[workhere-io]

In case it wasn't apparent, my "ever any doubt" question was rhetorical hyperbole. Any statement, no matter how self-evident, will have some people contradicting it.

Your argument that the US is the best place to start a business is not in any way "self-evident", and you have provided no source or proof.

So say some journalists.

Their methodology seems sound.

"We determined the Best Countries for Business by looking at 11 different factors for 134 countries. We considered property rights, innovation, taxes, technology, corruption, freedom (personal, trade and monetary), red tape, investor protection and stock market performance. Forbes leaned on research and published reports from the Central Intelligence Agency, Freedom House, Heritage Foundation, Property Rights Alliance, Transparency International, the World Bank and World Economic Forum to compile the rankings."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2011/10/03/the-b...

[tptacek]

Did you actually find their methodology? I couldn't. I read the summary of the most recent rankings, which explained why the US was so far down the list (taxes), but not the scheme by which they consolidates all the sources they used and created a rating.

Given Forbes' own editorial slant, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to look at these rankings as a simple coatrack for Forbes argument that the US corporate tax rate should be lowered.

If you could find the methodology document for Forbes ranking --- anything similar to the World Bank's ranking, which is itself not totally great, would be helpful --- I'd be grateful. This topic comes up a lot on HN.

[paulbaumgart]

They left out "size and wealth of domestic market" and "access to capital," which I suspect are the most important factors beyond a minimal level of market fairness.

It's really not self-evident that the vast majority of successful companies are started in the US?

[insuffi]

As proven time and time again, most popular does not mean "the best".(especially, considering how many people there are in the US compared to any EU nation. That'd certainly explain the "number of successful businesses".)

Do you think those people starting companies would do any worse, if we placed them in, say, Denmark?

EDIT:Or maybe Israel, which has the highest density of start ups worldwide? I'd be curious to see the per capita numbers of countries.

[paulbaumgart]

> Do you think those people starting companies would do any worse, if we placed them in, say, Denmark?

Yes. Facebook, Apple, Google, Tesla, etc. would never have happened in Denmark. I'm really glad my parents did the annoying work of immigrating to the SF Bay Area from Germany when I was a kid. Otherwise I would have wasted years of my life doing it myself.

Did you watch the Elon Musk interview posted here the other day? He said more-or-less the same thing: it was really obvious, growing up in South Africa, that California was the place to be to make things happen.

Edit: I don't know much about Israel. They seem to be doing a pretty good job, based on what little I do know. It doesn't sound like they're at SF Bay Area levels yet, but making progress: http://aleph.vc/the-israel-venture-capital-index/

[insuffi]

I don't see how you refuted my point. Have you tried anywhere else? Did Musk?

[mtrimpe]

I'm not sure Paul actually even meant that; but in my mind the difference is pretty simple:

The US is set up to achieve the maximum amount of runaway breakout successes at the expense of average of quality of life.

The EU is set up to achieve the maximum amount of reasonably sustainable business providing for a decent quality of life.

Each type of business is much easier to start on the respective continent.

[paulbaumgart]

That's a great point. Domestic market size and access to capital don't matter much for starting a business where the end-goal is single-digit millions in annual revenue. The USA is quite obviously (to me, at least) the best place to "do a startup" but there could well be better places to "start a median small business."

For the record, the discussion started with VKontakte, which is definitely not in the "median small business" category.

And let's not get started on the different possible definitions of "quality of life" ;)

[paulbaumgart]

This is obviously not a topic that can have a conclusive resolution. There are too many factors at play here. I believe the preponderance of evidence is in favor of starting a business in the USA, specifically in one of the major innovation hubs.

[insuffi]

I agree with you; tech hubs are extremely important, which is where Europe seems to be lagging behind.

I just think the reason they ARE lagging behind is because US is considered the default country to go for starting a business, without second thought.

EDIT:I should probably clarify - I meant the US is viewed as the best, hypothetically, not necessarily implying action.

[rwallace]

One could argue those two factors are very important if you want to take a shot at creating the next Google or Facebook (which an unusually high percentage of people here might aspire to) and less important if you're aiming for a lifestyle business (perhaps more typical).

[paulbaumgart]

Yeah, that seems to be the underlying mismatch in assumptions that started this debate in the first place. Glad we've figured that out :)

[tormeh]

I think "size and wealth of domestic market" and "access to capital" are the two most important ones as well. China and maybe India are going to test this hypothesis sometime within my life expectancy, I believe. Exciting times.