Hacker News Reader

Comment by hiphopyo | Hacker News Reader

I thought Malaysia's Cyberjaya was the "next Silicon Valley" due to its close proximity to the Iskandar megaproject with Singapore?

View on HN

Cyberjaya is...in Malaysia. And essentially the product of government. It's not really any more likely to succeed than Russia's attempts at a "Silicon Steppe".

Berlin is organic (as is London); that's why they have a decent shot. Berlin has some issues (mainly, a lack of great local investors; I'd love to run some money there on the side). It has the other elements (top universities, attractive to immigrants, especially from EU, stellar local talent (although maybe more "projecty" vs. "company-y"). CCC alone is worth about as much as UC Berkeley in the Bay Area.

I'm going to be sad if I'm not living in Berlin at least 50% time by the end of the year.

> Berlin is organic

This is hugely important. So many places have tried to copy Silicon Valley, but it's just not very easy to artificially put everything together.

I'm also pretty down on Malaysia as a country due to the racism directed by their government (generally anti-Chinese/pro-Malay), which seriously influences economic policies -- both in their goals, and their general desire for a top-down centrally imposed plan for things. This sort of works in natural resource extraction, but is antithetical to startups. I'd probably bet on Indonesia instead of Malaysia long term for this reason; less state-directed, more chaotic and natural.

I can't speak for Malaysia, but agreed on Indonesia. I just visited a co-working space, Jogja Digital Valley (Yogyakarta), and got the feeling that good things would come of it. It will take time, but the combination of skills (Gadjha Mada and many other universities) and capital are here (8 companies get around 30k which goes much further here). The main problem with Indonesia is their poor Internet connectivity, unless something is done, it seems hard to imagine a Facebook being born in a dorm room or garage.

Yogyakarta was great when I visited in November -- it's got a lot of universities. I didn't know about the coworking spaces.

The "dark horse" for SEA is Myanmar; assuming the elections go well in 2014/2015, I could see them turning into a great place with essentially greenfield infrastructure investments over the next 5-10y.

Thanks for the heads up, might have to make that my next work/travel destination!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com