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The Founder Visa

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Founder Visa

#141

Post by endtime »

catz wrote: post #140
endtime wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That may be true. But I see little use in commenting on something that is not relation to any issue that I am interested in. "If you don't have anything interesting to say, don't say anything."

Whether or not you feel what I said was interesting or relevant is completely up to you. I will just mention that for the parent post, at least 20 people found it interesting or to the point (since it has a moderation of 21). In any case, it is still more on topic point (emigration visas) than your discussion about my post. EDIT: I find your posts a little bit harsh. Why not tone it down to at least leave a semblance…

Well, part of the reason for my tone is that I very much don't want this to become reddit, and one of the things that characterizes reddit is that the best quality comments are often halfway down the page because so many people upvote irrelevant rants and one-line jokes.

Re: The Founder Visa

#142

Post by veteran »

pg wrote: post #131
veteran wrote: post #118

Is it incidental that except for one or two guys in essay review are all people who are small investors who don't have ability to open investment shop in India/China?.. May be 20 yrs back this was relevant but today just because you offer does not mean quality people need it..so before proposing was there actually needs analysis..did somebody read the Chinese social networks are ahead in revenue numbers and there is…

I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying that would-be founders should stay in their home countries and start their startups there? If so, then the answer is that it depends on the country and the nature of the startup. There are certainly some combinations of country/startup where the founders would be better off in Silicon Valley. It's up to the individual founders to decide if theirs is.

uh..hard point to understand (or swallow?).

I don't believe in this assumption -- "There are certainly some combination of country/startup where the founders would be better off in Silicon Valley - when we are talking about founders who need visas (they can't get EB5 green card which is given based on investment or business visas which are pretty much given to anyone who has valid established business or who are not already in US as a student/employee..in that case founders do get H1B easily transferred for their own company provided they can show company of substance..if they pursued advanced degree here then they don't get in H1B cap)..so limits to be the people without much of resources of their own - who don't understand market here (at least not on first hand basis) and don't have connections..how will they succeed.. why misguide some of them and also fool ourselves that such a thing is useful..especially, given there is much better chance if they stay where they are then they will be able to pull off something successful targeted at the market they already understand

and that too putting up number of 2500 such startups every year ..good idea to write 2 examples to validate it first..tell me some story..

so my point..people should start company where they understand the market and if US wants to benefit from international resources then investors should go outside US because only that will work..because that is right for startups/founders/investors..

Re: The Founder Visa

#143

Post by pg »

veteran wrote: post #142
pg wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying that would-be founders should stay in their home countries and start their startups there? If so, then the answer is that it depends on the country and the nature of the startup. There are certainly some combinations of country/startup where the founders would be better off in Silicon Valley. It's up to the individual founders to decide if theirs is.

uh..hard point to understand (or swallow?). I don't believe in this assumption -- "There are certainly some combination of country/startup where the founders would be better off in Silicon Valley - when we are talking about founders who need visas (they can't get EB5 green card which is given based on investment or business visas which are pretty much given to anyone who has valid established business or who are not…

I mean I literally can't understand you. This is like Finnegan's Wake.

Re: The Founder Visa

#144

Post by ajju »

veteran wrote: post #142
pg wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying that would-be founders should stay in their home countries and start their startups there? If so, then the answer is that it depends on the country and the nature of the startup. There are certainly some combinations of country/startup where the founders would be better off in Silicon Valley. It's up to the individual founders to decide if theirs is.

uh..hard point to understand (or swallow?). I don't believe in this assumption -- "There are certainly some combination of country/startup where the founders would be better off in Silicon Valley - when we are talking about founders who need visas (they can't get EB5 green card which is given based on investment or business visas which are pretty much given to anyone who has valid established business or who are not…

Actually there is a cap on H1B visas for advanced degree holders (20000/year) and this year this cap was met before the cap for the general category.

Re: The Founder Visa

#145

Post by ajju »

tokenadult wrote: post #65
tc wrote: post #10

This line made me smile: I think this would have such a visible effect on the economy that it would make the legislator who introduced the bill famous. It reminded me of "Law 13" of "The 48 Laws of Power": uncover something in your request... that will benefit him, and emphasize it out of all proportion. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=555691

A risk might be that if even one Al Qaeda terrorist gets in under this program, then the whole program will be shut down, and the sponsoring member of Congress's name will be infamous forever after.

Good VCs vet potential investees better than the FBI does. And that is true without the risk of being blamed for enabling a terrorist. Think about how well a VC would vet someone coming in from outside the country. (How well they can vet such a person is a separate but important issue).

And at least one of the 9/11 hijackers came in on a student visa. The student visa program has not been shut down (although checks for all visa programs have become more stringent).

Re: The Founder Visa

#146

Post by andreyf »

erlanger wrote: post #85
andreyf wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, who up-votes this junk? Let's see: The INS has their hands full... PG said: 10,000 people is a drop in the bucket by immigration standards For comparison, there were 591,050 student and exchange visas granted in 2007 [1]. If the INS can handle checking up on individual students following educations via Universities, they can do the same with 1/200th the number of startups via investment firms. The system would b…

"PG said: 10,000 people is a drop in the bucket by immigration standards" Yes, in terms of people. But you fail to understand that it's an entire new process and system that would have to be invented and executed. You just don't think like a con-man. Universities have quite a bit on the line, such as accreditation. A private company has next to nothing on the line. Anyway, here's how I'd do it: 1. First off, I'd need…

Tell me how you prevent either of the two previous scenarious, short of having the gov't handle the entire recommendation/approval process...

Accredidation - similar to the way that Universities do.

Re: The Founder Visa

#147

Post by andreyf »

bokonist wrote: post #139
tlb wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bar associations are very different from college accreditation boards. Bar associations are a guild whose main goal is to restrict supply by making it hard to become a lawyer. (Even still, the US has far more lawyers than it needs.) They exist pretty explicitly to keep legal salaries high. Accreditation for colleges is much more, well, collegial. There's no big motivation to restrict supply. It's hard to think of any…

Accreditation for less established and less lucrative professions is much easier. The grip tightens over time, within a profession. It's hard to think of any really good educational institutions that can't seem to get accredited for political reasons. Three years of on the job training is better education than three years of schooling in practically every field. Plus you get paid rather than have to pay. Yet on the j…

Three years of on the job training is better education than three years of schooling in practically every field.

In CS, this is mostly false. You learn very different things in school and in industry. The former is useful in the latter, but usually not vice versa.

Re: The Founder Visa

#148

Post by staunch »

rdouble wrote: post #136
tlb wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bar associations are very different from college accreditation boards. Bar associations are a guild whose main goal is to restrict supply by making it hard to become a lawyer. (Even still, the US has far more lawyers than it needs.) They exist pretty explicitly to keep legal salaries high. Accreditation for colleges is much more, well, collegial. There's no big motivation to restrict supply. It's hard to think of any…

Rather than petitioning congress for a new visa, perhaps it's easier to start a school and have founders come over on an F-1.

Operator of English language schools charged in massive [visa fraud]

http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/newsreleases/articles/080409losan...

Re: The Founder Visa

#149

Post by Xixi »

erlanger wrote: post #85
andreyf wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, who up-votes this junk? Let's see: The INS has their hands full... PG said: 10,000 people is a drop in the bucket by immigration standards For comparison, there were 591,050 student and exchange visas granted in 2007 [1]. If the INS can handle checking up on individual students following educations via Universities, they can do the same with 1/200th the number of startups via investment firms. The system would b…

"PG said: 10,000 people is a drop in the bucket by immigration standards" Yes, in terms of people. But you fail to understand that it's an entire new process and system that would have to be invented and executed. You just don't think like a con-man. Universities have quite a bit on the line, such as accreditation. A private company has next to nothing on the line. Anyway, here's how I'd do it: 1. First off, I'd need…

"Of course they'd agree, because of the benefits for the home country (sending money home, etc.)."

Sounds a bit like your first thought was along the line of "visa == immigrant == [name your third world country]". There are (still) many people in old Europe or Japan who think that US is a hotter place than home for a startup... and I'm part of them.

It's slowly changing though, I feel it around me : patents and costs of litigation, Sarbanes Oxley (IPO exit... gone ?), visa problems (the lottery thing with H1-B visa). It did hit quite a lot the American dream.

Specially when it comes to opening a branch in the US for small businesses : insurance costs literally explodes, it's harder to send employees to the newly created branch (H1-B is not the only solution, but it was the one that scaled the best), so it's harder to control it.

I used to work in New York City, with an H1-B. When I decided to create a startup I eventually trashed my H1-B and went back home. I didn't want to, but between keeping a day job and doing a startup part-time in the US, or doing a startup full time home, I choosed the latter.

I still think that US would have been much better, and I liked the life there quite a lot too (much more than horrid Paris), but well, my cofounder was in France and could not come... had there been a startup Visa, he/we would have applied, and we would have moved to SF.

Incidentally my former NY employer opened a branch in Switzerland, which is slowly becoming the main office... one of the reasons is the visa issue : it's much easier to move a US citizen to Geneva, than a European citizen to US... So in the end there might be just one marketer remaining in NYC, while it was supposed to be the opposite at first !

(For people wondering my first startup attempt did fail quite miserably... second attempt is faring pretty well so far)

Re: The Founder Visa

#150

Post by stuntprogrammer »

jules wrote: post #97

So if you don't need VC money you don't get in?

This is a serious hole in the proposal. If you have enough resources to not need to take investment for your startup (and want to minimize outside early stage money), but not enough for an EB-5 investor visa, then you're excluded. I know several people who fall into that gap; you'd think the US government would be happy to take immigrants with say at least 500k$ to support themselves but nope..
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