This artcile from Vivek Wadhwa also talks about the startup visa (it will be so awesome to have that in China!) and also mention the "wrong assumption that all startups raise angel or venture capital. As my team???s research has shown, nine out of 10 successful entrepreneurs don???t."

This is an assumption I had myself before -as a startup novice-, and that I then encounter in iWeekend participants. And the reason of this wrong assumption is probably that the media always talk about the successful start-ups that raised XX millions or when public….and not mention so much successful bootstraped startups. So in many aspiring entrepreneurs mind, if you dont raise VC money you are in the wrong track.

Talking with an experienced entrepreneurs this week (and mentor of iWeekend) he expressed very strongly that VC money can be a curse more than a blessing and you goal should never be to please VC enough to get their money. You goal is to find the right product/market fit!! And to find that, we have to take risk, and you know who doesnt like risk? VC!

When you start your start up, you pick up a market rather than a idea or business plan. SHip the product to the market and see the reaction of your customer. You need to be very flexible to adapt fast, and will need to iterate several time before finding the product market fit (pivot every 6 months and expect to have to pivot maybe 3 time = 1 year and a half). So only after maybe 1 year and a half, you can expect to have found the product you need to scale and ONLY IF YOU NEED IT, have to raise money from VC.

But before you find the product/market fit and have proven traction, forget about VC, bootstraped or at best seek Angel money. Angels invest in person and are willing to take risk if they believe in you.

Another cool data from this article, a fact that my friend Jonathan told me before but I never found the number online is that "52% of Silicon Valley???s startups from 1995 to 2005 were founded by immigrants".
It should be suprising as innovation raise from mixing culture, mixing different fiels together. In China were investors very often state very frankly "if you are not Chinese we are not interested in your project"…this number prove them wrong.