Start-Up Slowdown cover art

Start-Up Slowdown

How the United States Can Regain Its Entrepreneurial Edge

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Start-Up Slowdown

By: Robert Litan
Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
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About this listen

Over the past 30 years, the rate of start-up formation in the United States has slowed down. To reclaim its status as a hub of innovation, the United States must tackle reforms in many areas, from immigration and business regulation to health care and education.

©2015 Foreign Affairs (P)2015 Audible, Inc. Economics
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this is Part 7 of the Foreign Affairs: Schumpeter's Heirs article.
interesting article, even though i don’t agree with everything stated. for example, i don’t think enough emphasis is placed here on ”start-ups” being born inside stable companies, which can absorb failure and actually evolve from it. another thing is that the date used to inspire this article coincides with the tech boom, which does not necessarily imply the momentum in the numbers should be kept over time.
some points i liked were regarding business maturity in stability and opportunities for employees, but i would also add in stability and efficiency of strategy.
the idea of reform to the H1B visa system is something i think was not addressed well, the lottery was introduced to maintain healthier immigration levels and to keep fairness, for people of all qualifications and qualification levels, otherwise it’s likely only higher skilled workers would be accepted, or workers belonging to a lobbied category, for the set number of visas available per year. a reform to support start-ups is not the right point to raise, in my opinion. even if the Chile program mentioned was a success, it fits a different context compared to the US, already in high immigration demand and with and established tech machine, while Chile might be hungry to build up its tech economy and can afford to try an exotic incentive-based immigration policy.
the crowdfunding point is interesting, as mentioned, with a cap, but the article does not speak enough on regulations and mechanisms to protect against fraud, but, i agree, sunsetting regulation to force reassessment is an appealing concept, if there were enough resources to do extra legislation reviews, but it’s possible that the benefits would outweigh the cost, unless lobbing intervenes to set them as desired through lobby, in which case the process might turn into a bureaucratic waste.
otherwise, we now know that solutions like crowdfunding and business accelerators have proven since 2015 to work in offering more start-ups the opportunity to get funded, and turned out to be positive for the business environment.

interesting

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