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Conversely, if a two person company were founded by two immigrants it would beat the odds. The chances of two founders meeting, working together, then creating

by tonyhb 11y ago

Conversely, if a two person company were founded by two immigrants it would beat the odds. The chances of two founders meeting, working together, then creating a 1B+ company in the adversary of worse contacts is smaller. In fact, moving to this country and making a 1B+ country takes more work than being born here. Take a look at statistics at people from well-off backgrounds or with contacts vs people with nothing.

dalke 11y ago
I do not believe that adversity builds strength which leads to success, which I believe is your argument. I won't believe it until we start seeing the schools of the children of the successful put arbitrary and even petulant roadblocks in the way of the students, and deliberately teaching to far below the level the students can handle. Anecdotally speaking, as an American immigrant to Sweden, I do not think the adversity I faced has made me as successful as I would have been had I stayed the US. Certainly some succeed despite adversity, and even draw strength from it, but to highlight those few is to make faceless the many who did not. In any case, the report argues that diversity leads to robustness which leads to success. This is a very different view, designed more, I think, to appeal to the current pro-diversity trend rather than a group which might prefer the meaning behind "spare the rod, spoil the child."
- mahyarm 11y ago
  Educated ambitious people of other countries move and work to somewhere where the opportunities are greater, and are willing to do so, leaving their home countries and families. This is a filter which causes these immigrants to be successful compared to the average disadvantaged unmotivated american. It's the old high vs low skill immigration debate.
  - dalke 11y ago
    I agree that it's nice to think that. However, you've now introduced a third axis. Axis #1, from the report, is that nationality diversity is important, in which case a white Protestant Canadian from Toronto brings more diversity than a Russian Orthodox Tlingit from rural Southeast Alaska. Axis #2, from tonyhb, is that adversity leads to success. In which a highly educated medical doctor from Iraq who, as a refugee, ends up in Sweden and works as a taxi cab driver in order to support his family, instead of spending two years to learn the language and get recertified, has excellent changes for financial success. Or not. Now your #3 is "Educated ambitious people". But you have two baselines: "somewhere where the opportunities are greater" than in the home country is one, "successful compared to the average disadvantaged unmotivated american" is another. These are not the same. The US brings in agricultural workers from Mexico. The opportunities are greater in the US. But they are less successful financially than 'disadvantaged unmotivated american', because the Mexican worker is going to return to Mexico, where the cost of living and retirement is lower, while the American will stay in the US so needs a higher pay. Thus the long tradition of, say, South Africans going to work in London, suffer for a few years to save up a nest egg, and move back to South Africa. That doesn't mean the local English are disadvantaged and unmotivated, only that they have different motivations. Or the educated ambitious doctor from Iraq who drives a taxi, because the opportunity to be alive driving a taxi is better than being dead back in Iraq. Two different baselines, yes? Each of these three axes leads to different policy. All of them have some truth. All are based on factors which are hard to identify in a 22 year old other than "comes from a family with money." Now to point out another worrisome aspect of your comment - why do you highlight 'average disadvantaged unmotivated american'? The report compares immigrants to founders of high tech companies. Very view people, including educated ambitious Americans, do that. To then insert 'disadvantaged unmotivated' makes it sound like you are thinking of something else, but the only reason I can think of is anti-poor and anti-minority viewpoints, which surely you don't mean. Could you clarify why it was important to add those qualifiers? Does it also guide your thinking about how to accept refugees?
    - mahyarm 11y ago
      My logic went as so: 1. Immigrants are a minority 2. Yet immigrants found %50 of +$1B companies according to this article. 3. My hypothesis as to why this is so is because they are ambitious educated people, even though they might be very poor when they arrive. You notice a similar effect in schools. School performance is mostly dependent on the actual quality of the kids and the parents. High skill immigrant parents probably emphasised schooling and quality parenting a lot more than the low performing kids and thus you get a similar effect with high skill immigrants. It's why you see so many high performing 2nd-generation asian kids, even though the parents started as very poor people from some starving village in china. The parent's tiger parenting style lead to elevated outcomes for them and their kids. As far as refugees, that is why you have different visa categories, to reflect different immigration policies for different situations. High skill immigrants who are ambitious and found companies are a different separate thing than refugee immigration policy. The reason why people conflate the different kinds of immigrants is because it's easy, even though there are many different kinds of immigrants. --- As to why I said disadvantaged average american, is because america is a 1st world country with a 3rd world country inside of it. Compared to it's neighbor up north, there is significantly more violence, social inequality, rotting ghettos and uneducated poor people even though canada has an even more liberal immigration policy than the USA. The average american is probably less skilled and motivated than the average high skill immigrant. Also adversity acts like a people filter. The people who can get through adversity and still thrive are usually pretty amazing people. It also can make you stronger than a person who lives a soft life.
      - dalke 11y ago
        My original comment is that the 50% of point #2, which is based on this report, is a meaningless number. Suppose each company had 10 co-founders, and 1 of every co-founder was foreign born. Then by the definition from this report, 100% of all companies would be founded by an immigrant. Wow! Those immigrants are ambitious to have started every single one of the companies! Now comes a new report, based on the same data, that says "Immigrants are 10% of founders but 15% of the population". Something's wrong - immigrants are underrepresented as founders. Are they lazy? Discriminated against? Do they face too much adversity? So, two reports, one which says "foreigners started 100% of all companies" and the other "foreigners are underrepresented as founders", both base on the same data, but giving very different interpretations of the data. I believe this report was deliberately structured to present the sound bite that "50% of $1B+ companies are founded by immigrants" so that people like you would think it's meaningful. Without knowing the overall founder population, you cannot make a strong conclusion one way or the other. This report does not give those numbers, nor does it make it easy to figure them out myself. Hence why I say it's a propaganda piece meant to influence people who don't have the time to dig into policy wonk details. Like you. The rest of your comment unfortunately continues the ill-informed anti-poor and anti-minority viewpoint that I pointed out earlier by adding racist stereotypes.
cplanas 11y ago
You are supposing that an American company needs to have been founded in the US. That's not true. There are many tech companies, including 1B+ ones, that were founded out of the US and then moved there. The availability of capital is so great in the US -even comparing with Europe- that makes a lot of sense to move there.

by tonyhb 11y ago

dalke 11y ago

I do not believe that adversity builds strength which leads to success, which I believe is your argument. I won't believe it until we start seeing the schools of the children of the successful put arbitrary and even petulant roadblocks in the way of the students, and deliberately teaching to far below the level the students can handle. Anecdotally speaking, as an American immigrant to Sweden, I do not think the adversity I faced has made me as successful as I would have been had I stayed the US. Certainly some succeed despite adversity, and even draw strength from it, but to highlight those few is to make faceless the many who did not. In any case, the report argues that diversity leads to robustness which leads to success. This is a very different view, designed more, I think, to appeal to the current pro-diversity trend rather than a group which might prefer the meaning behind "spare the rod, spoil the child."

mahyarm 11y ago
Educated ambitious people of other countries move and work to somewhere where the opportunities are greater, and are willing to do so, leaving their home countries and families. This is a filter which causes these immigrants to be successful compared to the average disadvantaged unmotivated american. It's the old high vs low skill immigration debate.
- dalke 11y ago
  I agree that it's nice to think that. However, you've now introduced a third axis. Axis #1, from the report, is that nationality diversity is important, in which case a white Protestant Canadian from Toronto brings more diversity than a Russian Orthodox Tlingit from rural Southeast Alaska. Axis #2, from tonyhb, is that adversity leads to success. In which a highly educated medical doctor from Iraq who, as a refugee, ends up in Sweden and works as a taxi cab driver in order to support his family, instead of spending two years to learn the language and get recertified, has excellent changes for financial success. Or not. Now your #3 is "Educated ambitious people". But you have two baselines: "somewhere where the opportunities are greater" than in the home country is one, "successful compared to the average disadvantaged unmotivated american" is another. These are not the same. The US brings in agricultural workers from Mexico. The opportunities are greater in the US. But they are less successful financially than 'disadvantaged unmotivated american', because the Mexican worker is going to return to Mexico, where the cost of living and retirement is lower, while the American will stay in the US so needs a higher pay. Thus the long tradition of, say, South Africans going to work in London, suffer for a few years to save up a nest egg, and move back to South Africa. That doesn't mean the local English are disadvantaged and unmotivated, only that they have different motivations. Or the educated ambitious doctor from Iraq who drives a taxi, because the opportunity to be alive driving a taxi is better than being dead back in Iraq. Two different baselines, yes? Each of these three axes leads to different policy. All of them have some truth. All are based on factors which are hard to identify in a 22 year old other than "comes from a family with money." Now to point out another worrisome aspect of your comment - why do you highlight 'average disadvantaged unmotivated american'? The report compares immigrants to founders of high tech companies. Very view people, including educated ambitious Americans, do that. To then insert 'disadvantaged unmotivated' makes it sound like you are thinking of something else, but the only reason I can think of is anti-poor and anti-minority viewpoints, which surely you don't mean. Could you clarify why it was important to add those qualifiers? Does it also guide your thinking about how to accept refugees?
  - mahyarm 11y ago
    My logic went as so: 1. Immigrants are a minority 2. Yet immigrants found %50 of +$1B companies according to this article. 3. My hypothesis as to why this is so is because they are ambitious educated people, even though they might be very poor when they arrive. You notice a similar effect in schools. School performance is mostly dependent on the actual quality of the kids and the parents. High skill immigrant parents probably emphasised schooling and quality parenting a lot more than the low performing kids and thus you get a similar effect with high skill immigrants. It's why you see so many high performing 2nd-generation asian kids, even though the parents started as very poor people from some starving village in china. The parent's tiger parenting style lead to elevated outcomes for them and their kids. As far as refugees, that is why you have different visa categories, to reflect different immigration policies for different situations. High skill immigrants who are ambitious and found companies are a different separate thing than refugee immigration policy. The reason why people conflate the different kinds of immigrants is because it's easy, even though there are many different kinds of immigrants. --- As to why I said disadvantaged average american, is because america is a 1st world country with a 3rd world country inside of it. Compared to it's neighbor up north, there is significantly more violence, social inequality, rotting ghettos and uneducated poor people even though canada has an even more liberal immigration policy than the USA. The average american is probably less skilled and motivated than the average high skill immigrant. Also adversity acts like a people filter. The people who can get through adversity and still thrive are usually pretty amazing people. It also can make you stronger than a person who lives a soft life.
    - dalke 11y ago
      My original comment is that the 50% of point #2, which is based on this report, is a meaningless number. Suppose each company had 10 co-founders, and 1 of every co-founder was foreign born. Then by the definition from this report, 100% of all companies would be founded by an immigrant. Wow! Those immigrants are ambitious to have started every single one of the companies! Now comes a new report, based on the same data, that says "Immigrants are 10% of founders but 15% of the population". Something's wrong - immigrants are underrepresented as founders. Are they lazy? Discriminated against? Do they face too much adversity? So, two reports, one which says "foreigners started 100% of all companies" and the other "foreigners are underrepresented as founders", both base on the same data, but giving very different interpretations of the data. I believe this report was deliberately structured to present the sound bite that "50% of $1B+ companies are founded by immigrants" so that people like you would think it's meaningful. Without knowing the overall founder population, you cannot make a strong conclusion one way or the other. This report does not give those numbers, nor does it make it easy to figure them out myself. Hence why I say it's a propaganda piece meant to influence people who don't have the time to dig into policy wonk details. Like you. The rest of your comment unfortunately continues the ill-informed anti-poor and anti-minority viewpoint that I pointed out earlier by adding racist stereotypes.

cplanas 11y ago

You are supposing that an American company needs to have been founded in the US. That's not true. There are many tech companies, including 1B+ ones, that were founded out of the US and then moved there. The availability of capital is so great in the US -even comparing with Europe- that makes a lot of sense to move there.