« A Tale of a Kirkland Startup | Main | want ad: oregon start ups: digital home »
August 27, 2004
random thoughts: china
it's easy to focus on the obvious signs of economic advancement in china: the shanghai skyline, the IPOs, the massive sucking sound of the world supply of steel/concrete/gas going to china, the allure of the billion+ people market, the GDP CAGR, etc.
however, as a member of the high tech community, my greatest fear is that we now have a national/regional competitor that has 3 of the core success factors in high tech: access to "right" human capital, access to growing markets, and access to ready sources of growth capital...and they have these 3 factors in sufficient quantities...and they have that secret sauce that we think of as uniquely "amereican"...that frontier entrepreneurialism.
in previous challenges to US tech leadership, japan in the 70's/80's, the 4 tigers in the 90's, europe throughout the years, no other region has brought these 4 factors together.
i see two huge impacts in the near term:
1. setting a benchmark for "capital efficiency" in start ups, the "china burnrate"...ie, if a traditional fabless semi start up needs $40-50M of venture to get up and running, and a china based (or hybrid) start up can do it for $20M in venture funding, you now have a significant competitive issue.
2. the innovation-thing. the indian and chinese immigrants that have been both the rank-and-file of our tech workforce, and in the last 10 years the founding team members of many of the most successful tech intesive start ups, are the same people that are "over there." moreover, for the first time, we're seeing many of these successful immigrants, "going home."
as a NW based early stage VC, we're not going to be a direct investor in china based start ups, but i do know that the "china factor" will impact every aspect of my business, today.
Posted by Dave at August 27, 2004 06:52 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.nwventurevoice.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/1348
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)