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

blog.ycombinator.com

771–780 of 851 posts

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

#771

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Spoken as the incumbent. Of course it's a technical problem, as least as much as other SV companies. Hard tech hasn't been the edge for SV for many decades and it's getting even less important today. All the big companies has tried to tackle payments, but with lackluster results. What's "perfectly fine" for the US isn't in most of the rest of the world. Some of the more prominent startups in the UK, Germany and Sweden are payment related exactly because SV is weak in this area. There's a great opportunity for Chinese companies here if they ever decide to go outside their own borders.

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

#772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't ever want to work in a place where you can be thrown into jail for months for getting pregnant out of wedlock.

But you do want to work in a place where you get shot based on color of skin? You can see why making blanket statements based on a piece of news you read from another continent is not the right way to judge an entire country. Besides, my recommendation was for conducting YC interviews, not exactly living there. A 2-day YC tour conducting interviews in Dubai would enable founders from 3 continents to participate more…

> judge an entire country.

I am not judging an entire country. I am judging their legal system, their sense of ethics and morality. There is a difference between a loose canon cop or idiot killing someone because of racial reasons and a whole ethical and moral and legal system which do not conform to my sense of morality. I would avoid the entire Middle East for this reason.

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

#773

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.

Honestly, if the US had generally a welcoming visa/immigrant policy, I and most startup founders would not even think to set up my company elsewhere as it is in some regards "the center of the world". But as the US gets a more and more unwelcoming image, other places like London, Berlin or Vancouver rise. Of course tech in the USA is not dead and will not be any time soon. But it could be attracting much more talent if it was more open and easier to get into. Look at Dubai: you want to found a company in Internet Zone? Go there, found the company, get your visas in a simple process, move over. The fees are high, but it is straight forward. That is how it should be in the US. I know there are investor visas, but it is a difficult process with an open end. And then there is stuff like the random travel ban, which, for example, makes it impossible to take my wife (Iranian) with me.

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

#774
post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is a move of any importance into Canada (doubtful to me as a Canadian) it will not be to Vancouver with its outrageous real estate prices, and very few tech companies, but to the Greater Toronto/Hamilton area, which is where 90% of these types of businesses are. Amazon, Google, and IBM are all already here or around here [Google is in Kitchener/Waterloo]. Apple is here for sales/marketing only (at least when…

I wouldn't underestimate the advantage that being on the West Coast provides.

Because?

I don't see Vancouver "happening" (at least not more than it already is). Being similar to places like Seattle or SF isn't a good thing if you want to compete with them, because you'll always end up behind them in a comparison.

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

#775
post #718
post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The fact that SF buildings are poorly insulated doesn't help.

This!

I visited SF for the first time in December and at first I didn't realize why people were complaining about the cold when it was rather nice weather outside (I'm from 60 degrees north) and the weather was in the 60-70 Farenheit range (20 celsius) which I consider to be nice and temperate climate.

But after a week it hit me. It's cold as hell indoors! I have warmer in my house now than I had in my hotel room or office and it's snow and ice outside.

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

#776
post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 elsewher…

Let me end off by saying there's a difference between being "fine" and "exceptional". If you're content with the former, then that's okay, no problem there -- cutting off immigration will be okay. America will survive, there won't be an apocalypse. Like Japan right now -- it's got mediocre companies with a mediocre economy.

Many papers are written exclusively by Americans, but they're often not the best. That's what you're going to have to be content with, if you shut off immigration. Being okay, but not the best.

Imagine that those researchers couldn't go to the US. Imagine instead of Google DeepMind beating Lee Sedol it was a Canadian or Chinese company. Imagine if the first company to roll out mass self-driving cars would be Didi instead of Tesla. It's an inevitability, once all the top minds in the world go to companies outside the US. And as I said, it's not horrible for America, the country will surivive and do okay, but there'll be jobs lost and innovation will go somewhere else.

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

#777
post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we just pretending that Rudy Giuliani didn't outright say this was what it was?

Not at all, but I don't trust Rudy Giuliani. There seems to be agreement that this administration lies in a new and blatant way. I want to stop taking their word for things across the board. Part of that is not trusting their admissions of "guilt", the same way that I don't trust their admissions of "innocence".

They do sometimes tell the truth. Their animosity towards Muslims seems to be real, not a lie. There seems to be no other adequate explanation for the travel ban (the people who would push it as a rational security measure would also have been smarter about it) so I think this is a case where they can be believed.

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

#778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Amer…

I'll start with the following quote:

""" Himmler - "Reduce Deaths at all Costs"

Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Concentration Camps issued orders on December 28, 1942, that "The death rate in the concentration camps must be reduced at all costs" (Reitlinger, "The Final Solution"). The camps had been hit with a deadly typhus epidemic that spread by fleas and body lice. Stomach pain, high fever, emaciation and death can quickly follow. All of the camps were factories and the loss of workers was hurting war production. Inspector of the camps, Richard Glucks responded to Himmler's order on January 20, 1943, "Every means will be used to lower the death rates" (Nuremberg Tribunal Document No. 1523). """ Quote from a holocaust denial website [1]

> The Native Americans were not systematically wiped out.

""" From the earliest years of colonialism, conquistadores like Vasco Núñez de Balboa would brazenly advocate genocide against the native population.[50] In the 1700s, British militia like William Trent and Simeon Ecuyer gave Smallpox-exposed blankets to Native American emissaries as gifts at Fort Pitt, "to Convey the Smallpox to the Indians", in one of the most famously documented cases of germ warfare. While it is uncertain how successful such attempts were against the target population,[51] historians have noted that, "history records numerous instances of the French, the Spanish, the English, and later on the American, using smallpox as an ignoble means to an end. For smallpox was more feared by the Indian than the bullet: he could be exterminated and subjugated more easily and quickly by the death-bringing virus than by the weapons of the white man."[52] The British High Commander Jeffery Amherst authorized the intentional use of disease as a biological weapon against indigenous populations during the Pontiac's Rebellion, saying, "You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians by means of Blanketts, as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execreble Race", and instructing his subordinates, "I need only Add, I Wish to Hear of no prisoners should any of the villains be met with arms." """ Quote from wikipedia article on extermination of native Americans [2]

If you read the literature from that time period, Darwin, the various western diaries, ect. You will find that the desire to kill Indians, and the vision of Indians as undermench was universal. This impression of Indians continued up until very recently, when US children, when given squirt guns, would run around playing "shoot the Indian". An endeering game in which American childern would simulate the systematic extermination of the natives 50-100 years earlier.

> 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.

I was refering to the Holocaust, the systematic cilling of civilians. There were some ten-elleven million killed in the Holocaust[3]. There were some nine or ten million killed in the slave trade [4]. And millions of natives killed by european settlers (the exact number is really hard to place). Since ten million + some unknown number of millions is greater than ten million alone, I stand by my claims.

> Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions have literally never publicly made a statement supporting genocide.

Did Hitler ever do so? The Jews didn't know that they were going to be exterminated. Otherwise, they wouldn't have packed their things and gotten on the trains to the concentration camps. They were under the impression that they were merely being deported. And Trump certainly talks about deportation [5].

Indeed, when you read what Hitler wrote, it was pretty tame compared to what Trump has said: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWejiXvd-P8

Can you get more genocidal than that? Can you find a Hitler quote, from before the start of WWII that comes close to that?

[1] https://www.biblebelievers.org.au/wasthere.htm [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history#Americas [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust [4] http://orb.essex.ac.uk/lg/lg449/AtlanticSlaveTradeDeaths.htm [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0mOA1KAZME

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

#779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not impossible to impeach somebody.

It's like people don't remember that there was a president that called a press conference, spoke to the people, put on a jacket, got in a helicopter, and flew away from the White House forever.

Yes, and other people seem to forget that that did not lead to new elections.

Presidential elections happen on schedule. If Trump should leave that gives you Pence, if Pence should leave that will give you Ryan. And likely by that time it will be 2020 and you'll have those new elections but until then you'll be stuck with a Republican as president, like it or not.

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

#780

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.

The thing to note here is that this response from YC is not a political one, Indeed. It wasn't formulated as political -- but the intrinsically the move does have significant political import (as a form of "voting with one's feet", as it were). Which has the potential to send signals that signs, slogans and marches (alone) cannot.

A large reason many people are pushing back against globalism is _because_ of this thinking -- capitalism is blind to political movements, quality of life for its people, or growing inequality. All that matters is the bottom line. If it's cheaper to do it elsewhere, it will move there. But if this leads to yet continued wealth inequality while the laborers work for less in worse conditions, is it a good thing that it created more wealth in the process?

I know that example is an extreme one, but it is an example that is being seen throughout the country. Middle class jobs are being shipped overseas or supplanted by exploited H-1B visa holders. Lower class jobs are being displaced by illegal immigrants willing to do the job for below minimum wage. These are serious issues, and issues that will not be solved in a global economy where the bottom line is king.

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