Poll: HN readers, where's your residence?

[sasvari]

So fellow HN readers, where have you set up your residence?

(I'm aware of the fact that the majority is located in the US, but it might still be interesting to see if the HN community is getting more international.)

(Edit: NYC and SF area choice; England -> UK; split up Asia;Australia/+Oceania)

[m0th87]

Being from the (rest of the) US, what disturbs me about this poll is how much entrepreneurial talent we might be missing out on.

At current count, ~2/3 of readers are from outside the US. These results seem to be backed up by pitdesi's post.

Since HN is so centered on startups, that's quite a few founders and potential entrepreneurs who could be working on the next Google. And all things being equal, there is a 2/3 chance that that next Google won't be happening in the US.

The Valley is amazing, but it's nothing without talent. Making our immigration law more amenable to founders obviously won't cause a mass migration of founders here, but surely some will be attracted to our awesome startup hubs. And we need every edge we can get.

We really need a startup visa.

---

Edit: A couple of the responses have misinterpreted what I was hoping to convey. Of course I don't think everyone is dying to come to the US. What I am simply arguing is that 1) HN is a decent proxy of the startup community, 2) much of that community is outside of the US, 3) is there anything the US can do to attract some of that talent?

This is a question every country should be asking themselves, because startups are engines of prosperity. For the US, I think the startup visa is a good solution.

[kingsley_20]

"We" don't need a startup visa, "the USA" might. I'd prefer that Indian entrepreneurs capitalized on the excellent opportunities available at home. I support the startup visa in the spirit of supporting choice, but I resent the implication that the whole world should send its talents to the valley.

[davedx]

Conversely, not being based in the US comes with lots of disadvantages, such as terrible payment gateways, unfriendly tax and small business legislation, and smaller networks of entrepreneurs. Here in Ede, the Netherlands, I feel pretty isolated, and I imagine a lot of people in Europe also do unless they live somewhere like London or Amsterdam.

[j_baker]

Two things:

1. It's awfully presumptuous for you to assume that all these people are just raring to come to the US and the only thing holding them back is the lack of a startup visa. Perhaps people don't live in the US because they want to live where they are?

2. Sheer numbers don't mean shit. The Valley has the best concentration of engineering talent anywhere. Opening up the floodgates to anyone and everyone isn't necessarily a good idea.

[jphackworth]

All things being equal, there is a 2/3 chance that that next Google won't be happening in the US.

In this case, all things are not equal. Being located in the US and specifically in Silicon Valley makes a lot of venture-backed startup life easier, whether you need cofounders, investors, advisors, or employees. It's not a coincidence that Google, Apple, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Zynga, and Yahoo are all in the same area.

[dusanbab]

Regarding your edit - I can't understand why anyone doing a startup wouldn't want to be based in the US!

Better executive talent, great engineering talent (but perhaps expensive given demand), plenty of VCs, angels etc & importantly, exit opportunities. As another commenter mentioned, the sheer amount of successes (in the Valley especially) isn't coincidence.

The Startup Visa initiative is a great idea, but is that ever going to happen? The current US immigration system is an extremely good filter at keeping generally law-abiding entrepreneurs out, but letting in the exact kind of individuals it purports to protect the US from.

If you're going to keep potential job-creators out in this economy, why let anyone in?

[foca]

In this regard I love what Chile is doing with Startup Chile. You guys seriously need something like that, where you just grant visas to smart founders.

I still wouldn't like to live in the US, but I totally support that you become more open :)

[PhilipDaineko]

Didn't read all previous comments, but your last sentence is really cool.

Here, in Belarus, we have a startup challenge called "Belarus Startup" and the prize is a payed trip to the Valley :)

Startup visa is a cool idea

[pohl]

I mistakenly bumped-up the NY/SF answer, thinking (in haste) that it was all-inclusive of the U.S. I'm in Omaha.

[mkramlich]

Alternately, they could always just SSH into the US. Much easier, faster, cheaper.

[armandososa]

Uhm, I'm in Mexico and Mexico is in North America.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_America http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_America http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_America

See?

[postfuturist]

My first thought when I read the poll was, "What about everything between the US and South America?". I think the way these polls are written tells more about the person writing the poll than anything else. I can't imagine the usefulness of splitting the US into NYC/SF and everything else. Likewise with splitting the UK and the rest of Europe.

[altuzar]

Je suis @ Mexico aussi. We are North America!!!

[j_camarena]

Same here, from Baja.

[tcarnell]

Do people post this stuff just to earn karma points? What use would this half-thought through data set provide? and who would use it?

Can we NOT repeat the same polls again?

I suggest creating a Hacker News 'polls' section which lists a permanent list of polls ideally with a public data API and bonus points for a pub/sub mechanism to help 3rd party application developers build something that might actually be useful...

I'll even build it for you, but only if there is a purpose to it all.

[DanielStraight]

I posted a high-karma-earning poll once ("Do you know C?"). I suspected if it caught on, I would earn a bunch of karma, but I posted it because I didn't think as many people knew C as seemed to be commonly assumed (and because I couldn't find a previous poll on the same topic). Sometimes you just want to know how reality aligns with common belief.

Nevertheless, I think your idea is great.

[johnfn]

The timing of this poll is definitely going to throw off the results. It's nearly 2AM on the US West Coast, and most people are going to be asleep.

[Kliment]

Cologne, Germany. I'm running a 3d printing workshop on the weekend here. If you're interested, have a look at http://dingfabrik.de/2011/11/24/3d-drucker-an-einem-wochenen... (same info in English at http://blog.reprap.org/2011/11/reprap-prusa-iteration-2-buil... ). There's only a couple spots left though.

[jwr]

UK and "Rest of Europe", got to love this point of view :-) You might as well go ahead and say "UK" and "Europe", wouldn't be too far off the mark.

[duck]

One of these days I need to run a survey on my Hacker Newsletter (http://www.hackernewsletter.com) project, but here is the top 15 locations based on known locations via MailChimp:

USA 41.6%, United Kingdom 8.0%, Canada 5.1%, India 4.3%, Germany 3.7%, Australia 2.9%, France 2.0%, Netherlands 1.6%, Sweden 1.5%, Brazil 1.4%, Italy 1.2%, Poland 1.2%, Spain 1.1%, Portugal 1.0%, China 1.0%

[mooism2]

When you say "England", do you mean "UK", or do you intend for residents of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to be included under "(Rest of) Europe"?

Edit: Thanks for updating the poll option.

[tcarnell]

Cant HackerNews just publish the Google analytics stats for this?

[frankacter]

Agreed. This seems like a more accurate representation.

[danmaz74]

It would be interesting to compare the results of this poll with the access statistics from the server...

[kgutteridge]

UK here. It is interesting to how the poll was segregated! can I ask where you are from?

I've always thought that a lot of people from the UK are guilty of thinking US, UK, Maybe France, Germany, Spain, RoW (Rest of World)

Thankfully the internet and travel have made the world a smaller place and these opinions are starting to break down!

[b2spirit]

I voted Africa, being from South Africa. When I clicked on the up-arrow, the number of points did not increment immediately. I had to refresh the page to see the new number of points. Poor user experience.

[adrahon]

I'm in Douala, Cameroon... So, when's the Africa HN Meetup? ;)

[richoakley]

Hello fellow South African!

[OoTheNigerian]

Sup buddy? Lagos Nigeria here.

Are you in Capetown? I heard that is the SF of these parts.

[okal]

Kenyan here, from Nairobi. Most of my more geeky friends are HN lurkers.

[plq]

Okay, where would you put Turkey here? Europe or Asia? We're not totally Middle-Eastern, nor totally European. In fact, if you believe there's a cultural cliff between the Middle East and Europe, Turkey is that cliff, which makes it a cradle of contradictions and thousand-year-old battles.

Lacking the option to vote twice, I'd imagine the HN crowd from Turkey would consider themselves closer to Europe.

The time zone database, however, has this:

    d243875439adb3b667e82af04ad8be63  /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Istanbul
    d243875439adb3b667e82af04ad8be63  /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Istanbul

which is twice more "accurate" than whatever vote I'd cast on this poll :)

edit: Ah, turns out one can cast two votes. Anyway...

[praptak]

Also see http://hackrtrackr.com/ - a locator of (for?) HN readers. Put yourself on the map too!

[peng]

Asia/Pacific should be split up more.

One vote category that covers 60% of the world's population and 30% of Earth's land area is not very specific.

Australia has 22 million people and Canada has 35 million, while Asia (Oceania not included) has 3,900 million, yet the former two get their own country-specific categories.

[tzury]

I find one fact quite interesting.

All 8 Israelis have added Israel separately rather than voting up, commenting under existing one.

I wonder what doe this say about us.

[yuvadam]

First. Learn to use Ctrl+F :)

[nir]

There should be a "Middle East" option.. Asia/Pacific is too wide to be really meaningful

[mromaine]

Japan - only the 3rd largest economy in the world, gets grouped with "(Rest of) Asia/Pacific", while India, Africa, UK and Canada get their own spots ...? :)

[willvarfar]

Nordic would be an interesting breakout; I get the impression they are overrepresented

Because of the timing of posting this poll, I imagine the results to be skewed towards Europe too.

[marcamillion]

Where is the Caribbean on that list?

Kingston, Jamaica!!

[speleding]

Perhaps PG could post a Google analytics chart?

[irrumator]

HN does not use Google Analytics or any other kind of analytics tracking for that matter. I think they used to use mixpanel and had the mixpanel logo at the bottom of the homepage before though.