4 ms·

Yep, this part really struck a nerve: (2) the founder has to own at least 10% of a company that has raised $250,000 within the same year as the application for

by fnid 17y ago

Yep, this part really struck a nerve: (2) the founder has to own at least 10% of a company that has raised $250,000 within the same year as the application for the Visa. This is a power trip from the VC's it's also a method by which they can extract more equity from the founder of the company using "coming to america" as a carrot. What does raising money have to do with founding a company? This is a stupid and ego-centric view of entrepreneurship. 90% of VC funded startups fail. 80% of restaurants fail and according to the SBA, as a general rule of thumb, new employer businesses have a 50/50 chance of surviving for five years or more http://www.businessknowhow.com/startup/business-failure.htm http://www.businessknowhow.com/startup/business-failure.htm Seems like it would be better for america if raising money was not a requirement of being a founder.

joe_the_user 17y ago
This is indeed a terrible idea. Every day it seems like I read folks on hn who are indeed familiar with start-ups and investment but who think they thereby understand economics. The first thing they often don't understand is how perverse incentives work. Consider, lots of folks with $250K in the bank would be happy to get a guaranteed $50K out of it. So they would "invest" (launder) the money into a fake start-up which would serve only for the "found" to give them back their $250K plus $50K in return for the "founder" getting a green card. Just one bad effect of this would be the fake start-ups themselves, which would pollute the start-up space with starting with more fake craiglist ads on up.
- petercooper 17y ago
  A book I had about US immigration said that the situation you outline actually occurred with the E-2 visa for quite some time. That's why the criteria for the E-2 are so strict now - if the criteria weren't so strict, it'd be the ideal "founders visa" already. Basically the post is proposing creating a lax E-2 (of sorts), which already failed once. (Even though people are throwing around numbers of $500k, etc, for the E-2 - that was certainly not the case even a few years ago.) Perhaps the most interesting comment over there is on relaxing the criteria for the O-1 visa instead. Perhaps instead of being "incredibly famous" you could just be "well known in your field" instead.. I better keep in the top 100 on Hacker News then ;-)
  - linuxconvert 17y ago
    The 500k number comes from people confusing the E-2 and the EB-5 I suspect. The EB-5 program gives you a greencard for a 500k$ investment in an disadvantaged area or $1m anywhere else. The money needs to be "at risk". If there were programs I felt were sufficiently reputable I'd go for it. However, I'd want to quantify the risk. I'd rather not get into a situation where some ski resort gets partially built, goes under and funnily enough its all the immigrants money which disappears into dubious hands.. and the immigrants should just be happy they got their greencard.
  - potatolicious 17y ago
    My mother managed to get an O-1 actually - and she's not even college-educated. She's simply quite well known and regarded in her community (knitting, arts and crafts), and that was that. Maybe more founders ought to look at the O-1.
    - linuxconvert 17y ago
      Bearing in mind that the O-1 is a non-immigrant visa (my friend is on one).

by fnid 17y ago

joe_the_user 17y ago

This is indeed a terrible idea. Every day it seems like I read folks on hn who are indeed familiar with start-ups and investment but who think they thereby understand economics. The first thing they often don't understand is how perverse incentives work. Consider, lots of folks with $250K in the bank would be happy to get a guaranteed $50K out of it. So they would "invest" (launder) the money into a fake start-up which would serve only for the "found" to give them back their $250K plus $50K in return for the "founder" getting a green card. Just one bad effect of this would be the fake start-ups themselves, which would pollute the start-up space with starting with more fake craiglist ads on up.

petercooper 17y ago
A book I had about US immigration said that the situation you outline actually occurred with the E-2 visa for quite some time. That's why the criteria for the E-2 are so strict now - if the criteria weren't so strict, it'd be the ideal "founders visa" already. Basically the post is proposing creating a lax E-2 (of sorts), which already failed once. (Even though people are throwing around numbers of $500k, etc, for the E-2 - that was certainly not the case even a few years ago.) Perhaps the most interesting comment over there is on relaxing the criteria for the O-1 visa instead. Perhaps instead of being "incredibly famous" you could just be "well known in your field" instead.. I better keep in the top 100 on Hacker News then ;-)
- linuxconvert 17y ago
  The 500k number comes from people confusing the E-2 and the EB-5 I suspect. The EB-5 program gives you a greencard for a 500k$ investment in an disadvantaged area or $1m anywhere else. The money needs to be "at risk". If there were programs I felt were sufficiently reputable I'd go for it. However, I'd want to quantify the risk. I'd rather not get into a situation where some ski resort gets partially built, goes under and funnily enough its all the immigrants money which disappears into dubious hands.. and the immigrants should just be happy they got their greencard.
- potatolicious 17y ago
  My mother managed to get an O-1 actually - and she's not even college-educated. She's simply quite well known and regarded in her community (knitting, arts and crafts), and that was that. Maybe more founders ought to look at the O-1.
  - linuxconvert 17y ago
    Bearing in mind that the O-1 is a non-immigrant visa (my friend is on one).