5 ms·

A religion to get foreign entrepreneurs into Silicon Valley?

54 points by sprovoost 15y ago

Hyena 15y ago
On a more realistic note, I've often thought that combining hacker/maker spaces, good digital libraries and some communal living would make an excellent, low-cost fellowship for people looking to experiment for a couple of years. Related as I characterize the arrangement as monastic.
- mentat 15y ago
  I have been thinking similarly as have some friends. I think the time for this concept will be very soon.
  - sswezey 15y ago
    A modern age guild
- seanp2k 15y ago
  >"I've often thought that combining hacker/maker spaces, good digital libraries and some communal living would make an excellent, low-cost fellowship for people looking to experiment for a couple of years. Related as I characterize the arrangement as monastic." /WHEN/ I move out to SF and /when/ I have lots of cash this is exactly what I'm going to do.
- ramanujan 15y ago
  Very interesting. I wrote a spec for something similar a few years ago. Swap out the false truth claims of religion for the true ones of science, but keep the community, the ceremony, and the decor.
- pessimizer 15y ago
  I'm in - and I'd be looking to experiment for somewhere around 50 years, give or take 20. The major problem with something like that as I've seen it is that any arrangement or economy between people is inherently political, so the group would have to share a lot of goals and beliefs. Somebody needs to write a great book (or pamphlet) a few hackers could agree to get behind.
  - SomeCallMeTim 15y ago
    Having lived for a short time in "Cohousing," which is simply a fancy word for a bunch of people who own an entire condo complex/set of houses as a group, sharing ownership of a clubhouse and other facilities -- YES. The core problem was diverse goals. The entire group each time (I somehow made this mistake TWICE) had a hard time coming to common solutions around the most trivial decisions. Until you have something like a manifesto with a long set of explanations of what will be expected of everyone, you shouldn't even try to START forming the group. No more than a set of 3-4 friends should write the manifesto, either, or it won't have enough teeth. And there's a downside here, too: If you're going to live together with a lot of people with shared rules, the one thing you DON'T want is a lot of cultural diversity, at least not before the rules are set down and the new "diverse" members have bought into them. I've seen a community with strict vegans who wouldn't ever attend a meal where meat was served and other members who wouldn't eat if there wasn't a hefty meat portion. Now everyone gets their own kitchens, but the optional 2-3 times a week "common meals" were a strong way to stay connected with others in the community -- except in that they were also a source of conflict, for meat/no-meat and other reasons. tl;dr: Living together with (say) 30 other people is somewhat like being in a marriage with 30 other people, only with fewer benefits. At least in most such communities.
- dohkoxar 15y ago
  As I read this, I'm thinking this is somewhat happening in another sector, the Pro-gaming scene. In South Korea, gaming teams are starting to live together (10-15 people in a same house/apartment). In their team house, they will practice all day to improve their gaming skills through hard work day and night. I can't think of a reason this can't happen with hackers & entrepreneurs.
patio11 15y ago
Could there be some special religion related visa? The Mormons generally use Religious Worker (R) visas in the United States (and often similar ones internationally). Please do not actually attempt to convince a consular officer that you are the representative of an entrepreneurial religion. The time it takes to reject your application -- which is as-night-follows-day inevitable -- is time that the officer could have been using to examine and approve someone who has a legitimate case for a visa.
- Alex3917 15y ago
  "The time it takes to reject your application -- which is as-night-follows-day inevitable" If you're willing to invest the effort into reverse engineering the various court rulings on religion then you could probably get away with it, but you would also need a certain amount of traction first. While the supreme court usually strikes down protections for new religions, in all of their rulings they have been extremely careful to explain why such-and-such a protection shouldn't be granted in this specific instance, so as not to completely bar the creation of new religions in general.
  - Hyena 15y ago
    Because this religion is actively engaged in market labor, they wouldn't qualify even as a religious worker.
- andyking 15y ago
  As someone currently on month three of an interminable wait for a US bureaucrat (perhaps named Mr Godot) to decide whether I can marry my fiancée there or not, I wholeheartedly agree. The system's creaking as it is.
- mkramlich 15y ago
  I find it amusing/insane that a government gets to decide what is and is not an allowed religion. Q: Do you worship someone? A: Yes. Q: Good! Does he live in the clouds or in some Great Beyond? A: No he lives in Palo Alto. Q: Sorry, that's not allowed. We reject your religion on the ground of not being spooky/irrational/superstitious/ambiguous enough. Next please! A: I believe in faeries! Q: Too late. Plus that's not a serious religion. Faeries aren't real. Don't be silly.
Alex3917 15y ago
I've actually been joking about wanting to start the first YC-funded religion for a while. I think there are a lot of good idioms and paradigms from religion that one can use to tackle a variety of secular problems. I'm particularly inspired by the open source religion movement that's currently gaining momentum. That said, I'm not convinced that religion is the best approach for the particularly problem that you're trying to solve here. And even if it is, I think you're making the mistake of assuming that all religions have to basically look or feel like Christianity. In any case, silicon valley already has its own set of highly evolved spiritual beliefs. And no matter how much research you did I think it would be very difficult to impose some sort of external religion on top of that without changing the sorts of relationships that people have with each other, which I'd be hesitant to mess with too much since that is sort of the secret sauce of the place.
Mz 15y ago
My view of this is that it is intended as humor and is kind of tossing out the idea of "surely, there must be some sort of hack available for the visa problem". I was hoping it would inspire serious discussion of that piece of it rather than having people focus on the part of it that looks to me like it is tongue-in-cheek. (I get that kind of reaction a lot myself, which is sometimes frustrating, so it's possible I am projecting rather than being insightful.) Serious discussion of immigration options would be an interesting discussion to me. Busting people on the idea of "you can't be really serious about this" is pretty meh. Peace.
- VladRussian 15y ago
  >"surely, there must be some sort of hack available for the visa problem". it is simple - a PAC and a fund paying for the PR and lobby to change the law. Until there is no money interested in solving the problem ... Though if you look here http://www.h1base.com/visa/work/H1BvisaCapH1BquotaSystem/ref/1568/ http://www.h1base.com/visa/work/H1BvisaCapH1BquotaSystem/ref... - this year half H1B quota is still unused, so i'm not sure that there is really that big of a problem to be solved. Some nationals (China, India, etc...) may be in for a long wait at the final stage of the process - actual GC or adjustment once the petition is approved. It has nothing to do with being entrepreneurial or religious immigrant - it is about officially regulated racial makeup of allocation of the GC numbers and thus it is completely different problem. EDIT: strike the last one. It has been long time since i looked at it - http://www.hooyou.com/visabulletin/index.html http://www.hooyou.com/visabulletin/index.html - looking at the "Current" even for Mexico and Philippines it is obvious that the religion does also have the preferential treatment here as well (and numbers taken from one category usually decrease the numbers available for other categories).
- sgentle 15y ago
  This isn't really going to move the tongue farther from the cheek, but here goes: Why not a mail-order spouse programme for founders? Surely there must be a lot of Americans, especially with the financial crisis, who would be willing to take a bet on a founder's future income in exchange for a green card. You could make proposal pitch decks with Lessons Learned from previous marriages. And if it doesn't work out there's always Series B.
VladRussian 15y ago
How did the organizations which have amassed unimaginable wealth through not being taxed manage to get preferential treatment in the immigration law and its implementing system? Tough question... Btw, remember the religious worker visa being officially excluded from GC petition Premium Processing (15 days fast track) implemented for various employment based categories in the 2007 for the exact reason of being the category with the highest fraud found by the official investigation? One can imagine how bad the situation have been for the government to start officially "discriminate" against religion :) http://www.murthy.com/news/n_prorev.html http://www.murthy.com/news/n_prorev.html Why it isn't surprising that self-righteous people who think that they are owners of highest and the only truth [ and thus entitled to not pay their fair share ] are also the most fraud perpetrating?
jaekwon 15y ago
who's John Galt?
bugsy 15y ago
I don't understand why people in the Netherlands are so gung ho about emigrating to the US. All I hear from europeans is how the US is a warmongering nation that has health care only for the rich. I think that's largely true, but then why is there such a big rush to come here to work. Could it be that The Netherlands is not the paradise that it is commonly promoted as? I'd also like to see a list of nations that Americans with some sort of programming background can emigrate to with no hassle. Nothing special, just the sort of ease of moving in that they expect the US to provide to their people.
- Caligula 15y ago
  Not a big surprise. There are more opportunities for hi tech startups in the US. Also, health care is not as big an issue for young males.
- sprovoost 15y ago
  I didn't mean to suggest that Dutch immigration is any better (it's most likely worse). I was speaking in absolute terms, not relative. If you're under 30, take a look at the Australian Work-Holiday visa, that's about as laid-back as it gets.
- VladRussian 15y ago
  >I'd also like to see a list of nations that Americans with some sort of programming background can emigrate to with no hassle. Have University friends who immigrated to Sweden, Great Britain, Netherlands, Germany, Canada, mathematics or programming, and their immigration hassles were less/faster or comparable to mine (for example no double labor certification like for H1 and GC in the US, and some of them even did 2 immigrations one after another while i was doing one). On the other side nobody of them has made such money like some of my friends here in the US :)
iamelgringo 15y ago
Startups are a religion. Founders are zealots. Let me explain. In 1967, my parents received a letter from a missionary who taught at a school in rural Honduras. She asked them to help her run the school. 9 months later, my parents packed up all their worldly belongings into a Chevy pickup truck, and drove south 5,000 miles. Their 3 children under 5 rode along side my parents in the front seat. My parents worked for 20 years in Central America, running schools, starting at least 10 churches, rehabbing 3 youth camps, doing refugee work ( Nicaraguan revolution happened then ), started a seminary, did literacy work, etc... Most of their time was spent building community, getting people together to talk about shared values and beliefs, and helping people work together to build organizations that could help others. I've spent most of my life hanging around missionaries. I actually dropped out of Bible school 20 years ago. My original plan was to be a missionary in the middle of a jungle somewhere. (True story). Last thing in the world I wanted to do was to stay in the US and start a business. Oops. Point is. I know missionaries. Five years ago, my wife and I moved to Silicon Valley with all our wordly possessions in a moving van. And, we started work on our startup. Hackers & Founders is all about building community, helping other people connect and talk about shared values (building startups, and hacking cool stuff together), and enabling them to build startups that can help themselves, and their customers. We're going to be building educational resources: Hackers & Founders University, a physical coworking space (at some point), small groups ( Hackers & Founders @ Lunch ), large events with a speaker (preacher?), and general community building at our networking events. Missionaries and founders are zealots. They generally take huge risks for the sake of their quixotic beliefs and ideals. They are passionate and evangelistic about promoting what they believe in. They build communities of customers, and try their best to serve them. Misionaries == Founders && Startups == a religion. Laura (my wife and H&F cofounder) and I often joke around that we're building the Church of the Startup with Hackers & Founders.
danbmil99 15y ago
Of interest: for legal and tax purposes, some Humanist groups declare themselves religions, and this has been upheld in various court proceedings.
deerpig 15y ago
Did I read this article wrong? Why would American Mormons need to go through American immigration to work in another country? I live in Northeast Thailand, and there is a hive of Mormons not too far from here who always travel on bicycle in pairs, and always wearing black trousers, white shirts and little black name tags. Local people just think they are crazy and ignore them. I have know idea how they work out visas out here. But I do know they have a lot of under the table political clout in many countries mostly because of money paid over many decades. When I lived in Hong Kong, I remember someone telling me that in 50 years they had only converted a handful of people.
- sprovoost 15y ago
  American Mormoms in Thailand deal with Thai immigration, foreign Mormoms in the US deal with US immigration. In Utah you can get a tour in dozens of languages, so there's a lot of people in that second category. Of course there's also American Mormoms going from state A to B; they don't need to deal with immigration at all.

54 points by sprovoost 15y ago

Hyena 15y ago

On a more realistic note, I've often thought that combining hacker/maker spaces, good digital libraries and some communal living would make an excellent, low-cost fellowship for people looking to experiment for a couple of years. Related as I characterize the arrangement as monastic.

mentat 15y ago
I have been thinking similarly as have some friends. I think the time for this concept will be very soon.
- sswezey 15y ago
  A modern age guild
seanp2k 15y ago
>"I've often thought that combining hacker/maker spaces, good digital libraries and some communal living would make an excellent, low-cost fellowship for people looking to experiment for a couple of years. Related as I characterize the arrangement as monastic." /WHEN/ I move out to SF and /when/ I have lots of cash this is exactly what I'm going to do.
ramanujan 15y ago
Very interesting. I wrote a spec for something similar a few years ago. Swap out the false truth claims of religion for the true ones of science, but keep the community, the ceremony, and the decor.
pessimizer 15y ago
I'm in - and I'd be looking to experiment for somewhere around 50 years, give or take 20. The major problem with something like that as I've seen it is that any arrangement or economy between people is inherently political, so the group would have to share a lot of goals and beliefs. Somebody needs to write a great book (or pamphlet) a few hackers could agree to get behind.
- SomeCallMeTim 15y ago
  Having lived for a short time in "Cohousing," which is simply a fancy word for a bunch of people who own an entire condo complex/set of houses as a group, sharing ownership of a clubhouse and other facilities -- YES. The core problem was diverse goals. The entire group each time (I somehow made this mistake TWICE) had a hard time coming to common solutions around the most trivial decisions. Until you have something like a manifesto with a long set of explanations of what will be expected of everyone, you shouldn't even try to START forming the group. No more than a set of 3-4 friends should write the manifesto, either, or it won't have enough teeth. And there's a downside here, too: If you're going to live together with a lot of people with shared rules, the one thing you DON'T want is a lot of cultural diversity, at least not before the rules are set down and the new "diverse" members have bought into them. I've seen a community with strict vegans who wouldn't ever attend a meal where meat was served and other members who wouldn't eat if there wasn't a hefty meat portion. Now everyone gets their own kitchens, but the optional 2-3 times a week "common meals" were a strong way to stay connected with others in the community -- except in that they were also a source of conflict, for meat/no-meat and other reasons. tl;dr: Living together with (say) 30 other people is somewhat like being in a marriage with 30 other people, only with fewer benefits. At least in most such communities.
dohkoxar 15y ago
As I read this, I'm thinking this is somewhat happening in another sector, the Pro-gaming scene. In South Korea, gaming teams are starting to live together (10-15 people in a same house/apartment). In their team house, they will practice all day to improve their gaming skills through hard work day and night. I can't think of a reason this can't happen with hackers & entrepreneurs.

patio11 15y ago

Could there be some special religion related visa? The Mormons generally use Religious Worker (R) visas in the United States (and often similar ones internationally). Please do not actually attempt to convince a consular officer that you are the representative of an entrepreneurial religion. The time it takes to reject your application -- which is as-night-follows-day inevitable -- is time that the officer could have been using to examine and approve someone who has a legitimate case for a visa.

Alex3917 15y ago
"The time it takes to reject your application -- which is as-night-follows-day inevitable" If you're willing to invest the effort into reverse engineering the various court rulings on religion then you could probably get away with it, but you would also need a certain amount of traction first. While the supreme court usually strikes down protections for new religions, in all of their rulings they have been extremely careful to explain why such-and-such a protection shouldn't be granted in this specific instance, so as not to completely bar the creation of new religions in general.
- Hyena 15y ago
  Because this religion is actively engaged in market labor, they wouldn't qualify even as a religious worker.
andyking 15y ago
As someone currently on month three of an interminable wait for a US bureaucrat (perhaps named Mr Godot) to decide whether I can marry my fiancée there or not, I wholeheartedly agree. The system's creaking as it is.
mkramlich 15y ago
I find it amusing/insane that a government gets to decide what is and is not an allowed religion. Q: Do you worship someone? A: Yes. Q: Good! Does he live in the clouds or in some Great Beyond? A: No he lives in Palo Alto. Q: Sorry, that's not allowed. We reject your religion on the ground of not being spooky/irrational/superstitious/ambiguous enough. Next please! A: I believe in faeries! Q: Too late. Plus that's not a serious religion. Faeries aren't real. Don't be silly.

Alex3917 15y ago

I've actually been joking about wanting to start the first YC-funded religion for a while. I think there are a lot of good idioms and paradigms from religion that one can use to tackle a variety of secular problems. I'm particularly inspired by the open source religion movement that's currently gaining momentum. That said, I'm not convinced that religion is the best approach for the particularly problem that you're trying to solve here. And even if it is, I think you're making the mistake of assuming that all religions have to basically look or feel like Christianity. In any case, silicon valley already has its own set of highly evolved spiritual beliefs. And no matter how much research you did I think it would be very difficult to impose some sort of external religion on top of that without changing the sorts of relationships that people have with each other, which I'd be hesitant to mess with too much since that is sort of the secret sauce of the place.

Mz 15y ago

My view of this is that it is intended as humor and is kind of tossing out the idea of "surely, there must be some sort of hack available for the visa problem". I was hoping it would inspire serious discussion of that piece of it rather than having people focus on the part of it that looks to me like it is tongue-in-cheek. (I get that kind of reaction a lot myself, which is sometimes frustrating, so it's possible I am projecting rather than being insightful.) Serious discussion of immigration options would be an interesting discussion to me. Busting people on the idea of "you can't be really serious about this" is pretty meh. Peace.

VladRussian 15y ago
>"surely, there must be some sort of hack available for the visa problem". it is simple - a PAC and a fund paying for the PR and lobby to change the law. Until there is no money interested in solving the problem ... Though if you look here http://www.h1base.com/visa/work/H1BvisaCapH1BquotaSystem/ref/1568/ http://www.h1base.com/visa/work/H1BvisaCapH1BquotaSystem/ref... - this year half H1B quota is still unused, so i'm not sure that there is really that big of a problem to be solved. Some nationals (China, India, etc...) may be in for a long wait at the final stage of the process - actual GC or adjustment once the petition is approved. It has nothing to do with being entrepreneurial or religious immigrant - it is about officially regulated racial makeup of allocation of the GC numbers and thus it is completely different problem. EDIT: strike the last one. It has been long time since i looked at it - http://www.hooyou.com/visabulletin/index.html http://www.hooyou.com/visabulletin/index.html - looking at the "Current" even for Mexico and Philippines it is obvious that the religion does also have the preferential treatment here as well (and numbers taken from one category usually decrease the numbers available for other categories).
sgentle 15y ago
This isn't really going to move the tongue farther from the cheek, but here goes: Why not a mail-order spouse programme for founders? Surely there must be a lot of Americans, especially with the financial crisis, who would be willing to take a bet on a founder's future income in exchange for a green card. You could make proposal pitch decks with Lessons Learned from previous marriages. And if it doesn't work out there's always Series B.

VladRussian 15y ago

How did the organizations which have amassed unimaginable wealth through not being taxed manage to get preferential treatment in the immigration law and its implementing system? Tough question... Btw, remember the religious worker visa being officially excluded from GC petition Premium Processing (15 days fast track) implemented for various employment based categories in the 2007 for the exact reason of being the category with the highest fraud found by the official investigation? One can imagine how bad the situation have been for the government to start officially "discriminate" against religion :) http://www.murthy.com/news/n_prorev.html http://www.murthy.com/news/n_prorev.html Why it isn't surprising that self-righteous people who think that they are owners of highest and the only truth [ and thus entitled to not pay their fair share ] are also the most fraud perpetrating?

jaekwon 15y ago

who's John Galt?

bugsy 15y ago

I don't understand why people in the Netherlands are so gung ho about emigrating to the US. All I hear from europeans is how the US is a warmongering nation that has health care only for the rich. I think that's largely true, but then why is there such a big rush to come here to work. Could it be that The Netherlands is not the paradise that it is commonly promoted as? I'd also like to see a list of nations that Americans with some sort of programming background can emigrate to with no hassle. Nothing special, just the sort of ease of moving in that they expect the US to provide to their people.

Caligula 15y ago
Not a big surprise. There are more opportunities for hi tech startups in the US. Also, health care is not as big an issue for young males.
sprovoost 15y ago
I didn't mean to suggest that Dutch immigration is any better (it's most likely worse). I was speaking in absolute terms, not relative. If you're under 30, take a look at the Australian Work-Holiday visa, that's about as laid-back as it gets.
VladRussian 15y ago
>I'd also like to see a list of nations that Americans with some sort of programming background can emigrate to with no hassle. Have University friends who immigrated to Sweden, Great Britain, Netherlands, Germany, Canada, mathematics or programming, and their immigration hassles were less/faster or comparable to mine (for example no double labor certification like for H1 and GC in the US, and some of them even did 2 immigrations one after another while i was doing one). On the other side nobody of them has made such money like some of my friends here in the US :)

iamelgringo 15y ago

Startups are a religion. Founders are zealots. Let me explain. In 1967, my parents received a letter from a missionary who taught at a school in rural Honduras. She asked them to help her run the school. 9 months later, my parents packed up all their worldly belongings into a Chevy pickup truck, and drove south 5,000 miles. Their 3 children under 5 rode along side my parents in the front seat. My parents worked for 20 years in Central America, running schools, starting at least 10 churches, rehabbing 3 youth camps, doing refugee work ( Nicaraguan revolution happened then ), started a seminary, did literacy work, etc... Most of their time was spent building community, getting people together to talk about shared values and beliefs, and helping people work together to build organizations that could help others. I've spent most of my life hanging around missionaries. I actually dropped out of Bible school 20 years ago. My original plan was to be a missionary in the middle of a jungle somewhere. (True story). Last thing in the world I wanted to do was to stay in the US and start a business. Oops. Point is. I know missionaries. Five years ago, my wife and I moved to Silicon Valley with all our wordly possessions in a moving van. And, we started work on our startup. Hackers & Founders is all about building community, helping other people connect and talk about shared values (building startups, and hacking cool stuff together), and enabling them to build startups that can help themselves, and their customers. We're going to be building educational resources: Hackers & Founders University, a physical coworking space (at some point), small groups ( Hackers & Founders @ Lunch ), large events with a speaker (preacher?), and general community building at our networking events. Missionaries and founders are zealots. They generally take huge risks for the sake of their quixotic beliefs and ideals. They are passionate and evangelistic about promoting what they believe in. They build communities of customers, and try their best to serve them. Misionaries == Founders && Startups == a religion. Laura (my wife and H&F cofounder) and I often joke around that we're building the Church of the Startup with Hackers & Founders.

danbmil99 15y ago

Of interest: for legal and tax purposes, some Humanist groups declare themselves religions, and this has been upheld in various court proceedings.

deerpig 15y ago

Did I read this article wrong? Why would American Mormons need to go through American immigration to work in another country? I live in Northeast Thailand, and there is a hive of Mormons not too far from here who always travel on bicycle in pairs, and always wearing black trousers, white shirts and little black name tags. Local people just think they are crazy and ignore them. I have know idea how they work out visas out here. But I do know they have a lot of under the table political clout in many countries mostly because of money paid over many decades. When I lived in Hong Kong, I remember someone telling me that in 50 years they had only converted a handful of people.

sprovoost 15y ago
American Mormoms in Thailand deal with Thai immigration, foreign Mormoms in the US deal with US immigration. In Utah you can get a tour in dozens of languages, so there's a lot of people in that second category. Of course there's also American Mormoms going from state A to B; they don't need to deal with immigration at all.