5 ms·

Is there any chance of YC expanding to Europe in the future?

by mcxx 19y ago

sharpshoot 19y ago
What do you mean expand to Europe? European founders can apply.
- mcxx 19y ago
  Yes, I know that but we would have to move to US for the summer and thus get visas, which could be difficult.
  - pmjordan 19y ago
    I'm hoping that getting a visa is easy compared to getting a successful startup off the ground. :) pg's views on this have been widely documented.
    - DaniFong 19y ago
      From http://www.paulgraham.com/america http://www.paulgraham.com/america : "US immigration policy is particularly ill-suited to startups, because it reflects a model of work from the 1970s. It assumes good technical people have college degrees, and that work means working for a big company. If you don't have a college degree you can't get an H1B visa, the type usually issued to programmers. But a test that excludes Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Michael Dell can't be a good one. Plus you can't get a visa for working on your own company, only for working as an employee of someone else's. And if you want to apply for citizenship you daren't work for a startup at all, because if your sponsor goes out of business, you have to start over." Getting a visa isn't always something you have control over. My best friend, having found a job at a YC startup, is currently held up at the boarder. The guards didn't seem to believe it was a real company. I was rejected for my TN visa once, and had to prove that the company I was to be working for was incorporated, along with a plethora of other documentation. I'm still not sure how I'm supposed to get a visa to work at my startup. The rules for the TN-1 visa (for Canadians, I presume the TN-2 for Mexicans work similarly) say you can't be a controlling owner of the business you'd work for. Could you then get a whole bunch of Canadians together, no one of whom would have a controlling share, and found a company in the US? I've tried to hunt down an answer to this, but to no avail. By the letter of the law, yes, one should be able to: this means that many college educated Canadians could bypass immigration entirely. But in practice it's up to the whim of the immigration guard, and people are kept out of the US, not allowed to work for completely legit companies.
      - pmjordan 19y ago
        It strikes me as odd that this would be decided by some random immigration official at the border. Surely, you'd chip away at getting an appropriate visa at the US embassy back home? Or are there in fact two possible points of failure?
        DaniFong 19y ago
        For most programmers, there's the H1-B Visa. This is tied to a specific employer, they're given out on a roughly first come first serve basis and there's a quota of them: only 65,000 are given out per year at last count. Last year there were so many people applying that all the visas for FY 2008 (starting October 07) were given out on April 1st -- the next time you'd be able to apply would be April 1st 2008, for October 2008! For Canadians and Mexicans there is a different visa, called the TN, created under NAFTA. If you read the NAFTA proceedings, you'll come to understand that the method of getting verified at the border was meant to make it easier and quicker to get a Visa, for certain classes of professional. The one professional category involving computers, 'computer systems analyst', was so vaguely defined that one could only interpret it was meant as an umbrella term. But what's happened in reality is that small-minded border guards have been given the authority to simply reject people. They demand all sorts of things that aren't in the law, and they make no apologies.
        jward 19y ago
        I wonder how well it'd go over to attend a 4 month long entrepreneurship seminar in Boston. I also wonder how they define 'working in the US'. If my start up is incorporated in Canada, can they stop me from working on it while I'm visiting the US?
        DaniFong 19y ago
        The law isn't very refined on this point. It's perhaps best to talk with a lawyer, taking the attitude "I'm going to do this, now keep me off the waterboard". US law doesn't ban individuals from being international actors. It barely even acknowledges the possibility. But ultimately you're subject to the whims of whichever boarder guard your happen to meet. Canadians are legally allowed to vacation in the USA for up to 6 months. I'm not sure, but I don't think the law is too specific on not being able to work (the semantics of the word are too tricky), but you need a visa to be in someone's employ. That may leave certain possibilities open.
SwellJoe 19y ago
Read the YC FAQ.

Is there any chance of YC expanding to Europe in the future?

by mcxx 19y ago

Is there any chance of YC expanding to Europe in the future?

sharpshoot 19y ago

What do you mean expand to Europe? European founders can apply.

mcxx 19y ago
Yes, I know that but we would have to move to US for the summer and thus get visas, which could be difficult.
- pmjordan 19y ago
  I'm hoping that getting a visa is easy compared to getting a successful startup off the ground. :) pg's views on this have been widely documented.
  - DaniFong 19y ago
    From http://www.paulgraham.com/america http://www.paulgraham.com/america : "US immigration policy is particularly ill-suited to startups, because it reflects a model of work from the 1970s. It assumes good technical people have college degrees, and that work means working for a big company. If you don't have a college degree you can't get an H1B visa, the type usually issued to programmers. But a test that excludes Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Michael Dell can't be a good one. Plus you can't get a visa for working on your own company, only for working as an employee of someone else's. And if you want to apply for citizenship you daren't work for a startup at all, because if your sponsor goes out of business, you have to start over." Getting a visa isn't always something you have control over. My best friend, having found a job at a YC startup, is currently held up at the boarder. The guards didn't seem to believe it was a real company. I was rejected for my TN visa once, and had to prove that the company I was to be working for was incorporated, along with a plethora of other documentation. I'm still not sure how I'm supposed to get a visa to work at my startup. The rules for the TN-1 visa (for Canadians, I presume the TN-2 for Mexicans work similarly) say you can't be a controlling owner of the business you'd work for. Could you then get a whole bunch of Canadians together, no one of whom would have a controlling share, and found a company in the US? I've tried to hunt down an answer to this, but to no avail. By the letter of the law, yes, one should be able to: this means that many college educated Canadians could bypass immigration entirely. But in practice it's up to the whim of the immigration guard, and people are kept out of the US, not allowed to work for completely legit companies.
    - pmjordan 19y ago
      It strikes me as odd that this would be decided by some random immigration official at the border. Surely, you'd chip away at getting an appropriate visa at the US embassy back home? Or are there in fact two possible points of failure?
      - DaniFong 19y ago
        For most programmers, there's the H1-B Visa. This is tied to a specific employer, they're given out on a roughly first come first serve basis and there's a quota of them: only 65,000 are given out per year at last count. Last year there were so many people applying that all the visas for FY 2008 (starting October 07) were given out on April 1st -- the next time you'd be able to apply would be April 1st 2008, for October 2008! For Canadians and Mexicans there is a different visa, called the TN, created under NAFTA. If you read the NAFTA proceedings, you'll come to understand that the method of getting verified at the border was meant to make it easier and quicker to get a Visa, for certain classes of professional. The one professional category involving computers, 'computer systems analyst', was so vaguely defined that one could only interpret it was meant as an umbrella term. But what's happened in reality is that small-minded border guards have been given the authority to simply reject people. They demand all sorts of things that aren't in the law, and they make no apologies.
        jward 19y ago
        I wonder how well it'd go over to attend a 4 month long entrepreneurship seminar in Boston. I also wonder how they define 'working in the US'. If my start up is incorporated in Canada, can they stop me from working on it while I'm visiting the US?
        DaniFong 19y ago
        The law isn't very refined on this point. It's perhaps best to talk with a lawyer, taking the attitude "I'm going to do this, now keep me off the waterboard". US law doesn't ban individuals from being international actors. It barely even acknowledges the possibility. But ultimately you're subject to the whims of whichever boarder guard your happen to meet. Canadians are legally allowed to vacation in the USA for up to 6 months. I'm not sure, but I don't think the law is too specific on not being able to work (the semantics of the word are too tricky), but you need a visa to be in someone's employ. That may leave certain possibilities open.

SwellJoe 19y ago

Read the YC FAQ.