I don't think the top 65k salaries are necessarily going to the top 5-10 companies. I work for a very small company outside of the SF/SV bubble and our pay is m

I don't think the top 65k salaries are necessarily going to the top 5-10 companies. I work for a very small company outside of the SF/SV bubble and our pay is much more than the top H1B companies. We don't sponsor new H1Bs because recruiting is expensive for us and we can't really afford to have candidates rejected by the random lottery. Any system is going to have winners and losers. As I said above, my company can't sponsor new H1Bs under the current regime. I suspect that your startup example can't take that gamble either. Finally, there are always workarounds. Your hypothetical startup could hire the expert as a remote employee or if they're a true expert then other visas are available to them.