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

blog.ycombinator.com

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

#651

Post by justin66 »

jessewmc wrote: post #612
mck- wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weather here is amazing! Vancouver has such a bad rep when it comes to rain, but honestly it's not that bad. Here's what it's really like: Between May and October, basically half of the year, you'll have very comfortable T-shirt weather, and blue skies I'd say 70% of the time! Between December and March it's gloomy, but you'll have awesome snow in the mountains, just 30 min from downtown :) from our office we can see…

The temperatures are very moderate in the winter, but the rain is bad. It can, and does, rain for multiple consecutive weeks in the winter. The lack of sun is even worse. It can have a very real effect on mood if you're from somewhere that gets more reasonable amounts of sunlight, which is pretty much anywhere else in Canada. I lived there for four years and I had a very tough time with the lack of sun. It can be ver…

Well, the relevant comparison is to the San Francisco Bay Area...

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

#653

Post by acchow »

cperciva wrote: post #602
acchow wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ski in the morning and play beach volleyball in the afternoon? What month of the year? Whistler-blackcomb tops out at only 8000ft. Vancouver gets 1900 hours of sunlight a year. That's not a lot. Compare to Seattle (which is considered gloomy) at 2170 hours and SF at 3000 hours.

Ski in the morning and play beach volleyball in the afternoon? What month of the year? Whistler-blackcomb tops out at only 8000ft. March or April. We've had an exceptionally harsh winter this year (snow on the ground in Vancouver for weeks on end -- happens about once a decade) but usually around now people are admiring the cherry blossoms on their way to the beach. Whistler/Blackcomb has a perfectly skiable alpine t…

Ok, but even in May average high in Vancouver is 16.7C, average low of 8.8C. That's hardly beach volleyball weather. I'm skeptical of the claim that people ski in the morning and play beach volleyball in the afternoon...maybe one or two lucky days a year?

These are exactly the temperatures tons of people in this thread are saying is cold when referring to San Francisco. They actually correspond with March in SF.

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

#654

Post by robotresearcher »

c141charlie wrote: post #619
acchow wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Vancouver's climate/geography is a feature, not a bug. Mountain biking, climbing, and skiing in Vancouver is amazing. And you don't have to drive two or three hours to get there. It's literally right outside your front door. This will be a draw for outdoorsy types.

Also world-class scuba diving. Dry suit required, but lots of wildlife. Easy stuff and technical stuff available.

Climb, ski, bike, dive, kayak, hike. Top vacation destination activities available every weekend.

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

#655

Post by discombobulate »

vinay427 wrote: post #648
discombobulate wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have all Muslims been banned from the US? I thought it was only a set of countries draw up by Obama. Edit: Words are hard! Edit2: Yes, downvote me & upvote the hyperbole. Welcome to the post-fact world. All Muslims are banned. Trump is Hitler. The stock market's going to crash. Anyone right of Obama is racist scum who should lose their job. Etc.

I'm still trying to work out why many are so emphatic about the list being drawn up by Obama. It's not as if Trump signed a list without carefully reviewing and collecting evidence on the countries whose citizens' lives he would be directly affecting. I hope that wasn't the case, anyway...

> I'm still trying to work out why many are so emphatic about the list being drawn up by Obama.

It's probably an attempt to show the delta between Obama & Trump isn't as large as some imagine.

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

#656

Post by muninn_ »

jacquesm wrote: post #198
muninn_ wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to actually take that bet. Excluding thermonuclear war, if things get annoying enough we'll just elect a democrat next year and restore the political arena that people believe is best. One (what seems to be) bad president isn't going to completely ruin Silicon Valley. It's pure hyperbole.

> Excluding thermonuclear war, if things get annoying enough we'll just elect a democrat next year and restore the political arena that people believe is best. Most likely not next year.

The way Trump has been acting? We'll see.

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

#657

Post by hueving »

echevil wrote: post #625
fdsfsafasfdas wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's just an example that i find interesting enough, that quite a few US companies tried to solve, but still have a long way to go. As for self-driving cars, Chinese companies like Baidu are not unlike Google, and they are investing/researching heavily in these fields. The only twist is that self-driving in China would be a lot harder to solve because the roads are a lot messy there :) At the same time, many of the…

>That's just an example that i find interesting enough, that quite a few US companies tried to solve, but still have a long way to go.

Because it's not a technical problem. Nobody cares about the ability to pay with their phone in the US when a credit card works so well and doesn't have a battery that dies.

Android and Apple pay work perfectly fine but almost nobody in my tech circles feels the urge to use them, let alone normal citizens. The credit card infrastructure in the US is so prevalent and reliable that there needs to be some serious perks to unseat the dominance.

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

#658

Post by freehunter »

ryandrake wrote: post #70
clamprecht wrote: post #4

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 don't know. It's not like there's all of a sudden a lack of homegrown startup ideas and tech talent in the Bay Area / USA.

There's a lot of tech talent all across the US and North America too, but they end up flocking to SF. For the same reasons they'd hypothetically flock to Vancouver in this situation.

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

#659

Post by rebootthesystem »

There are a number of questions that have not been asked:

How many applicants does YC have from countries with visa issues?

Has any YC applicant been denied entry into the US? If so, what were the circumstances?

In looking though YC historical records, how many people, on average, would typically apply from affected regions?

How many of those people were accepted into the program?

How many of those people succeeded?

In the age of Skype, why can't interviews be conducted without the need to travel?

Yes, I understand speaking to someone in person delivers a lot more information than possible through online meetings. An initial online meeting could function well as a 1 to 3 pass filter leading up to an in-person meeting, thereby providing a lot more time to deal with visa issues.

I am taking a wait-and-see attitude with regards to visa restriction issues. As is the case with any startup or new venture, mistakes are made, non-ideal rules are implemented, some confusion seeps in, etc. So long as the process is one where the right solution is evolved and the ability to pivot is retained things eventually improve. These rules should not behave differently.

What gives me hope? Take a look at who sits in Trump's business advisory council (not sure this is a current list):

http://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-on-trump-business-advi...

It would be inconceivable that this topic isn't discussed with frequency in these meetings.

If I were to presume to be able to give YC advice it would be this:

Use your connections to gain a seat in this council.

Being part of the dialog is the best way to affect positive change. That doesn't mean agreeing with all policies, it does mean you'd be heard at the highest levels rather than not.

And, if you do gain a seat in this council I would further ask that you work hard to convince the administration to take the SBA and convert it into a YC-style program where, in every city of this country, entrepreneurs can have access to not just funding but a real support infrastructure to chase after their ideas.

The SBA has never been of real use to the myriad of startups that have revolutionized the world. If you want to borrow $100K from the SBA you better have $100K in the bank, or more. And the "advisers" they offer-up are often so far behind the times they are only good to help open a doughnut shop or more traditional non-scale-able businesses.

Yeah, do that and the immigration thing and you'll change this country. But you have to be on the inside to do it.

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

#660

Post by justin66 »

thearn4 wrote: post #584
pragone wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do feel like an outlier in that I really enjoy living in distinct seasons. It feel like it helps me mark the time internally, and reminds me that I'm a pretty small part of nature overall.

> I do feel like an outlier in that I really enjoy living in distinct seasons.

You're not really an outlier, I learned that I feel the same way after living in SF for a while. It's just that it doesn't occur to many people because many people don't live in two such radically different climates.

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