A third of venture-backed IPOs between 2006 and 2012 had an immigrant founder
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Re: A third of venture-backed IPOs between 2006 and 2012 had an immigrant founder
#2That doesn't surprise me in the least. Immigrants have one leg up over the competition: they have generally very little to lose and everything to gain. They have also already self-selected for being people that are not risk adverse (they just left everything behind to start a new life) and they are executing on their dreams.
I often see people that rant against immigrants in general and I always wonder how they would react if you explained to them that their old age pension likely depends on some not yet born immigrant and his or her children.
Re: A third of venture-backed IPOs between 2006 and 2012 had an immigrant founder
#3Uh look, this is a false equivalency. Nobody is complaining about the brilliant immigrants who are founding companies.
People are upset about using immigrant labor as price competition to depress wages and capture middle class income to be transferred to the wealthy.
We all see this all the time--companies hire legal immigrant labor or import H1B's to pay 80% of the prevailing wage, meanwhile a massive and unnecessary management structure compensates itself lavishly.
This is a classic "commons" problem. It's advantageous for any individual company, but when everyone does it, it leads to the tragedy of the commons. In this case that tragedy is the collapse of the American consumer. He's being attack by high health costs, food costs, energy costs, regulatory burden, grift from financial institutions, education costs and he has no more money to spend at Waltmart-- the guys who caused the problem in the first place.
Re: A third of venture-backed IPOs between 2006 and 2012 had an immigrant founder
#4Skilled immigrants don't have much of a voter base, and the current set of US leaders don't seem to be very far sighted.
It is also pretty hard to even conceive of a good crisis that can force change.
So, yeah, pretty much a waste of time.
Re: A third of venture-backed IPOs between 2006 and 2012 had an immigrant founder
#5I wonder how many more are founded by children of immigrant parents. My YC batch felt 1/3 immigrant founder, 1/3 child of immigrant founder. Quite the overrepresentation since they each comprise just over 10% of the population: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/foreignborn...
Re: A third of venture-backed IPOs between 2006 and 2012 had an immigrant founder
#6That doesn't surprise me in the least. Immigrants have one leg up over the competition: they have generally very little to lose and everything to gain. They have also already self-selected for being people that are not risk adverse (they just left everything behind to start a new life) and they are executing on their dreams. I often see people that rant against immigrants in general and I always wonder how they would…
This seems a bit of a generalization, or dare I say, a romanticization. It's supposing you know the motivations driving a group of people whose only shared characteristic is that they weren't born in the United States. In many ways, it's as much a generalization as the "people that rant against immigrants in general".
Re: A third of venture-backed IPOs between 2006 and 2012 had an immigrant founder
#7One thing I always find, even when dealing with USCIS, or press, or really anyone regarding this matter, is that only very few people truly wish to make it difficult for immigrant founders to stay in the country. In fact, I have never met anyone that gave me the impression that they didn't want me around. The problem is that immigration law is slow moving and the adjudicators at the USCIS need to follow it to the dot, even if it was written before a lot of the technology we use today was invented and the world was a much less global place. And now they are rolling the issue of startup founders and high skilled labor into the massive immigration reform, where it is likely to fall through the cracks or even be used as a bipartisan bargaining chip/concession.
Personally, I think a great way to level the playing field wrt starting businesses for immigrant founders would be to allow all holders of employment visas a grace period during which they can stay in the country after they quit their job. This grace period could depend on the type of visa, your degree, your income (read taxes), the time you spent in the US, whatever. Then you can start a business without first having to secure your own presence, which is very difficult (because you don't yet have a real company) and expensive to do. A similar arrangement exists for study visas and is extremely effective in keeping college and grad school graduates in the country after school.
Re: A third of venture-backed IPOs between 2006 and 2012 had an immigrant founder
#8That doesn't surprise me in the least. Immigrants have one leg up over the competition: they have generally very little to lose and everything to gain. They have also already self-selected for being people that are not risk adverse (they just left everything behind to start a new life) and they are executing on their dreams. I often see people that rant against immigrants in general and I always wonder how they would…
This seems a bit of a generalization, or dare I say, a romanticization. It's supposing you know the motivations driving a group of people whose only shared characteristic is that they weren't born in the United States. In many ways, it's as much a generalization as the "people that rant against immigrants in general".
No, that was mostly from personal experience.
Re: A third of venture-backed IPOs between 2006 and 2012 had an immigrant founder
#9I wonder how many more are founded by children of immigrant parents. My YC batch felt 1/3 immigrant founder, 1/3 child of immigrant founder. Quite the overrepresentation since they each comprise just over 10% of the population: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/foreignborn...
Not an exact answer to your question, but FTA:
"Currently, more than 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants"Re: A third of venture-backed IPOs between 2006 and 2012 had an immigrant founder
#10As a founder, this is one of the most frustrating things you may deal with: having another founder who has to worry about visa problems.