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This 40% stat gets pushed all the time with no context. The way it sounds is that super immigrants are starting these companies. But the way the study is, a 5 p
by bruceb 6y ago
This 40% stat gets pushed all the time with no context. The way it sounds is that super immigrants are starting these companies. But the way the study is, a 5 person founding team could have 1 person who was son/daughter of immigrant and then it is counted.
Lots of valuable brains are outside the country, but doesn't mean we should traffic in somewhat misleading statistics.
- burkaman 6y agoHow is that misleading?
- belval 6y agoTo be clear I have no skin in the game (not from the US), but if the GP's claims are true, then I was misled because I did think that the 40% that gets thrown around was founded only by immigrants. Does it change my view on immigration? Of course not, but it does indicate that if immigration was stopped entirely then it is not true to say that that 40% slice of fortune 500 companies would simply never have been founded.
- burkaman 6y agoI mean if somebody told you "40% of fortune 500 companies are founded by first generation immigrants" that wasn't true, but I've never heard that, and I can't immediately find an article that says that. The claim as stated here, "40% of the Fortune 500 companies are founded by immigrant families", is very straightforward.
- bruceb 6y agoBS. What is the image that comes to mind with: "40% of the Fortune 500 companies are founded by immigrant families" Sounds like they were solely responsible for creating this company. Now a more precise statement: 40% of Fortune 500 companies had at least one immigrant or American with at least 1 immigrant parent on found team. Changes the image in one's mind a lot. Why not actually be straightforward instead of misleading?
- burkaman 6y agoI guess it would be better to change "founded" to "founded or cofounded". Your formulation is fine too, although immigrants are Americans, so I don't love that distinction. Regardless, these all conjure up the same idea for me. For the purposes of this discussion, I don't even see much difference between founder and cofounder. Typically if someone is called a cofounder then the business probably wouldn't exist without them. To settle the argument, why don't we agree to stick with this sentence from the original study: "43 percent of these companies were founded or co-founded by an immigrant or the child of an immigrant."
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoWell... 40% of the Fortune 500 had at least one founder that was from an immigrant family. I think that's the precise statement, but I might misunderstand. That is not the same as saying that 40% of the founders of Fortune 500 companies were immigrants (which I believe is bruceb's point). To your point: Let's say there were 5 founders. Let's say one was an immigrant. Would the company still have been founded by the other 4, if the immigrant were not there? That's unknown, but one would expect that at least some of the time the answer is "no". Or if it were founded, would it have grown as large as it did? Again, unknown, but in at least some cases the answer is probably "no". To argue otherwise is to say that founders are replaceable parts - that they have nothing unique to add. That seems... questionable.
- belval 6y agoI think you are building a straw man from my comment instead of addressing the actual claim, my point is absolutely not about questioning whether the co-founders were relevant to the companies success. My comment should be read as: I have seen the 40% figure given very often on HN and I did interpret it as 40% of Fortune 500 companies being founded only by first-generation immigrants. To me someone who was born in a country and has citizenship in that particular country is not an immigrant.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoIf that was a strawman, it was unintentional. But, to your actual point (I hope): I'm inclined to agree with your definition of immigrants. And yet, if we didn't accept the parents, we wouldn't have the children either. The problem with that argument is, where do you draw the line? One generation? Two? A few decades? A few centuries? If you follow that argument too far, only businesses founded by Native Americans weren't founded by families of immigrants. I think that categorizing people as immigrants, (first generation) children of immigrants, and non-immigrants makes sense for this discussion. And if "founded by families of immigrants" means first-generation children, that's still to some degree an argument that we want immigrants because of the effect they have on the economy. Not as direct an argument as if they were founded by immigrants, but still something of an argument.
- rileymat2 6y agoI don’t agree with the overall point but there is an implication in the use of the stat that the business would not have started if not for that 1 out of 5 founder. Alternatively, that role would have been filled By someone else.
- three_seagrass 6y ago>Alternatively, that role would have been filled By someone else. If your hypothesis were true, then the rate of Fortune 500 companies being founded by immigrant families (40%) would be representative of the % of immigrant families in the U.S. population (24%), which it's not.
- rileymat2 6y agoNo, The ops point is if you include cofounding, the percentage should be higher than the population rate. Made up numbers follow. If the average number of Cofounders was 4, at 25% population rate the number would be around 66% immigrant founded by that stat.
- burkaman 6y agoI don't understand what you mean. How would the role be filled? They invented the role, that's the point of founding something. They didn't apply to a job posting for the position of "founder" that somebody else could have applied to.
- rileymat2 6y agoSay you have a CTO, Salesman and CEO founding and one is an immigrant, it is possible the other two would have filled that role with someone else.
- burkaman 6y agoAnything is possible, but the term "cofounder" is not usually thrown around lightly. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any cofounder willing to say they could have started their business without one or more of their fellow cofounders.
- hadlock 6y agoI think the reason you're getting down-modded is that the accepted way to challenge this kind of baseless statistic is "do you have a source for your 40% number?". Thanks for calling out this 40% number, I had just glanced over it and accepted it until you challenged it.