[fsloth]

Well, the thing is, investment requires capital.

Finland really does not have it. This may feel odd, but really, Finland is capital-poor country.

Unless government invested, nobody would.

In places like England with lots of private capital it makes sense to leave investment to the markets. But like I said... that market of capital just trying to find the best investment, does not exist in Finland in massive scale.

[reitzensteinm]

It's OK if nobody invests. There's no god given right for the well connected middle class to play Silicon Valley for their own gratification.

[fsloth]

You do realize our way of life was built from investment? Scientific revolution gave us ideas but industrialization gave us the means the realize those ideas to the benefit of all mankind. To not to invest means no creative destruction, and stagnation.

[reitzensteinm]

You were responding to a specific complaint, and I was responding to your response.

European governments are throwing money at questionable startups in the hope of replicating SV. Being opposed to that is not the same as not believing in investment as a general principle (?!).

[fsloth]

Ah, sorry. Your comment was just that "It's OK if nobody invests". I was responding to that in general principle.

European governments are throwing money at all sorts of dubious things. I don't think being inept about how to create new business value is the worst thing they do. At least there is funding available.

I suppose the thing that ires you is - is this funding inclusive or is it only supplied to cronies. Knowing european systems, I think, like everywhere, having connections of course helps, but in general the systems are built with some level of inclusivity in mind.

[reitzensteinm]

I believe the programs are actually harmful, because they filter for different things than what it actually takes to make a startup work. You're teaching people to play games and jump through arbitrary hoops, rather than connect with customers and identify problems to solve.

And that's before you take in to account corruption and inclusivity. I do believe Europe (at least based on my experience living in Germany) makes effort towards inclusivity, but if you looked at where this money is going, it would be vastly weighted to the middle and upper class (though I concede I may be wrong on this point).

Given that you can easily bootstrap a tech company on the side with some contract work, my belief can be summed up as the practice is: 1) actively harmful 2) unfair 3) wasteful 4) unnecessary

[fsloth]

It sounds your argument is based on claims of hypothetical second order systems effects. I think that systems thinking is important - but makes it very hard to discuss further if the other party (me) is not deeply familiar with the domain (german economic life and people) which I'm not.

I.e. 'actively harmfull' -> but just dropping state investment won't magically teach peoples how to do business in a customer oriented way. So you need some second order effects to kick in (i.e. people would then focus on market needs more etc).

I can't really comment on that. I don't know the german psyche enough to postulate on the second order effects.

Most of german industry has been grown historically in a corporative manner, so I'm a bit skeptical you could drive US style individual entrepreunship in just by dropping this or that government program.

[mattmanser]

So only Americans can make these sort of companies? This is a deliberate investment by their government, and yes they shouldn't be handing out to Americans who can go to SV and get their handout from their VCs.

[amylene]

Do you also believe these countries should accept the consequences of not influencing the next generation of successful startups?

[reitzensteinm]

You can raise money internationally. I did it. So "only Americans" is a total straw man.