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@2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

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Re: @2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

#41

Post by gruseom »

jhancock wrote: post #39
gruseom wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is one of the few comments in the thread that makes sense to me.

I haven't asked anyone about percentages, but one thing we can say is that whatever the percentage is of foreign-founded startups trying to relocate to the US, that would be roughly the number who are having trouble doing so.

As I pointed out in another comment, the best investors say that their bottleneck is finding good startups to invest in. Objections that reduce to the idea that these people don't know their own business (or are lying) don't hold much water with me. It also seems obviously true that a demographically small number of new startups (a few thousand) would provide huge economic leverage. (Sure, their investors would get richer, but the whole country would get richer. This isn't a financial shell game, it's about creating value by making things.) So the question reduces to the design problem of figuring out a good way to identify authentic startups and minimize gaming of the system. That isn't prima facie insoluble, so all these arguments that it can't be done, at the very beginning of the discussion, just seem disingenuous to me.

What you say about health care from your own experience is very clear, and I certainly hope that that situation gets replaced by a more rational and sustainable one.

Edit: by the way, there's a problem with this:

Unfortunately your challenge is flawed of finding investors that have experienced health care as more of a problems than immigration

That's not my challenge. My challenge was "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" (emphasis added), in other words, a leading investor who has gone through the same thought process as you guys and arrived at your conclusion that the HC impediment is more important than the visa one. If the argument is a good one, it ought to be possible to find someone who knows early-stage startup investment inside-out and agrees with it. This is a significant point because one thing we know about the business of startup investment is that it doesn't work the way most people think it does. By the way, I'm quite willing to change my mind about this, but not as long as I see all the most credible people lined up on one side of the issue.

Re: @2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

#42

Post by fnid »

tptacek wrote: post #22
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…

Also, and everyone's heard me on this before - this group would do a lot more for startups if they channeled this energy into healthcare reform. Job lock-in is real and affects many, many more potential startup founders than immigration policy. Absolutely. The "founders visa" thing isn't bad because it's scary policy; it can't be scary since it will never happen. It's bad because it's diverting our attention from the…

Exactly! And the real issues are that our society isn't concerned with producing bright scientists, engineers, and researchers. They are concerned with producing more pop stars, tv stars, athletes, etc...

The inventors, innovators, and scientists have made life so easy, we've forgotten how necessary they are to provide us with the life we live. I'd say the intellectual contributors to life improve it immeasurably more than a basketball star, but the admiration is completely flipped.

When China and India become the super powers through a direct concentration on study, science and technology and we are left in the dust the equation will flip again. It was the space race and the cold war that made scientists sexy and we'll get back there when we realize we are not so powerful anymore.

The founder visa concept is just a band-aid. It's a farce. It's a ruse created by investors to give themselves more power and opportunities to fund companies, but I don't really see a lot of positive benefit to society coming out of the companies I'm seeing funded lately.

Most of the startups that have been promoted since the web 2.0 fiasco are pretty stupid ideas really and if they do succeed we will continue to be worse off as a nation. Ad networks? Upload a photo today? Show my location 24/7? 140 character messages? Really people? Is that the direction we want to take our country? We need more visas for that nonsense?

I don't think so.

Re: @2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

#43

Post by joe_the_user »

fnid wrote: post #42
tptacek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, and everyone's heard me on this before - this group would do a lot more for startups if they channeled this energy into healthcare reform. Job lock-in is real and affects many, many more potential startup founders than immigration policy. Absolutely. The "founders visa" thing isn't bad because it's scary policy; it can't be scary since it will never happen. It's bad because it's diverting our attention from the…

Exactly! And the real issues are that our society isn't concerned with producing bright scientists, engineers, and researchers. They are concerned with producing more pop stars, tv stars, athletes, etc... The inventors, innovators, and scientists have made life so easy, we've forgotten how necessary they are to provide us with the life we live. I'd say the intellectual contributors to life improve it immeasurably mor…

I don't think that the Founder's Visa is ruse. I think it's a not particularly well-thought-out idea that resonates with the start-up community because it seems to address some problems and, even-more, seems to validate the identity 'Founder' as something worthwhile.

I do think that start-ups provide something of worth to society. However, I think it's a problem when public policy starts to be about massaging some groups identity.

Re: @2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

#44

Post by dcurtis »

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…

Health care is fixed easily with money, which investors have. Visas are not as easy, so they're a bigger problem.

Re: @2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

#45

Post by gruseom »

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.

Whoa there. I brought up the tourist visa as an obvious way to enter the country and then work illegally, to answer the bogus objection that a founders' visa would lead to more illegals stealing American jobs: all that would be is an expensive and convoluted way to do what anyone willing to break that law can already do cheaply and trivially right now. And it wouldn't even work as well, since your name would be associated with the company you'd "founded", leaving a trail that the other method wouldn't.

Edit: I suppose I should mention that no, I am not condoning anyone who enters a country on a tourist visa and works illegally.

Re: @2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

#46

Post by gruseom »

joe_the_user wrote: post #12
davemc500hats wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not sure i understand your concern? the proposal we're working on is a modification to the EB-5 Visa, which currently requires a $1M investment (or a $500K investment in economically targeted area). even with a lower capital rqmt of say $100K-$250K, i don't think many people would be willing to put up that kind of cash for a taxi driver. on the other hand, it might be useful to make sure the source(s) of capital are…

It saddens me to see so much effort put into this kind of proposal. I favor loosened immigration conditions but this is a poorly thought-out scheme that seeks to create private initiative via government intervention. It doesn't just threaten to pollute the 'immigration space' with folks trying to seem like 'founders', it also pollutes the start-up space with these folks. If someone is 'creating jobs' with the goal of…

this is a poorly thought-out scheme that seeks to create private initiative via government intervention

But that's absurd. It's trying to lower a government barrier to individuals who are the very definition of private initiative. And I don't mean that in a moral sense. I mean it in a dictionary-literal sense.

Re: @2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

#47

Post by BerislavLopac »

Personally I would like to get an US visa, startup or not -- but this is plain ridiculous. As I understand it, the VCs are running out of good projects to invest in in the States, so they want the hill to come to Mohammad, i.e. the founders to get to the US.

US is a lovely country I'd very much like to visit, but why don't the VCs simply pack up themselves and go to other countries and fund startups there? I understand that they would find it difficult to follow their investments in foreign environments, but there is a number of solutions they could combine, from having trusted local experts at location, to combining western legal entities with the local technical expertise (Seedcamp's Zemanta, from Slovenia, is a good example).

Re: @2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

#48

Post by jacquesm »

fnid wrote: post #42
tptacek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, and everyone's heard me on this before - this group would do a lot more for startups if they channeled this energy into healthcare reform. Job lock-in is real and affects many, many more potential startup founders than immigration policy. Absolutely. The "founders visa" thing isn't bad because it's scary policy; it can't be scary since it will never happen. It's bad because it's diverting our attention from the…

Exactly! And the real issues are that our society isn't concerned with producing bright scientists, engineers, and researchers. They are concerned with producing more pop stars, tv stars, athletes, etc... The inventors, innovators, and scientists have made life so easy, we've forgotten how necessary they are to provide us with the life we live. I'd say the intellectual contributors to life improve it immeasurably mor…

> It's a ruse created by investors to give themselves more power and opportunities to fund companies,

I doubt that investors are looking for more power or opportunities to fund companies, there is rather a glut of ideas and companies that could be funded than a scarcity, so that can't really be the deciding factor here.

What I think drives this whole idea is that to regain the lead in innovation you have to make it possible for innovators to get in on the game. And America is the country to be in for that.

I only have to look at my own history to see how much difference location can make when you are just out of the 'seed' stage.

Whether it would work or not is a different thing, but I definitely don't see it as a ruse. Merely a nice idea but probably ultimately too hard to execute properly so that it is only an all across the board 'win', instead of a 'win' for some and a 'loss' for others.

Re: @2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

#49

Post by socratees »

netsp wrote: post #27
johnnybgoode wrote: post #9

This appears to have started with PG's Founder Visa essay. Be sure to read the original HN thread about that essay: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=556908 At the time, I thought PG's idea was so flawed that I nearly registered just to point out why. Fortunately, bokonist did a great job of explaining what was wrong with the idea in that thread.

Thanks for pointing to that thread. Bokonist makes a strong case against accreditation bodies in general, barriers to entry and the associated slippery slope. While I am sympathetic to that idea, we have to remember that the Founder Visa is a type of liberalisation, not a type of barrier. The solution mightn't be perfect, but it could be better then no founder immigration. While accreditation is possibly bad in gener…

So if a VC firm overseas funds a startup, who gets the visa? Do you think the VC's overseas will be generous enough to let the founder get a US visa while they remain at their home country?

Re: @2gov - Visas for startup founders movement

#50

Post by nopassrecover »

miloshh wrote: post #37
joe_the_user wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 need…

Well as it stands you can get a visa based on simply having a sponsoring employer. This just moves from sponsoring employer to sponsoring VC.
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