> The reason the US has freely flowing funding is because the VC has an immense amount of cash from the previous generations of successful Unicorns. So why was it (and still is) easier to raise unicorns in the USA ?
You're ignoring that all of this money initially came from massive investment by the Defense Advanced Projects Administration (DARPA) which funded the semiconductor industry in its infancy, which funded the creation of the Internet, which funded the creation of mainframes, which funded the creation of personal computers, and continues to provide massive funding to tech companies. Heck, their decision to choose Microsoft DOS over IBM OS/2 for the US DOD literally solidified its rise as the dominant operating system. It's requirement that all parts must be multi-source-able is why AMD and Via were created as additional manufacturers of x86 processors. But it also funded PowerPC and even provided significant funding to ARM.
Sure, we don't have much socialism here (USDA farm "subsidies" not included), but we do have very strong, protectionist-welfare capitalism.
So you had the combined might of the US government founding the creation of the computing industry. That let companies take massive risks which left tons of people making tons of money before private VC even really became interested. The IPOs of the original tech companies funded the creation of half of the current major VC funds.
I see this comment often and it strikes me as conspiracy nonsense.
For example, AMD was founded within a year of Intel - years before either manufactured a CPU. You're blurring lines with antitrust lawsuits in the 90s.
Now if you want to talk about the Federal government single handedly propping up the market for semiconductors until the end of the Apollo program, that's a different story and includes more players than DARPA.
Europe, at least Sweden, used to have this approach for the traditional industry, e.g. companies like Ericsson, SAAB, Volvo, is/was all heavily involved in the Swedish defense industry with government backing and at the same time they sold consumer products.
Perhaps the ending of the cold war ended this policy, thus a boom of new companies never took place.
Apple was a zombie before Steve Jobs was rehired. Also, it was initially funded by Mike Markkula who was from Intel which was a company founded with DOD and DARPA backing.
You're ignoring that all of this money initially came from massive investment by the Defense Advanced Projects Administration (DARPA) which funded the semiconductor industry in its infancy, which funded the creation of the Internet, which funded the creation of mainframes, which funded the creation of personal computers, and continues to provide massive funding to tech companies. Heck, their decision to choose Microsoft DOS over IBM OS/2 for the US DOD literally solidified its rise as the dominant operating system. It's requirement that all parts must be multi-source-able is why AMD and Via were created as additional manufacturers of x86 processors. But it also funded PowerPC and even provided significant funding to ARM.
Sure, we don't have much socialism here (USDA farm "subsidies" not included), but we do have very strong, protectionist-welfare capitalism.
So you had the combined might of the US government founding the creation of the computing industry. That let companies take massive risks which left tons of people making tons of money before private VC even really became interested. The IPOs of the original tech companies funded the creation of half of the current major VC funds.