41–50 of 160 posts
If your goal is to persuade as many people as possible, insulting the previous administration and by extension those that voted for Bush is a bad start. I was already opposed to your idea before the second sentence, despite the fact that I'm an advocate of increased legal immigration.
A link to a PETITION where one can register support, might give this some political traction. I think pg+hn+/. etc could generate 50k signatures. ideas?
http://whitehouse2.org/priorities/1948-visas-for-startup-fou...
Anyone who missed it should check out the etherpad link: http://etherpad.com/ep/pad/slider/foundervisa Very cool.
Having been through the hoops, I'd generally support this, but it's a tough sell in today's economy. Because there are emotions involved. There are already similar visas (EB-5 and E-1). Especially the E-1 category is very close and could easily be amended to fit Paul's ideas (I used the E-1 as co-founder of my previous startup, EVE). One issue that needs to be addressed: you are not likely to get funding until you mo…
Is there any other options?
As much as I support your position (I'm an open immigration advocate), the concept of "Let the market decide" isn't exactly a position I hear the government ever clamoring to support. The government wants control, and giving up control is it's antithesis.
Let's suppose there are 2 types of founders: people who have enough money & connections, and the young "live on Ramen noodles" type founders.
For the "money & connections" type, a lot of foreign countries offer cheap but still qualified programmers and don't put too many obstacles on founding companies so if your country is like that it might make sense to stay. For the "Ramen" type, many of them may not afford America's often high living costs.
As for the argument that the US provides a better/more free market... even this is changing: The internet probably allows relatively easy selling to worldwide customers from any country.
All that said, the American dream probably still lives on and many people would likely provide counter-examples to my limited point of view. Of course pg didn't claim that coming to the US is a no-brainer for every single talented hacker. There are probably enough of those who are interested to satisfy the 10,000 founder/year goal.
This part scares me. Accreditation boards are a bug, not a feature. Perhaps, like pg's idea, they started out as well intentioned. But today, their primary purpose is to erect arbitrary barriers of entries, thus propping of the salaries of professionals and the tuition of the schools. The tech industry is great because it is so isolated from politics and bureaucracy. I'd hate for that to change.
I don't see why the potential benefit to the US of immigrants with startup ideas is necessarily greater than immigrants of similar technical skills with no stated intention to start a company. But the immigration fee could help in sorting that out.
I usually avoid politics, but since we now seem to have an administration that's open to suggestions, I'm going to risk making one If your goal is to persuade as many people as possible, insulting the previous administration and by extension those that voted for Bush is a bad start. I was already opposed to your idea before the second sentence, despite the fact that I'm an advocate of increased legal immigration.
Having been through the hoops, I'd generally support this, but it's a tough sell in today's economy. Because there are emotions involved. There are already similar visas (EB-5 and E-1). Especially the E-1 category is very close and could easily be amended to fit Paul's ideas (I used the E-1 as co-founder of my previous startup, EVE). One issue that needs to be addressed: you are not likely to get funding until you mo…
> you are not likely to get funding until you move here I think it's likely that if this visa existed, VCs would adapt to it by becoming more open to funding people who haven't immigrated yet.