Comparing Asia to North America is such a false equivalence.
Asia is huge. Like 63% of humanity huge.
Of-course the market in Asia is going to be much more massive.
A lot of rural places in India have better Internet that I have sitting here in a British city - at a much more discounted price.
Everyday millions of people are coming online - internet virgins. They will have their own new taste, needs, etc.
The thing to understand before you think about investing your hard earned money in an asian country - is even though the volume of amazing ventures are a lot more - each smart ventures is followed by 1000s of dumb ones.
The signal to noise ratio in low - unless your are in the market - you will be scammed - this is why a lot of large companies have tried and failed to start industries all over asia.
Anytime you start pouring a lot of money anywhere - govt, scammers, etc all want to dig into you. Red-Tape, bribery, lack of transparency and rule of law.
This is not as overwhelmingly present in European or american markets.
I do not for a second doubt that the market size, growth, etc are going to be insane in asia for the foreseeable future - but there is a question of sustainability - and this requires structural change in government in many asian countries.
Unless you are interested in short term - high risk - high reward outcome. And are more interested in long term investment - then Asia needs some reform before you think about investing big time there.
Europe is almost twice as big as the US, yet US technology companies dominate Europe in almost any startup category. So I don't think brushing it away on that basis is helpful.
At the end of the day if it goes as it normally does with technology there are going to be few winners in each industry and many loosers.
If Asia manages to create more successful companies locally they are going to be able to create more successful companies internationally which means just as the US have many in Europe, Asia can have many in the US (Alibaba comes to mind)
It's not a competition, it's a game with no rules and no judges.
Agree with what you are saying but internet in India generally really sucks. You pay almost the equivalent of western rates and get shitty speeds and service. UK must be far better.
Most of that VC is not being invested into innovative ideas, products or business models, but local versions of foreign companies than can't operate in China for diverse reasons, ranging from privacy to foreign ownership restrictions. The value created will be mostly limited to the Chinese market.
This is exactly the same in India as well. We have Ola Cabs here which is an Uber clone and it is a billion dollar company. Likewise, we have flipkart which is an amazon clone and is another multibillion dollar company. We have plenty of clones doing phenomenally well.
The question is this. Why would you ( or should you? ) try and innovate when there are clearly billion dollar problems waiting to be solved (cloned?) right in-front of your eyes in broad daylight. And yes, the impact will be mostly be limited to India but India is a huge market.
Meh... it would be hard to compare in practice, given how VCs tend to chase trends in general, funding lots and lots of copycats in the hope that they will fund the last successful player in the field. Or maybe I'm just bitter about the state of fundraising in the valley. ;)
VC in emerging markets (I come from one, and work with several) tend to be a bit different than that. cost of capital and uncertainty is much higher, so VC funds have to take a lot less risk, only betting in existing and proven business models. That's why you almost never see a really innovative startup from EMs, risk of an EM + risk of a new business model is just too high for most VCs.
Of course all those Ruby on Rails shops in SV are innovating, but Asia is only doing Copy-Paste? I am long on America as much as any other guy, but this kind of hubris has a huge price tag. There is a nice book "Art and Fear", in which Group A was given task to create a quality art and Group B was given a task of creating a lot of art with any kind of quality, at the end of the test, Group B produced better quality art, because they got the practice with the trial and error feedback. Group A suffered trying to get perfect from the get go. So a resounding Yes, to Quantity is a Quality.
During the few years that I spent doing business in both Beijing and Shenzhen, I can say with confidence that the majority of companies there are creating innovative new technology and are not simply "copying and pasting". Also, technology startups are not an "ideas business". They are an ideas with amazing world-class execution business. The latter is what determines the bulk of the value created by the company and is much, much harder to come by.
Asia is huge. Like 63% of humanity huge.
Of-course the market in Asia is going to be much more massive.
A lot of rural places in India have better Internet that I have sitting here in a British city - at a much more discounted price.
Everyday millions of people are coming online - internet virgins. They will have their own new taste, needs, etc.
The thing to understand before you think about investing your hard earned money in an asian country - is even though the volume of amazing ventures are a lot more - each smart ventures is followed by 1000s of dumb ones.
The signal to noise ratio in low - unless your are in the market - you will be scammed - this is why a lot of large companies have tried and failed to start industries all over asia.
Anytime you start pouring a lot of money anywhere - govt, scammers, etc all want to dig into you. Red-Tape, bribery, lack of transparency and rule of law.
This is not as overwhelmingly present in European or american markets.
I do not for a second doubt that the market size, growth, etc are going to be insane in asia for the foreseeable future - but there is a question of sustainability - and this requires structural change in government in many asian countries.
Unless you are interested in short term - high risk - high reward outcome. And are more interested in long term investment - then Asia needs some reform before you think about investing big time there.