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Showing posts from May, 2021

Why are all the big tech giants from America?

  There is a definite bias towards big tech giants being either American or Chinese companies. From America, we have Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and in China, at least Tencent, Alibaba, and perhaps Ant Financial when they IPO. Unicorn companies (private companies with > Billion dollar valuations) are also predominantly US or China based. I believe that there are 5 reasons for this. Free flow of people, technology and capital, which is particularly crucial for technology companies. The US is the best at this. In spite of the Trump administration, the US continues to welcome educated, talented people from all over the world, and capital is abundantly available. China is also good at this. It also has notable disadvantages in terms of a lack of transparency and corruption, favoring large, state-owned enterprises and restricting capital when it suits them, but makes up for this by “co-opting” and supporting its national champions as they emerge. The US has great Universities, but s