Here's the thing: immigration is something that is waaaay out of your control as a founder. It doesn't matter how clever you are, if some snooty clerk decides

Here's the thing: immigration is something that is waaaay out of your control as a founder. It doesn't matter how clever you are, if some snooty clerk decides that they don't like you, you're done for, your dream is going to die. I personally think that start-ups are already hard enough without having to contend with gratuitous bureaucratic roadblocks. You would be better off founding your company in your own country (assuming that we are talking about people from modern Western or Asian countries). Putting your dream at the mercy of bureaucrats is a recipe for disaster. This is a little bit of a cry from the heart. The dramas I had, as an Australian wanting to work in France were just unbelievable - clerks that flatout refused to apply the rules, disintrested bosses, ridiculous catch-27 style rules in the first place, it was almost impossible to get a work visa, even as an engineer with more than 10 years experience. I even had to spend 6 months shuttling backwards and forward between London and Paris every week for 6 months whilst fighting the bureaucracy. And, as if the rest wasn't bad enough, the only way that I eventually got my paperwork approved was to get the personal support of the mayor of Paris. As an interesting aside, once I got passed the roadblock clerk, and passed up to the next stage where they deal with 'special' cases, the clerk couldn't understand why my application hadn't been approved straight-away. Anyway, start-ups don't need distractions of that size.