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YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

blog.ycombinator.com

561–570 of 851 posts

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#561
post #152

Wow. We often wonder how the Bay Area would be unseated as startup capital of the world. Maybe it'll be the US's immigration problem.

I completely agree that visas are a problem but I disagree that they will be "the problem" to unseat Silicon Valley as the world nexus of startups. I've spent most my adult life in Asia and have lived in several countries and cities that claim to be very serious about becoming the next tech hub. None of them have very liberal immigration policies. All have visas for highly skilled workers, all have visas for entrepre…

[deleted]

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#562
post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will Vancouver improve its weather? California has a powerful draw...

A little bit of rain is a small price to pay for not having massive drought problems

We got so much rain in CA this year, the drought is nearly gone now. You can import water, but you can't import sunshine :)

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#563
post #152

Wow. We often wonder how the Bay Area would be unseated as startup capital of the world. Maybe it'll be the US's immigration problem.

I completely agree that visas are a problem but I disagree that they will be "the problem" to unseat Silicon Valley as the world nexus of startups. I've spent most my adult life in Asia and have lived in several countries and cities that claim to be very serious about becoming the next tech hub. None of them have very liberal immigration policies. All have visas for highly skilled workers, all have visas for entrepre…

When adjusting for average income, Beijing is the most expensive city in the world.

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Native borns aren't fighting to pick oranges for 12 hours a day at minimum wage, but these guys will and do. An economist would say it's because the wage being offered is too low. Businesses don't get to have access to unlimited labour at whatever wage they choose in a market economy.

Yet they're not all illegals. Natives of Mexican heritage and others of the poorest class perform this work at this wage. Regardless, why aren't we jailing those who hire these people and cause these problems then? Oh right, they're Trump loyalists, political donors, and white.

Prices are set on the margins. Any illegals in the system will drive wages down.

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#565
post #22
post #12

May be this is a dumb question, I will ask it anyway, Tijuana Mexico is about 500 miles from Bay Area, where as Vancouver Canada is 1000 miles. Que Canada?

and cheaper than Vancouver and Mexico's a lot easier to go to than Canada (which now also has an ESTA like system) also I would guess that people in Tijuana are pretty good with their English

I may vehemently disagree with the eTA program, but let's not overstate, it's $7CAD ($5.18USD) and lasts a decade.

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beijing? Right with the Great Firewall, it's a ridiculous place to run a tech company. With the air pollution it's a ridiculous place to live. I lived for many years in Shanghai but ultimately moved because it was nearly impossible to do anything tech related that relied on standard tools such as Github or marketing venues such as Facebook, etc.

Well there are tons of interesting tech work done in China, targeting only Chinese market though :) its a self contained market I can walk around and pay for everything with my cellphone nowadays in China, but can't really do that in Bay Area.

> I can walk around and pay for everything with my cellphone nowadays in China, but can't really do that in Bay Area.

Is this really that interesting though? Tell me when they have self-driving cars that are affordable enough for ride sharing.

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#567
post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will Vancouver improve its weather? California has a powerful draw...

Lots of business is done in places where weather not up to Bay Area standards, such as New York, London, Tokyo, Beijing, etc.

You guys realize that our weather sucks right? A handful of days over 75F per year, near-freezing cold and fog in _July_ in some parts of the city, needing to carry at least a light jacket/hoodie every single day of the year?

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#568
post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I was originally /u/cperciva on Reddit, but forgot the password for that account a few months in and created /u/perciva. And yes, I'm coming to the end of my fourth 3-year term on the Senate, and about to submit my nomination papers seeking re-election for a fifth term.

Yeah but did you win the Putnam tho?

Only once. :-(

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#569
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shenzhen is a very different thing. It's important but not a challenger to SV. Huge startups come out of Beijing because it's the hub where the top students, founders, investors and regulators are. If you look at Fortune's list of unicorns, 3 of the top 10 are in Beijing. As they build, they're strengthening the founder/techie/investor ecosystem in the city even further. http://fortune.com/unicorns/

By that logic, Boston's Route 128 would have continued to be the "tech alley" of America. [1] Just having the talent, a silicon valley doesn't make. Its about the culture of collaboration and openness. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/the-valley-of-my-dreams-wh...

And yet Boston has some of the highest real estate prices in the country these days. (Fortunately you can commute out of it easier than in the Bay Area.) The Tech world doesn't begin and end with web/social/mobile.

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#570
post #537

If you don't provide opportunity and a good civil environment to brilliant/enterprising people, they will find a way elsewhere. And once Vancouver or any other city starts working for them, Silicon Valley will lose its exclusivity. The thing to note here is that this response from YC is not a political one, but a response that came out of market demand; it is pretty significant if it works out.

How will Vancouver improve its weather? California has a powerful draw...

Literally one of the things I hated the most when I visited California and all I hear about California is the weather (I should say, "San Francisco", not CA, since obviously CA is a pretty big state). I can't imagine what living somewhere that is the same every day.
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