181–190 of 198 posts
This is a great idea, can I do this too?? The government can give me 100 visas to allocate, and I'll give them to international entrepreneurs whom I consider to be deserving and who incidentally and in a totally non quid-pro-quo fashion agree to sell me a 7% stake in their companies for a nominal fee. I'll also buy them pizza once a week, if that sweetens the pot.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have an experience with that. I was applying to the Canadian entrepreneurship program since 2010, so 4 years now. I was aware the processing time was long, so I was just waiting to be my turn to be processed. 3 weeks ago I've heard that the entrepreneurship program has been canceled in profit of the startup visa one. I mean that seems to be on whim and that's not really nice to wait 4 years for nothing but that's l…
Whoa - they just told you now? :O I'm sorry you've had to wait this long. This whole situation is insane. We could actually just let more people in; we need more for long-term demographic reasons and the current policy is just a xenophobic disaster.
You don't have to be sorry, gov. != people.
What I dislike particularly it's the kind of hypocrisies you were denouncing. Canadian VCs had been lobbying for this kind of visa while other entrepreneur visa programs being shutdown. Now there are in position to determine who is getting Canadian residency based on their own interests. Like for example, I am posting this rant now under my usual handle, is it going to undermine our chances to get Canadian VCs' funding and be in Canada? Maybe or maybe not. I liked the ancient system where you have just to show you have accumulate more than $300k while being an entrepreneur whereas now it's the sole dick-sucking abilities that matters.
Here's the argument:
The US is tough on immigration because supposedly immigrants will take American jobs. American people - which we'll broadly define as the "middle class" who statistically speaking don't have these tech skills - don't want this. Why would they want foreigners taking their jobs? It makes no sense. Thus they will vote, or have political influence, tending to enact policy that is tough on immigration.
Founder visas for tech companies with the intention of creating jobs does not change this, because it creates tech jobs. Middle class America can't fulfill this in meaningful-enough numbers for there to be any positive political influence.
"Let us show you what we can do with 100 visas. This will be measurable, and in 5 years, we can tell you exactly how many jobs get created."
This won't matter much until jobs get created in large enough numbers for the middle class. What's important though will be (and it's hard to tell if this is the case) a "trickle-down" effect, where these relatively small number of tech jobs created lead to the creation of other jobs that have a meaningful impact. EDIT - an example that comes to mind is Homejoy, which creates more maid jobs... but boy oh boy can this sort of thing sound like inequality ("let foreign founders come in to make web services turning Americans into maids!").
Think about it - even if a new Google pops up in the next 5 years - that's 25K jobs. Drop in the ocean. 2.2M jobs were created in 2012; let's say in 5 years 10M jobs are created. 25K new tech jobs for a new Google represents a difference of 0.25%. I guess that's something - but how many of those 25K jobs will be filled by American citizens?
In short - there's absolutely no reason not to have a founder visa like proposed. That would be sweet. But from the policy makers' perspectives, it doesn't look like there's a compelling enough reason to change the status quo. If anything it's just easy to paint as "let rich investors bring in foreign engineers to build new websites and apps". Doesn't really resonate.
Feel free to point out flaws in this argument, it would probably help the OP's cause. I made my post purposely cynical, because these are the sort of opinions and spins that will need to be addressed.
I wonder how many of the negative commenters on this thread are either citizens or permanent residents. I don't see why a techie who is not yet a citizen or permanent resident of US, and wants to be one, would be so negative about this proposal. At worst this can lead to a few lucky immigrant founders who get free visas, but at best, this can do a lot of good to the country in terms of creating new jobs, and to the s…
Mercifully, foreigners don't elect our legislators.
Yes foreigners can influence our politics
I wonder how many of the negative commenters on this thread are either citizens or permanent residents. I don't see why a techie who is not yet a citizen or permanent resident of US, and wants to be one, would be so negative about this proposal. At worst this can lead to a few lucky immigrant founders who get free visas, but at best, this can do a lot of good to the country in terms of creating new jobs, and to the s…
People seem to be trying to deliberately misunderstand my point. 1) I don't think this should just be for YC. I'm just volunteering to beta test it. I think we are very likely to show success, which would hopefully open it much more broadly. But I'd be very happy to do it together with other investors from the beginning. I feel that in general investors (YC included) are not doing enough to push this issue. 2) I do t…
Welcome to HN :)
Btw, <3 whomever did the fruit loopt video.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Deliberately? I generally ascribe to the camp that says: when the majority or a large portion of the audience misinterprets what is being said, the problem lies not with with readers but with the author. Perhaps it is you who mis-wrote not us who mis-read. What you wrote came off as incredibly arrogant. Especially with your recent promotion.
Incredibly arrogant? Really? Sorry, but you're definitely mis-reading that one and you've clearly never met Sam.
This is a JOKE. Let Y Combinator? Oh yeah, bro? Wow. If the US were to give ONE company this right, that would be complete b llsh t. I like YC, but think before you speak.
This is a JOKE. Let Y Combinator? Oh yeah, bro? Wow. If the US were to give ONE company this right, that would be complete b llsh t. I like YC, but think before you speak.
This is a terrible idea. VCs have proposed the same solution in Canada; the government canned the old investor visa and allowed founders to get a startup when they receive investment from some of our VCs. (There were many more investor visa than VCs can even process. We'll end up with less total job creation. You have to be careful what you lobby for, and how it will be implemented!) What was once a process over whic…