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

blog.ycombinator.com

761–770 of 851 posts

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

#761
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Canadian visa might sound appealing at first blush but won't help for ycombinator founders as far as I know. To be eligible you need to have funding from a canadian venture fund, see below. I guess ycombinator could setup a Canadian fund and apply for the funding eligibility, but with the principles being mostly American and living in the US, I'm guessing it would be a very tough sell. http://www.cic.gc.ca/englis…

In the medium term, I'm sure YC can find Canadian funding sources if they wanted to do this.

Canadian founder who relocated my startup to US for funding reasons here. It is very hard to secure seed level funding. The mindset is very un-SV unfortunately. But that could change rapidly if we see a few pillar companies emerge, but that's a big if.

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

#762

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.

Ever tried to get a visa as an American for Europe or the U.K.? Good luck with that.

Yes. Depending on where you're going it's surprisingly straightforward. Hell, you can even go set up a business in the Netherlands if you're self-employed with relatively few restrictions.

Also, what do you mean by "visa"? There are many different sorts, depending on whether you come to interview, work, be an entrepreneur, etc.

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

#763
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…

Hours of sunlight per year:

Vancouver - 1835

London - 1460

Tallinn - 1753

Amsterdam - 1568

Stockholm - 1973

San Francisco - 3037

Honestly it's not that bad.

This map[1] might be of interest.

1 - https://i.imgur.com/yIe8gWy.jpg

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

#764
post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd say the Research Universities, Medical Technology, Robotics, and Travel Technology that comes out of Boston is significantly ahead of Silicon Valley.

Automotive and related tech is quite small even with Tesla in the bay area. The number of automotive technology jobs is quite small. Automation technology from cars is picking up, but I doubt the number of jobs is very high in comparison to Detroit, Stuttgart, or Nagoya

There are a lot more aerospace outside of Silicon Valley with Aerobus and Boeing having little presence in California.

Google is #3 in cloud technology compared to Seattle/Redmond with AWS and Azure with significant marketshare advantage.

Amazon is 45% marketshare in US for online commerce. Logistics technology for them is mainly built in Seattle and Boston. Not much for Amazon going on in Silicon Valley. Alexa not made in Silicon Valley.

I'm still quite surprised people still believe Silicon Valley + SF lead in technology.

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

#765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany waged two world wars over 20 years and tens of millions of people died because of that. Germany, even at its scientific height was racist and nationalist. Hitler didn't come to power in the 30s without generations of Germans being the foundation. The US is very far from that. I don't understand the massive overreaction. The United States in the 60s was a place where there were sundown towns that blacks dared…

But the US has a history of racism, slavery (even today, in the prisons), genocide angainst the natives, Christian supremasism leading the military to torture people without cause [1], mass internment of native Americans, Japanees, and Irish. In US history, Americans have already killed more inocent civilian Native Americans and blacks than the germans killed Jews, Polls and Gypsies. Unlike the Germans, Americans sti…

The US obviously isn't perfect. It has a very sordid past. It's just that it's sordid past isn't any worse than others (this is a human problem) and at its best it does stand for something - continual progress.

You are also absolutely incorrect on numbers of Native Americans or blacks killed vs the Nazi actions. The Nazis killed tens of millions systematically, not even counting incidental casualties.

The Native Americans were not systematically wiped out. The vast majority died prior to contact with Europeans due to simple disease. There's really no contesting this, all you can do is contest the numbers. Something like 50+% (conservative numbers) of the NA population pre-contact was killed by disease.

Many Native American tribes experienced great depopulation, averaging 25–50 percent of the tribes members lost to disease. Additionally, smaller tribes neared extinction after facing a severely destructive spread of disease.[2] The significant toll that this took is expounded upon in the article Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas. A specific example was Cortes' invasion of Mexico. Before his arrival, the Mexican population is estimated to have been around 25 to 30 million. Fifty years later, the Mexican population was reduced to 3 million, mainly by infectious disease. This shows the main effect of the arrival of Europeans in the new world. With no natural immunity against these pathogens, Native Americans died in huge numbers. The eminent Yale historian David Brion Davis describes this as "the greatest genocide in the history of man. Yet it's increasingly clear that most of the carnage had nothing to do with European barbarism. The worst of the suffering was caused not by swords or guns but by germs."[9] By 1700, less than five thousand Native Americans remained in the southeastern coastal region.[4] In Florida alone, there were seven hundred thousand Native Americans in 1520, but by 1700 the number was around 2000.[4]

That of course does not deny the past. The US mistreated natives and exploited them, there is no doubting this.

Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions have literally never publicly made a statement supporting genocide. The gap between reactionary politics and genocide is vast. Has Trump at age 70 ever even killed a man? Where does this idea that he's going to become genocidal comes from? How can you equate his actions (no deaths) to something which killed tens of millions?

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

#766
post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This implies that we don't have enough home-grown talent. We do.

It's not a zero-sum game of open jobs to potential employees. If you're able to interact with the smartest people in the world - and not just your own country - you end up forming more effective and larger companies. Which in turn create jobs. If you shut out your country to the rest of the world, the next Google will be founded somewhere else. And I'll dispute your claim that the US has enough talent. There was a su…

Sure and I love that those people (highly skilled immigrants) are working for American companies.

But so what? That doesn't demonstrate that the US doesn't have enough talent. It just shows that some people from out of the country were working on something. Maybe if the situation was different then that paper could be exclusively written be Americans. The majority of the worlds most intelligent people reside elsewhere, but the US has nearly 400 million people. It's fine with or without immigrants. Japan is fine isn't it?

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

#767
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you familiar with the Middle East?

You're being a bit broad with your brush strokes there. The United Arab Emirates (of which Dubai is one) has a female labor force participation rate of ~46%. While that is low compared to the ~50-60% you'd see in most OECD countries, it's not that far off places like Poland (48%) and better than, say, Mexico (45%). It's definitely not Iran (15%) or Saudi Arabia (20%).

That statistic is simply meaningless in this context. Just today some girl got arrested with her boyfriend for sex before marriage. Does that happen in Mexico or Poland?

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

#768

Great intent. I'd like to know the reasoning behind choosing Canada as an alternative interview location because from experience, it easier to get a US visitor visa than that of Canada. Nigerians cannot even transit the Canadian airport without a visa which takes upward of 8 weeks to get AFTER approval vs days for the US. Requirements for Canada are more onerous. 2 suggestions. 1. A country of interview per continent…

I totally agree with you especially your suggestion that Dubai be considered for the interview. In fact Dubai should be considered as a site for the 3 month program.

I applied to YC for the 2017 batch and I'd rather get into the program than not. But if I have to jump through needless hoops to do so, and put up with the bullshit of a narcissistic circus-performer politician while at it, I'll bootstrap my business for longer or seek investment from someplace else.

If YC is committed to 'discovering world-wide talent' it had better do something more drastic in pursuit of this goal in the light of recent events and challenges.

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

#769

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.

Been hearing this since late nineties about how inability to get visas is going to be the death of US tech industry. Absolutely nothing has changed since h1b visa was initially implemented, its almost exactly the same when as it was conceived. And yet U.S tech industry is not dead.

> Absolutely nothing has changed since h1b visa was initially implemented

They've changed a bunch of things, including at one point tripling the number of visas available:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Changes_to_legal_and...

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

#770
post #757
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's "a few people." It is everyone holding or desiring a US visa that is worried. I would contend that it is only the extent of that fear that is variable. Maybe I am wrong and there are visa holders feeling absolute confidence at the moment, but I would like to hear why from even one before considering your "a few people" categorization as anything but spin.

As someone that is look for jobs right now and talking with a lot of tech comapny in the US on the side, they just hold all tentative to get visas. O1 are still doable, but all H1B are on hold. If you are canadian, it is not a problem. But all Europeans that would like to get visa are on hold right now. People that already have one are in limbo, worrying about how the coming ruling will affect them.

May I ask where you are from and what your field is?
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