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@2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

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Re: @2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

#31

Post by ilkhd2 »

tptacek wrote: post #21
miloshh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As pointed out by gruseom below, if somebody wants to game the system, they will come on a tourist visa and simply not leave. I don't think these convoluted scenarios of possible abuse are realistic at all. Furthermore, if the founder's visa law is any good, it will not require the founders to create jobs. It will simply assume that from 2500 startups a year, many will create a lot of jobs.

Which is a faulty argument, because you flat-out can't work in the US on a tourist visa.

... legaly. As a janitor or on gas station - perfectly can.

Re: @2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

#32

Post by gruseom »

joe_the_user wrote: post #18
miloshh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad how the founders visa isn't even close to reality yet, and already has vocal opponents bringing up bogus reasons why it's a bad thing. How long will it take until somebody complains about "foreigners taking away startup opportunities from Americans"?

Uh, while some folks may bring up racist or otherwise ridiculous objection to this idea, sachinag, bokonist and others have brought up well thought-out objections that I haven't seen answered with much thought (the claim that tourist visas are the only thing subject to abuse seems hardly creditable but I'll argue more if someone fleshes out this one existing counter-argument). It seems like the founder's visa already…

the claim that tourist visas are the only thing subject to abuse

I didn't say that or anything like it, and I don't see how the point I was making could have been any clearer.

Re: @2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

#33

Post by ilkhd2 »

maxwin wrote: post #16
ilkhd2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not see anything bogus in my reasons. There a lo mor important problems to be solved for making the market for software/internet startups better place. Namely - fixing pharmaceutical industry which is main reason why such an evil corporation like USPTO exists, which inflicts problems on software/internet industry by means of issuing bogus patents for buttons on webpages so on. I kno many American people who suff…

this is a logical fallacy. Other more important issues don't make this issue less important. This is a hackers website not a health care/doctors website.

What you are saying is logical fallacy, in fact.

1. More important issues do make other issues make other issues less important after the have been taken into consideration by definition of word "more" and less. After more important issues are taken care of - well yes, the do not alter the priority of other problems.

2."Hackers" are people, and the topic of this talk is not about computers either; if you are about to start political campaign you can not tal about RoR, hadoop, clouds or whatever else technological; you gotta take into account, real old like humanity issues - healthcre, fraud, flee of capital; externalities of robbing countries of enterpreneurs.

Re: @2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

#34

Post by jhancock »

gruseom wrote: post #25
jibiki wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many times does "health care" appear on such a list? I've never heard it cited once. It comes up occasionally. Here's an example I found with searchyc: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=764255

I grant you that it's a data point (well, sort of), but what I meant is that I've never heard it being cited by people who know a lot about startups, and they cite visa issues all the time. Anyway, bringing up health care in this context is the very definition of a red herring. Nothing stops one from being in favor of both sensible health care and sensible immigration.

Your right, it would be great to fix both health care and immigration. But this founders visa plan doesn't do either. It attempts to create a new category of immigration to fix one issue that certain investors have. If you really want to fix immigration, at least start by dissecting the problems with H1-Bs. I do see that the current proposal claims that an easiest route would be to modify the EB-5. But this is really creating a new type of visa for this special purpose.

Re: @2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

#35

Post by gruseom »

jhancock wrote: post #29
gruseom wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These "objections" are just getting out of hand. How many founders can you bring over for one company? That's hardly an issue. The optimal number of founders is basically known. You can argue about 2, 3, or 4, but it's obviously way less than 10. The pro arguments now are based on anecdotes, not data The proposal is based on reasoning, not anecdotes, and it seems like pretty clear reasoning to me. The anti arguments…

If I were an immigrant from China or India under this new visa program, the first thing I would do in hiring programmers is fly back home and crank up a top quality, low cost team. As things progressed, I would take it further: anything not absolutely necessary to be within 50 miles of my investor would be done back in my home country. As an investor, I would fully expect/encourage these founders to behave like this.…

Can you please provide these examples?

I know at least a dozen people who have personally experienced this, but I'm not going to name anybody. I also have read and heard many statements by people like PG, Fred Wilson, Brad Feld - people who really know about startups - who mention this as a key issue. I have not ever heard anyone bring up health insurance as this specific kind of impediment before, until a few moments ago when people suddenly started mentioning it on HN as a way to monkey-wrench a completely different issue. Find me someone who's made 20 or more angel investments who agrees that the visa issue is less significant to new startups than health care, and I will grant the legitimacy of the objection.

(This is not to say that health insurance isn't a big issue in general, though personally it strikes me as more of an issue for people who want to switch jobs than found startups - that's important, but not the same thing.)

Edit: in fairness, I should add that many of those people I know personally did eventually get visas, but it was expensive, difficult, and distracting - to such a degree that everyone who goes through the process says it is insane.

Re: @2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

#36

Post by netsp »

gruseom wrote: post #20
sachinag wrote: post #13

There are a bunch of issues with the proposal, but hey: #Let's say someone comes over, starts a company with $500K and it fails. Then what? Legally, they would have to leave at that point, right? If not, why not? Brad says no, they just have to found another company. That makes me squeamish; while they may be working for themselves, it's not that different than bonding to a trade. #How many founders can you bring ove…

These "objections" are just getting out of hand. How many founders can you bring over for one company? That's hardly an issue. The optimal number of founders is basically known. You can argue about 2, 3, or 4, but it's obviously way less than 10. The pro arguments now are based on anecdotes, not data The proposal is based on reasoning, not anecdotes, and it seems like pretty clear reasoning to me. The anti arguments…

That's not an argument against the proposal, it's an argument in favour of sensible policy design - something that is lacking in the status quo.

It is if you are arguing that a sensible policy is not possible.

Re: @2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

#37

Post by miloshh »

joe_the_user wrote: post #18
miloshh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad how the founders visa isn't even close to reality yet, and already has vocal opponents bringing up bogus reasons why it's a bad thing. How long will it take until somebody complains about "foreigners taking away startup opportunities from Americans"?

Uh, while some folks may bring up racist or otherwise ridiculous objection to this idea, sachinag, bokonist and others have brought up well thought-out objections that I haven't seen answered with much thought (the claim that tourist visas are the only thing subject to abuse seems hardly creditable but I'll argue more if someone fleshes out this one existing counter-argument). It seems like the founder's visa already…

The thoughtful objections have not been against the idea as such, but mostly against the proposal that a board of investors or government officials would decide who is good enough. That would indeed a problem - startups that VCs or government approve would likely be the ones immitating the previous big thing, rather than building the next big thing. But I think a board is not necessary. In my opinion, all that's needed is that the founders

1. have bachelor's degrees, 2. register a corporation, 3. start with at least $X in the company account.

The value of X is up to debate, but it should not matter which investors they received the money from. Details can be worked out.

Re: @2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

#38

Post by gruseom »

jhancock wrote: post #34
gruseom wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grant you that it's a data point (well, sort of), but what I meant is that I've never heard it being cited by people who know a lot about startups, and they cite visa issues all the time. Anyway, bringing up health care in this context is the very definition of a red herring. Nothing stops one from being in favor of both sensible health care and sensible immigration.

Your right, it would be great to fix both health care and immigration. But this founders visa plan doesn't do either. It attempts to create a new category of immigration to fix one issue that certain investors have. If you really want to fix immigration, at least start by dissecting the problems with H1-Bs. I do see that the current proposal claims that an easiest route would be to modify the EB-5. But this is really…

It attempts [...] to fix one issue that certain investors have.

That seems disingenuous. This isn't about a few rich people's personal convenience. It's about lowering an absurd impediment to the creation of innovation and wealth.

The investors you mention must be really dumb to waste their time on foreign founders, let alone immigration reform, if they could just go and find better startups some other way. They say their bottleneck is the supply of good startups to invest in. Are they lying or incompetent?

Re: @2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

#39

Post by jhancock »

gruseom wrote: post #35
jhancock wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were an immigrant from China or India under this new visa program, the first thing I would do in hiring programmers is fly back home and crank up a top quality, low cost team. As things progressed, I would take it further: anything not absolutely necessary to be within 50 miles of my investor would be done back in my home country. As an investor, I would fully expect/encourage these founders to behave like this.…

Can you please provide these examples? I know at least a dozen people who have personally experienced this, but I'm not going to name anybody. I also have read and heard many statements by people like PG, Fred Wilson, Brad Feld - people who really know about startups - who mention this as a key issue. I have not ever heard anyone bring up health insurance as this specific kind of impediment before, until a few moment…

I have heard from a few investors that immigration issues caused problems. When I query about what percent of founders this applies to, I hear numbers like 10% or 20%. What numbers are you hearing?

Unfortunately your challenge is flawed of finding investors that have experienced health care as more of a problems than immigration. The health care argument is that people won't consider quitting their day job because of this problem so they never reach the point of showing up on an investor's radar. I know far more well qualified U.S. citizens that would love to start their own business than there is money to fund them. Health care is generally the number one reason cited for them not leaving BigCo.

The founder's visa argument is there are not enough founders to invest in in the U.S. Some people, myself included, are simply trying to point out that not only may there be far more than immigration reform could provide, but that legislation is currently in progress that might alleviate a big part of the reason they are not "on the market".

I am commonly "self-employed", at least from the perspective of Health Care insurers. I have insurance, but mostly to appease my wife. Do you know the stats on cancellation for an "individual" policy if you actually do get a serious illness? Its well over 50%. I know my insurance is most probably useless, as I said, I pay for it to appease my better half who is more risk averse. Most founder-wanna-bes do not have enough money socked away to spend as I do.

I agree that immigration process is insane and unfair to the immigrant. One big problem I have with this proposal is it is highly self-serving to investor desires and doesn't put leverage on the more important issue of simply treating all legal skilled immigrants more appropriately.

Re: @2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

#40

Post by jhancock »

gruseom wrote: post #38
jhancock wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your right, it would be great to fix both health care and immigration. But this founders visa plan doesn't do either. It attempts to create a new category of immigration to fix one issue that certain investors have. If you really want to fix immigration, at least start by dissecting the problems with H1-Bs. I do see that the current proposal claims that an easiest route would be to modify the EB-5. But this is really…

It attempts [...] to fix one issue that certain investors have. That seems disingenuous. This isn't about a few rich people's personal convenience. It's about lowering an absurd impediment to the creation of innovation and wealth. The investors you mention must be really dumb to waste their time on foreign founders, let alone immigration reform, if they could just go and find better startups some other way. They say…

"Are they lying or incompetent?"

If this ever gets in front a Senate committee, hopefully they will have to disclose hard numbers so we can find out. I don't see why they don't go ahead and publish their data right now if they want encourage more support.

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