's best to be a chinese company. Hence, to fund growth on a global scale going native in china is an obvious move.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_countries...
By which measure? China has nearly five times as many inhabitants, the biggest economic growth over the past three decades of any country, and out-produces the US by over nine thousand. If it's not yet the biggest market on the planet yet, it soon will be.
A big problem for the US is that it is a litle off, while most other social/cultural areas are closely connected. For instance, China and Russia might be almost as close allies as the pre-Trump US and Europe. But because Russia and Europe are so close, in fact the business dependencies between both are quite high as well. So a lot of business happens in that exchange, with high values due to the political risks. Since the US lacks such interdependencies with close neighbors it can survive better in a time like WW2 but it is harder in a long peace time like we currently have.
The only thing that really drove us out was the pollution (a huge problem in Beijing that is supposedly finally getting better).
Given the US visa policy, as bad as it is, still attracts far more many foreigners than China, at least. More than most countries actually even by per capita measures.
Basic question: what do you do in China for browsing, emails and maps? I suppose Google doesn't work there and all the local services would be in Mandarin, no? When I travel I use Google search, emails, maps extensively but I have no clue what would I do in China. Also FB and Twitter also likely won't be accessible. So how do I even keep touch with folks outside China, especially if I don't know Mandarin?
China is an especially interesting market to us given the quality of companies and entrepreneurs we see there.
Language barrier is not an issue for YC - they can just hire mandarin speakers like Lu Qi. I’m sure YC China would get mostly Chinese employees.
It's not going to be easy, but it would better address the political and humanitarian issues raised.
However, I think it's easy to fall into a trap of assuming that everything about China (or any other culture) is worse just because it's different. My experience in China, and talking to Chinese people about their experiences in China, has been very different than what I assumed it would be.
(1) The talent pools in Taiwan and China are different
(2) The markets in Taiwan and China are very different
Right now the Chinese market is more important than the Chinese talent pool, but both are important. Basing an accelerator in Taiwan would be good for Taiwan, but it would not meaningfully engage with the Chinese market or talent pool. It's too late in the game for that.
Even if YC's ultimately goal were political and humanitarian it would still be more effective to base the accelerator in China and use the additional leverage gained from being in China to better pursue those goals.
Disclosure: I am an American currently living in Taiwan. (edits: grammar)
It's clear that you're speaking from a political perspective, but even that gets a bit grey.
Since you don't live in China, you should know that there are hundreds of different versions of China within China itself. You could live in Shanghai and never know the reality of the China that the people of Xinjiang experience. So I would say to your points that:
1) The markets all over China are very different. 2) The talent pools all over China are very different.
If YC wants to call it YC Shangjing, (because they're primarily targeting those two markets), that would be fair. But considering China just to be Shanghai and Beijing is a bit myopic, which is why I suggested Taiwan in the first place.
Disclosure: I am a Chinese-American currently living in Northwest China, which is VERY different than Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Linxia, Shenyang, etc. all of which I've visited.
Taiwan is literally the Republic of China. The leadership is descended from the same people who overcame the Japanese. Pretending the Communist Party has a monopoly on the word 'China' is uninformed and unreasonable.
Off topic, a better compromise would have been Hong Kong, inside the PRC with some degree of democracy, though less than originally promised in 1997.
Native Chinese here. I don't think this is the case. It's not even close to ideal to base in Taiwan given the political environment between the straits nowadays. The policies are very unfriendly. Recruitment and market delivery is even more complicated than between foreign countries actually.
The apps used in Taiwan and China are significantly different. In China, its anything owned by tencent, baidu, or alibaba.
The app market in Taiwan uses mostly English offerings (google, facebook, instagram) with a combination of Asianic/Non-china based apps including Line, which is similar to Whatsapp or Wechat.
In my OP I said it would be work. It would be more of a challenge for Mainland Chinese applicants to launch their businesses while not being in the Mainland, but if that was their biggest problem then they're prepped for success!
This is not true. Taiwanese investment in China is considered 'external'. And Taiwan's talent reserve is no way to be considered as on par against mainland China. But that is not the point either, I think YC just wants an entity in China, not for the talents, but for the market. Under the risk of being downvoted, I have to say China has created some world class startups in the past decade, only second to US.
YC is not a NFP, it is a VC firm. It does indeed just care about money. Thinking otherwise is naive. Sure, YC wouldn't feed babies to lions to make money, but short of direct-- and that is the key word-- contribution to inhuman acts, everything else is fair game for Venture Capitalism.
Moreover, here, it would have been OK if the political climate in China was improving, but it's not. In fact with Xi getting supreme power, it's worsening. So, with that in mind this does not send the proper message.
Having said that, YC is a private business, and from where I stand this is not PG/SL's YC, and I have no business projecting my ethics and morality on YC.
But, anyone supporting YC in here, should also not be critical of Google or any other company when they do business in China, nor should they be surprised when they hear of atrocities in Tibet, Uighur, Chinese police state etc.
Because the startups are simply not there. Why doesn’t US YC base in Puerto Rico
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/china
China gets a score of 14/100 as opposed to Taiwan
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/taiwan
which gets 93/100.
In my mind we should "Look for the Freedom label" and use this as a somewhat objective measure if we want to have free trade with free people.
I think a better move would be to move YC China to Vancouver, given the high density of rich Chinese expats in Vancouver, and its status of being in a liberal, western democracy. [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_indigenous_peoples
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Amer...
> ???
So I guess I'm not join the team of doubt this time for now.
(Before you click, grab yourself a translator first)
[0] https://www.zhihu.com/question/277693647/answer/396254674
Especially since the PRC government is getting much more aggressive in forcing Western companies to kowtow to their political stances even in their operations outside of China. Mercedes-Benz was forced to apologize for posting a Dalai Lama quote on Instagram [1], and a Marriott employee was fired after he "liked" a post about Tibetan independence [2]. This happened despite both websites being blocked in China.
The implications for companies with new Chinese operations that also operate an open web forum is left as an exercise for the reader.
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/mercedes-bows-to-chinese-pressure-afte...
[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/marriott-employee-roy-jones-hit...
How about respecting human rights? That would be a start.
Technology can help for some things, but past a certain point, "making the world a better place" also imply policy changes.
> to ensure that the benefits of that are fairly spread throughout humanity.
Yes, but technologies at the hands of a dictatorship is dangerous. This morning, there was just a thread about Chinese surveillance/censorship technologies being sold to other countries. Lord help us if the Chinese government somehow gets its hands on a superior weapons tech, or smarter AI.
He also says
> Qi will also take over as the Head of YC Research, YC’s non-profit research lab.
We've heard several prominent lawsuits in recent months on how Chinese nationals stolen and transfered US techs into Chinese companies (possibly government involvement). Qi Lu literally said "The Chinese government understands what AI can do, and they show a lot of commitment for sustained and long-term investment...AI is part of China’s national five-year plan, and just a few months ago, the Chinese government published a comprehensive white paper to call out a systematic investment in AI." https://venturebeat.com/2018/01/09/baidu-coo-says-chinas-gov.... We're literally handing the Chinese government some of the Western world's greatest knowledge and inventions.
This is scary scary thing. I am not sure what YC is thinking, allowing Sam Altman to do this.
Edit: it looks like you've been creating tons of accounts just to argue about China. That's clearly abusive, so we've banned this one. Please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines with.
Why wouldn't they get their hands on that? With companies like HPE existing as now defacto chinese companies I just don't see how anyone can see this as a if rather than a when.
> We're literally handing the Chinese government some of the Western world's greatest knowledge and inventions.
Isn't this great though? More innovation spread amongst the world. This is what liberalism tells us, that there is no distinction between people living under different nations.
If we can make the lives of chinese citizens better like we use AI to make ours better, why should minor issues like government "stealing knowledge" (whatever that is) be some big issue?
The YCR connection makes sense, since he has a lot of experience in AI where much of YCR is now at, but it will be interesting to see how he will interact with Bret Victor's group. Are they going to start a YC-like incubator in China? It will be interesting to see how this compares to Kai Fu's Innovation Works.
Qi Lu is not responsible for the creation of Bing. MSN Search project was well underway in 2005, then it was re-branded as Live Search, then as Bing. Qi Lu is joined in 2008.
He was given an almost impossible task in competing with Google basically from scratch. Ya, he didn't completely succeed, but that isn't very surprising.
What happened at the end, I'm not really sure. I was pretty surprised when I heard he was gone with Harry Shum taking over most of what he was in charge of.
Well, if China lets them.
the same law, the same government, 0 tariff between provinces, and the same language,
all of these properties lead to one thing. extremely low cost of products which is Competitiveness.
Expecting capitalists (the economic class, not the ideological faction) to put human rights over returns on capital is, if not silly, at least naively optimistic.
On the other hand China just recently confirmed a "president for life", that's always a bad idea, remember the last "president for life" China had? Yeah... So despite U.S. being more likely to start wars its open to change from the inside; China is a solid big time bomb with little to no space for change and once they decide to enter a war it will likely be the last one.
Virtually every non-technologist businessperson who becomes a manager in the IT industry will present themselves as a technologist. They will usually have some real technical people at their beck and call to help with the stuff they can't fake.
That's amazing to anyone who has struggled to connect an Android device to Windows via USB just to access a file or two.
The interview [1] by 36kr does a much better job of introduction and vision he has for YC China. Unfortunately it is in Chinese only.
Some interesting snippets (G Translated):
Lu Qi: YC China's new business will include
1) business incubation, 2) talent training, 3) research and 4) public welfare.
These are all in a way that Lu Qi's plan will operate in an unprecedented way. He wants more than just new technology. Technology is only an ability to change society. He wants to establish a new ecological support for new technology to change the society. That is the correct way to open the new world in his mind.
[...]
Q: How will YC China start?
Lu Qi: Among the four businesses, the first to start is the incubator. Incubation camps are the first attempt at YC localization, but at the same time it draws on the core of YC:
1. The methodology of the incubator process and training content established by Paul Graham;
2. A network of YC alumni with more than 4,000 people. Alumni will help later entrepreneurs, and for Chinese entrepreneurs, alumni networks around the world can set up channels for offshore companies;
3. The YC brand, which is incubated by YC, is equivalent to being recognized and endorsed, and is more likely to be favored by investment institutions.
In other respects, YC China may develop its own entrepreneurship curriculum and expect to reverse the influence of American entrepreneurs because I believe that globalization is the best way to innovate. YC China's research institute will be established under the YC Global Research Institute and will establish cooperation with Chinese research institutions. Finally, the charity business is hoping to focus on solving the impact of new technologies on people's employment.
However, it is now the first day of the launch of YC China, and everything is still very early. I only have one person now. The most important thing at the moment is recruiting people.
[...]
Lu Qi: Because we need to build a new innovation ecosystem, so many players with different roles can participate.
The first is Chinese investors. Because YC China will be closer to the early projects, it hopes to establish good interaction with Chinese middle and late investors. Also, YC China will also raise funds independently, and I hope to get support from China LP.
Second, we and the big companies will also have a lot of cooperation. YC China's investment projects may be acquired, acquired, or serviced by large companies in the later stages.
YC China Research Institute will also establish contacts with government or research institutions within the enterprise, and hopes to become China's support for the country to become a big country in innovation.
[...]
Sam has said on many occasions that 10 companies will reach Google in the next decade, three to four of them will be born in China, and more than 20 years of professional experience tells me that these three or four companies must be Believe in long-term companies.
Will YC be taking a stand on China’s rampant theft of intellectual property or tacitly encouraging it as part of “being a start up”?
“Our mission at YC is to enable more innovation than any other company in the world, and to ensure that the benefits of that are fairly spread throughout humanity.”
Do you really think it’s possible to ensure that the benefits of innovation are spread fairly while simultaneously partnering with an oppressive, cruel government in order to create vast pools of wealth controlled by a tiny subset of individuals allied with that government?
I can understand why someone would try to get as rich as possible and would turn a blind eye toward obvious moral compromise. I can also understand the utilitarian impulse to “ensure that the benefits of [innovation] are fairly spread throughout humanity.” But I can’t understand ignorance of the wild contradictions between those two “missions.”
If you want to spread innovation equally, you should be working to support dissident voices in China and you should be putting 95% of you and your associates’ vast personal wealth behind the political project of reversing Republican-engineered inequality here at home.
Helping people in China who you deem most likely to succeed (working in harmony with the government, of course) to become even more successful is not, in fact, helping to make the distribution of benefits among humanity more fair.
TL:DR — Choose only one: fairness among humans or the accumulation of vast personal wealth by collaborating with governments that brutally oppress their own citizens.
Why cannot YC improve invocation by focusing on those areas?!
If your dad said harsh words to you, are you going to claim that you are made inferior to normal citizen or you are working with a repressive parent?
Through this deal, YC is taking an active position in support of the Chinese dictatorship and is helping them increase their grip on power.
You may believe that but the communists do not.
That doesn't work so well for China because of capital controls and because the Chinese business environment is so hostile to foreign companies.
Though Qi was born in China, he almost spent his all career time in the US. Probably the time he worked in China is less than one year. You can't expect this person knows China market, Chinese young people, Chinese companies well, and has connections with people in China gov.
And he worked for big companies only (Yahoo, Microsoft, Baidu). He never worked in startups. Can he find and invest good startups? I don't know.
Anyway, YC entering China is a good thing. Hope Google search will come back to China soon.
Now, China solely relies on blocking entire websites or relying on compliance of services. So Google is blocked, while Bing will actually harmonize their search results in China (the search will still turn things up, but some results might be hidden).
I'm not aware of any foreign funded startups in China currently. I mean, there must be some small players with private foreign funding, but it is so easy to get Chinese funding I'm not sure why anyone would even bother.
But that is just a guess by an amateur, we have to wait to see how this turns out.
I wish them all the best, and I hope that the interactions with the great qualities of YC produces an excellent step forward for China and its technologists.
As a result, China was invaded over and over again by colonizers who levied punitive fines for losing the war. And then there were a series of revolutions. (I know, I was born in a part of Shanghai that's commonly called "the French Concession.") The Bolsheviks were the first to give a bunch of that money back ... maybe because they wanted an ally or because they had a conscience.
Oh, also the Versailles Treaty, which ended WW I, involved a clause that gave Shandong province to Japan (from German control), which caused students to take to the streets in protest against the KMT who ratified it, the political party that eventually lost popular support and went to Taiwan and prevented the international community from recognizing the CCP's government as official China because the KMT maintained that they're the official China.
Is that what you're referring to?
It depends on how you define "China", "3000 years years[sic] old", "still" and "emerging". China has been a "developed market" a few times throughout its history. The modern China (ROC and PRC) lagging behind the Western world in part is due to industrialization in Europe.
To be fair this has been known since the early 90's maybe even late 80's
The 2000s have allowed, in my opinion, a more mature understanding of China with less stereotypical hyperbole. I expect part of that is the commercial and cultural interchange, part of that is time, and part of that is the Internet.
I also think there's something of an ideas stagflation in the US, against which China might be considered to be a bright spot in the world.
Have you ever wondered why?
I wish they would pick a western city, like Chengdu or Kunming...to become the "san francisco" of China. But there is really not much in those places to work with.
I think I'm gonna have to close my HN account. I don't even want to be this close to YC anymore.
(They practice organlegging over there. Your wait time for a new kidney is so low because there are prisoners kept as involuntary donors. Most of the prisoners are incarcerated due to practicing something called Falun-Gong. They are not violent criminals.)
It's funny to watch YC do this, the one time I was actually invited to interview with YC was when our Chinese co-founder submitted a rather fraudulent[0] application. Angry that we wouldn't participate in his fraud he disappeared and filed a frivolous lawsuit against us (which after many years we won).
China's tech growth is built on IP theft and protection by a murderous regime. It's a total antithesis of what made the Valley great. Big numbers put out by some people in China don't change that.
If YC plans to invest in local Mainland startups:
- ownership is going to tough, likely through dubious trickery
- these uncertain legal rights expose YC to strong political pressures, anybody that has vested interest in China knows it - if you want to have a chance at cashing out your better be in good graces with the CCP
- unethical behavior of YC pupils is inevitable, a PR nightmare in the making. "it's not the real YC, it's YC China, don't blame us!"
You've destroyed your brand, now good luck getting a dollar out of China.
And again, a necessary reminder I like to tell everyone: China is actively imprisoning and killing thousands of people for their religious beliefs. Censorship is nothing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go... Few people know it, I certainly didn't, I wish I have. Like many I've heard something about the Falun Gong, I've seen the signs but never bothered to looked into it. It's all real, it's big, almost Nazi scale persecution. Please share it with anybody that does business with China.
[0] because in China I guess that'd only be normal-fraudulent, right?
For reference, this is the market they're excited about joining:
http://time.com/5366225/china-uighurs-detention-report/
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/ch...
So let's be honest here. YC needs to tap in to Chinese market's booming startup scene. You can't do that without having native Chinese guy leading these effort. You ideally need a suit who has network and hopefully also understands the little details, you know, like code. But you got only the suit who has network. You will try to do best with what you got. That we get it.
The genesis of Bing is said to be the acquisition of the company PowerSet which did large-scale data extraction from DBpedia and similar sources to make a knowledge graph.
Google had ridiculed this approach before but when Microsoft came out with Bing which was comparable in quality to Google, Google was shocked and they bought Freebase and started talking about a "Google Knowledge Graph".
Anyhow you should try it. Bing and Google are comparable in search quality -- some people might prefer some SERPs from Google or Bing for certain queries, but the difference between raters is bigger than the difference between search engines.
"one of the most impressive technologists" is much different than "most impressive technologist". Removing the plural completely changes the meaning of that statement.
China appearing to succeed at a time when democracy is on the ropes is a dangerous trend for democracy.
When you import goods from China, you import repression.
Short-termed capitalists might think the repression applies just to workers, but China is a country with no human rights, no property rights, no rule of law. The Chinese government reserves the right to take anything you "own" there. Somehow it is a capitalist and communist hell at the same time.
can you please tell us where the goods in your home were manufactured? why not start with the ones with the glowing white apple on them?
if you won't change, why should anyone else?
I own very little Apple hardware and only because I am a software dev.
I certainly buy many things from China because it is hard to never get anything from China, but often you do have a choice.
I was at Target, for instance, and I bought a Samsung branded microwave oven from Malaysia which has a 44/100 score from Freedom House as opposed to China which has a 14/100 score.
I have also gotten into fixing old toasters and things because I've found that recent models from China are based on inferior technology. When toasters started coming from China they would burn up -- multiple times my mother and law would buy them from Wal*Mart and thought she got a deal but it lastest less than six months.
A few years later, Chinese toasters traded toasting speed for safety, then they went from two slots to four slots to make up for lost time. It doesn't help though if you are watching your carbs and want just one or two slices.
Old toasters fail in a predictable way and can be repaired easily. It might be true about new toasters but why bother.
Sam has lost his mind.
What about Uighur internment camps YC money will finance through taxes?
>> What about Uighur internment camps YC money will finance through taxes?
> yeah what about US corporations exploiting cheap Chinese child labor as a manufacturing base.
I don't think the grandparent poster is OK with that either.
Next up YC will hire the Amazon Exec that puffed himself up and was fired before he joined Uber?
I too would like to see this, but no such statement exists for YC at large (outside China) either.
The power we do have is to make our own choices. The Chinese might certainly have, what they think are, good reasons for doing what they are doing, but that doesn't mean you have to participate if you think you have better reasons for not doing so.
Chinese companies are largely forced to align with the Chinese government. US companies disagreeable behavior, including aligning themselves with the US and Chinese governments, are largely their own choosing. The reality is that Silicon Valley's moral compass is buried at the bottom of their own Superfund sites.
No. You can't do business with China and speak out because then the Chinese government will refuse to do business with you. You have to toe their line in the West in order to get access to their market. See the recent articles regarding airline's treatment of Taiwan on their websites [1].
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-airlines-china/u-s-ai...
When YC is invested in China they won’t last on this website either.
Maybe we should stop putting tech companies and tech leaders on a pedestal.
There's this weird rationalization that somehow a person becomes immune to moral considerations when they accept a job as a corporate executive.
I don't that's true. And I don't think most businessmen think that's true either. I'm pretty sure Warren Buffet doesn't think that's true.
why is Qi Lu required to push for "political change"? is he supposed to share your views?
that same regime built your phone, so why not lead by example?
I believe Paul Graham knows better than average American about China. I appraise him, not for his move as a venture capitalist who want to make money (Many people who share your belief think he is cynical and only thinking about making money, which might be part of the reason), but quite opposite , for his moral courage against prevailed belief of Mob which is the same evil as authoritarian region's.
Politics is often compared to religion but it's actually worse: many religion believer can keep their belief private but in politics most "belief oriented people" are not aware of they don't differentiate their opinions/beliefs from facts. This can radicalize many opposite side people knowing the truth. Eventually this cognitive defect of modern human being caused conflicts all over the world. Even here in HN, I've seen quite a few radicalized HNer's beaned by dang (the moderator of HN) due to their misbehave that were (mistakenly) considered to be caused by strong nationalist views.
I would suggest all HNer's keep political view private as much as possible if totally avoidance is not piratical.
