« My Bathroom Gets Papered In Forbes | MassTLC Innovation 2009 Unconference – 10/1/09 »

The Founders Visa Movement

In April, Paul Graham wrote an inspired post titled The Founder Visa. In it he proposed the idea of creating a US Visa for founders of startup companies – 10,000 / year for founders of companies that are started in the US. There was some chatter around this at the time (I think it’s a brilliant idea) but then the discussion died down.

I sent the link to Paul’s essay to a few congressmen (congresspeople?) that I know with an offer to discuss it further and give some substantive examples. I just got off the phone with a senior staff member of one of my congressmen who had read the essay and was interested in hearing more.

This issue has come up over and over again – in 2008 I wrote a post titled Solving the H-1B Visa Issue where I suggested that “the US should grant permanent residency to anyone who graduates from a qualified four year university with a computer science degree.” I didn’t put any energy behind this at the time (beyond a blog post) because of where we were in the election cycle.

Now I’m ready. I was hit squarely in the face with this over the summer. Two of the ten TechStars Boulder teams were comprised of non-US founders – two from Canada and two from the UK. Both lived in Boulder for the summer and want to relocate here and build their businesses in the US (and – specifically – in Boulder). Over the summer we struggled to figure out ways to get them Visas – all of the proposed approaches were expensive, risky, and tiresome. Both companies are still trying, but each are now seriously considering returning to their home countries to build their businesses.

I cannot come up with a single reason why this makes any sense from a US perspective. These are young, talented entrepreneurs that have come out of a three month program with amazingly interesting startups. They are in the final process of raising their first rounds of financing. Post financing they will be creating US based high tech jobs. If they are successful, they will create a lot of jobs. Plus, they are young so they will do this multiple times in their lifetime.

It should be trivial for them to stay in the US.

In an effort to flesh out this thinking, a few questions came up on the call.

How Do You Determine If Someone Is a “Founder”? Two easy approaches: (1) set up a non-government board consisting of credible VCs, entrepreneurs, and lawyers to vet applicants. (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.

How Do You Deal With Failure? The founder gets to keep the Visa. Startups fail. That’s part of the experience. Some of the greatest companies were not the “first” that an entrepreneur did. If the entrepreneur doesn’t start another company with a year, then the Visa expires.

I’m looking for more feedback on this as I work with a few people to actually create a movement around this (rather than just an idea, blog post, or essay). So – if you have positive or negative feedback, along with suggestions about how to make this more powerful as a construct, or more palatable to people in our government who will have a negative knee jerk reaction based on “illegal immigration” or “jobs to immigrants” concerns, please weigh in.

September 10th, 2009 Categories: Startup Visa

Yuri Ammosov

Brad:

This WILL NOT work. VCs demand residency as condition to review your pitch. "I will get it after we close a deal" is an absolute dealbreaker. I heard this this summer 14 times (I counted) from 14 different big- and not-so-big Valley names that I met. Everything goes great, "we will pitch you at a partner meeting" – "wait, are you a non-resident?" – "sorry, deal's off". You cannot even get a lawyer to draft your company docs unless you pay in full in advance!

http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld Brad Feld

If there was a Founders Visa that fit something like the spec I described, I’d happily fund a company in advance of it being formally approved.

JasonJ

The problem with your proposed plan is that letting unsuccessful founders keep the Visa may make the program politically unpopular (read: bad soundbite) and kill it before most people have a chance to digest the long-term advantages.

I propose a slightly modified, more politically palatable version:

In our political system it is important to note that:
The Government wants job-creation because more jobs=happy constituents.

Therefore, if we tie the problem that the Government is trying to solve (unemployment) directly to the problem that these founders are trying to solve (citizenship), we find that they have a common solution.

-Entrepreneurs create jobs!
-About half of Entrepreneurs are foreign-born (http://venturebeat.com/2006/11/15/note-to-washing…
-The public rancor surrounding immigration law has to do with immigrants TAKING American jobs
SOLUTION: The Government creates "Founder's Visas" which are a path for a Founder's citizenship upon CREATION of, say 100,000 hours of "American" employment (over, say, 5-years).

Each Party's interests are closely aligned:
-Founders work as hard as possible to create as many jobs as possible as quickly as possible to gain citizenship before their Visa expires;
-VC's want a committed founder to grow the company as fast as possible to see if the idea is a "home run";
-Politicians want to crow about the great new jobs that "they" create.

To make this idea EVEN MORE politically popular, you could modify Paul Graham's "10,000 American Visas" into "200 Visas per State". This would create "local" jobs for local politicians to show benefits to their constituents–a cost-free version of "political pork"!

On the plus side to this modification, creating just 100 jobs per year in Bismark or Cheyenne would make the news there, and keep local constituents happy. Creating 100 jobs in Colorado or California wouldn't be widely noticed, though the companies planted there would have a strong local infrastructure and an improved chance to be much, much bigger.

What is the possible economic impact?

Rough calculations of a new annual class of 10,000 entrepreneurs trying to create 100,000 hours of American employment over 5 years gives us an attempt at an average of 100,000 new American jobs annually. This is the minimum that each annual class of founders is shooting for. And while some of those companies will never create their 10 jobs/year and fail, others will "go Google" and be spectacularly successful, creating thousands or tens-of-thousands of new jobs each.

Over a decade, the wealth created by such an outpouring of entrepreneurship could potentially be measured in the TRILLIONS. And all this employment and goodwill toward the government and happy citizenry is possible without costing taxpayers a cent.

Brad, you are proposing playing a political game, so it is important to give the politicians what they want, and ultimately, there is no reason not to do so. The long-term advantages to the economy, to individual companies, to American citizens and to the potential startup founders are just too great.

http://www.acebrandage.com ace bhattacharjya

Love this idea and in some ways, it's got some precedent. Lots of foreign-born doctors in the 1970s and 80s chose to practice in less affluent states. They moved there because it was easier for them to get a visa– it had the additional benefit of improving rural American healthcare.

The one issue I have with your argument (and that you note) is that tech startups often need that tech / venture ecosystem to be successful. If the company in Bismarck or Cheyenne isn't a success, the political points won't be there.

http://intensedebate.com/people/PhilSugar PhilSugar

The real issue shouldn't be around "founders" it should be do we want to let foreign nationals that have received technical degrees in the U.S. work in the U.S?

To let you know where I stand on that one I think that if you graduate with a threshold GPA from an accredited engineering school they should present you with a green card along with your diploma.

What is INSANE is that we educate people and then not let them work in the U.S. If you care to argue that we shouldn't educate foreign nationals….I'll let you go down path, because I think there is more logic to that argument than investing in the most important asset the U.S. has: Human Capital. Don't misread me….I think we should attract the best, brightest, most motivated, from anywhere.

So I think the whole process (from exploiting Visa holders to providing amnesty for people that blatantly don't follow any rules, etc) is flawed and this is some small band-aid.

We should strive for better.
http://www.intensedebate.com/people/PhilSugar PhilSugar

The real issue shouldn't be around "founders" it should be do we want to let foreign nationals that have received technical degrees in the U.S. work in the U.S?

To let you know where I stand on that one I think that if you graduate with a threshold GPA from an accredited engineering school they should present you with a green card along with your diploma.

What is INSANE is that we educate people and then not let them work in the U.S. If you care to argue that we shouldn't educate foreign nationals….I'll let you go down path, because I think there is more logic to that argument than investing in the most important asset the U.S. has: Human Capital, and then basically throw it away or worse burn it. Don't misread me….I think we should attract the best, brightest, most motivated, from anywhere.

So I think the whole process (from exploiting Visa holders to providing amnesty for people that blatantly don't follow any rules, etc) is flawed and this is some small band-aid.

We should strive for better.

http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld Brad Feld

I completely agree that we should present a green card with a diploma whenever someone graduates with a threshold GPA. I wrote about that in http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2008/08/solving-t…

Michael

The idea is great but how would anyone be able to raise 250K if it is not sure that you can actually get a visa afterwards? A lot of visas get denied and this one seems especially prone to it.

I wonder why nobody has yet come up with the E-2 visa? It may not work for all nationalities, but it could work from an investment as low as $150.000 (http://www.green-card.com/Visa-Services/work-stud…

Then, if the founder is successful, there should of course be an easier way to obtain a green card to remove the incertainty of being expelled in case of any failure.

I like the founder´s visa too though, good luck and success convincing the congresspeople….
http://www.4mmgames.com Nick Perrett

I got an O1 Visa when I moved from London last year to found a company in NYC.

I think the keys were: you're last company was a recognized leader in its field; you, pesonally were a key part of that success; a very narrowly defined focus expertise to lead the application (even if you're experience, as mine was, is much broader); and to have "presence" in your industry ie speaker panels, press articles, awards etc.

A good lawyer really helps as I spent a year trying with another lawyer whose advice was essentially poor.

In case anyone's interested my former company was http://www.image-metrics.com whose VFX work on the Curious Case of Benjamin Button's facial animation won an Academy Award and won a games industry award for Grand Theft Auto. My new company http://www.4mmgames.com was also starting to produce ground-breaking online games. So, my point being, is that the companies you're founding/have founded previously need a good story, but then I think you'd be good to at least try the O1.

Laura Devine in NYC was my lawyer by the way. Anastasia there is excellent and I'm sure would help anyone thinking of trying for an O1.

Nick

http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld Brad Feld

Excellent feedback / info – thanks. Do you think there’s any approach / option with the O1 that would work with a first time founder / entrepreneur?

kip

Great post. Here are some other hacks that could potentially partner well:
1. If i get a Visa, my whole family can work.
Nerds marry nerds and yet go near any top tier college and you have people doing language lessons rather than working because they can't get under a Visa.
2. Put an extra zero on to the number h1bs and cap on the total number any company can have. I'd take maximum current employee count w visa +15% or 10% as the limit so it's not seen as being protectionist. but allowing competition.
3. Hack Americas schools in the model of Ireland and India
We spend more on education in terms of local budgets than anywhere else. Let's make the education more competitive.
Al Eisaian

Great idea Brad, just need some way of keeping it high-fidelity. I came to this country as a high school student in 1978 and barely qualified to stay in the US by getting my green card through some INS technicality a year after getting my BSEE in 1987. The process to say the least was quite touch and go! I was one of the fortunate ones! Majority of my fellow foreign-born classmates (some extremely brilliant had to leave the US after graduation!)

I launched my first company in 1991 that failed but taught me a great deal about planning. After a few years of working for a global conglomerate and saving some money, I launched my second company in 2001, my 3rd company in 2005 and my 4th company earlier this year. The fact that I was one of the lucky ones to get the right to stay in the US has been responsible for the creation of hundreds of very high-paying jobs here AND overseas. And looking at it purely from a human perspective and self-interested American (I am a citizen now) there is NO better way of contribution and making friends all over the world than this.

Why would we actively drive away the brilliant minds and job engines of the future is beyond comprehension from me. I am HUGE supporter!
http://upasanataku.com Upasana Taku

I graduated from Stanford 5 years ago. Stanford paid me full tuition and stipend to study at Stanford. I worked with Fortune 50 companies in California yet struggled to get my H1-B with the quota getting used up within week 1 that year. Once that was done I had to deal with realms of docs to get through stages of Green card processing, at this time it seems it will take 3-5 more years to get one, I filed for it 2.5 years ago. I am an Indian citizen.

My friend who graduated with me from Stanford worked at the same cool Bayarea company, filed for the green card with me and had it in his hand in 7 months! He came from a smaller country which does not churn out hordes of engineers. Does merit have value or quotas and India's population have a higher say on what I can and cannot do in the global business landscape?

I have moved to India to start my venture so I dont have to worry about legalese and can setup any type of company (not necessarily in my area of education) for which I can hire people all over the world. Is it a problem that I now have a bigger professional network in the US but more flexibility to build a company in India? YES
That I will have to travel back and forth to tap Silicon Valley networks? YES

- Canada unlike US gives permanent residence to anyone who works and pays taxes for 18 months.

- There are thousands of people in the same shoes as me, with one foot in the US and one in their birth country evaluating which road to take to build on their ideas.

- USCIS is already screwed up very heavy on paperwork that gets lost, ever heard of scanning original documents? Please find a solution that is heavy on tech automation, not another manual process heavy system that takes 10 years to enforce bills.

Note: Papers I submitted to USCIS for green card are same/similar as those I submitted for H1-B are same/similar as those I submitted for F-1 student visa. Wonder if its not easier to just ask for new papers instead of building larger files for each visa?
Pingback: Health Care, Immigration, and Marketing by Pigeon : Floriday Properties
Pingback: Cake-Roll.com » Blog Archive » Health Care, Immigration, and Marketing by Pigeon
http://twitter.com/berkan @berkan

A founders visa wouldn't only allow entrepreneurs to stay in the US, it would allow engineers in the US with "real jobs" to become entrepreneurs…
Doug

Why just founders? Or people with computer science degrees? I have some very talented immigrants working for me with degrees in math, physics, accounting, and political science, who just happened not to be born in the U.S. Imagine, for a moment, that each state in the U.S. had its own immigration rules and it required a visa to work for a company in California or Colorado.

Realisticly, free immigration isn't going to happen, but here is a simple improvement: anyone who graduates from an accredited U.S. university is awarded a green card when they get their degree. We allow fairly free immigration to U.S. universities. We educate these people (often at considerable expense to the U.S. taxpayer) and ask them to leave the country as soon as they might become productive. (There is a one year training exemption, which makes even less sense. It says, essentially, "You can be here as long as you're not very productive.") Many go home and create companies that compete against U.S. companies.

http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld Brad Feld

I completely agree that a green card should be awarded with a diploma.

http://www.altcanvas.com Jayesh

It is a great idea. I can give you my case as an example to prove your point.

I spent last 6 years in US (earning MS for first 2 yrs and doing jobs for 4 yrs). During this time I got bit by the startup bug. I tried to find ways to do a startup on my own while still staying in US. But the only way I figured was to work for 2-4 more yrs for my employer while they get me a Green Card and then ditch them to go solo. Ditching the employer who processed your GC is not what I wanted to do and 2-4 yr wait is way tooo long for an under-30 entrepreneur.

So about 7 months ago I took the plunge. I resigned and moved back to my home country India. I now work on my own ideas and am trying to build a startup around them. Given the audience of my product and the prospering environment for startups in US, I would still like to do this in US. But these (artificial?) borders between countries make that very difficult.

I wish the best in your effort and hope that leads to better global opportunities for startup founders.
http://www.mydials.com Wayne Morris

Thanks for championing this as it does seems crazy. We are a 3 year old startup with HQ in CO and a wholly-owned subsidiary in Australia where our development teams are. One founder, the CTO, resides in Australia and we are trying to obtain a L-1A visa for him to move to the USA since he can be much more valuable here given some of our potential partnerships. We have just been told the application has been rejected – we don't have the full decision notification yet so not sure why.

In this case he meets the criteria of founder, we are funded and viable and it seems to clearly meet the intent of an executive transfer so we are a bit mistified.

It seems that innovative companies are creating jobs, but there are plenty of obstacles and one that shouldn't be happening is this type of bureaucracy.
http://intensedebate.com/people/richard_st59861 Richard Stump

I havent read every comment so some of this mat be addressed and these are in a random order:
The money component could easily lead to gaming of the system
It should be written to include a clause that the founder must work full time in the business
IS it possible that just raising the H1B cap would solve much of this problem?
is it possible to get this passed they will trade h1B jobs for founders jobs and is that a good compromise?
if a dollar requirement is included it should include SBIR/STTR funding
Would a bank loan qualify for the 250K?
This is actually as much or more of a problem in life sciences
likelihood of current members of congress and administration (both parties) to understand and get this right is low
Chris in Charlotte

A key to making this work is to have a high volume of lawmakers support the concept. Therefore, you need to have wide geographical dispersion of support if you wish to make any progress at the Federal level.

I'm happy to work on my own Congressmen and Senators (I'm in North Carolina) but there needs to be some coordinating group with an actual strategic plan at the head of these activities or it'll just be a lot of hot air activism that yields some small amount of gratification and very little actual change.

I am sincere about doing my geographic part. Please contact me when / if there is action you'd like to coordinate nationally.
Ryan

I will start a venture capital firm tomorrow to offer 10% stakes in $250k-funded venture for $50k. Could be a nice little racket.
Pingback: America can’t be the world’s tech leader without immigration reform « Coco Touch
Pingback: ‘Founder visa’ would allow foreign entrepreneurs to move to the US more easily
http://www.livelovecoffee.com Solis

I have not heard about this before, but it sounds like a very reasonable common sense approach to bring new ideas and new jobs to the US. I would definitely like to see this examined in further detail.
Pingback: @2gov and The Founders Visa Movement
Max

Great idea. Thumbs up!
Pingback: Join the Startup Founder Visa Movement « StartupVisa.com
Pingback: Aux Etats-Unis, l’immigration à la rescousse des hautes technologies | MONDIALNEWS | Actualites et communiques de presse relayes par Google Search, google recherches, google blog et Google Actualites
http://twitter.com/jjsnyc @jjsnyc

Excellent thoughts and very worth project to push forward. Happy, and eager, to help as the political world was one I was heavily involved in and have been looking forward to a reason to re-engage previous contacts for an entrepreneurial worthy cause such as this…

http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld Brad Feld

Jeff – thanks for the offer to help! Keep your eyes open for progress – we are now calling it the Startup Visa and have had a lot of interesting activity over the weekend.

Pingback: Special Immigration Policy for Startup Founders | CloudAve
Alex

Brad, there must be a path to citizenship for this visa, otherwise it's gonna be useless and prone to exploitation by VCs: bring a person in US and then manipulate them by threatening to cancel the visa or something like that.
Pingback: An Open Letter to Mr. Obama on Innovation Policy | Mendelson's Musings
Pingback: peHUB » Open Letter To President Obama on Innovation Policy
Pingback: K9 Ventures » Blog Archive » My story and support for the Founders Visa
Pingback: The Coming Labor Shortage » Miles Lasater Blog
Pingback: The Startup Visa #startupvisa | Andrew Hyde - Startups. Start Here.
http://www.techtain.com O.O.

Brad,

How can one raise angel or VC capital if s/he discloses to the investor that “his or her presence in this country is NOT yet guaranteed?” Would you, Brad, give your hard earned fund-dollars to a person you know may be asked to leave the country tomorrow? Thus, the suggested requirement that 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”, needs further contemplation.

O.O.
Pingback: StartupVisa Momentum
Pingback: Dan Moore! » Boco: Colorado’s SXSW?
http://twitter.com/terrycojones @terrycojones

Hi again Brad

I know there's now a domain dedicated to this issue, but I couldn't find it with a quick search.

Something that should be added to the Founder Visa proposal is that founders be exempt from the normal DOL salary requirement that's applied to H1B holders. I don't have current figures, but if you come into the country on an H1B your job title determines your minimum salary (the DOL holds the tables on prevailing wages and these are used to set the number). I remember in 2004 or so the *minimum* CTO wage was something like $130K, and a CEO was higher. That's obviously something that's not at all geared towards startups. So the Founder Visa would ideally not be so encumbered.

Could you inject this into the proceedings if it has not already been brought up? Thanks!

http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld Brad Feld

Thanks for the suggestion – I’ll make sure it’s included in the thinking.

The site – FYI – is http://www.startupvisa.com
/>
http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld Brad Feld

Thanks for the suggestion – I’ll make sure it’s included in the thinking.

The site – FYI – is http://www.startupvisa.com
/>

Pingback: Broadband Access as a Legal Right | THE DREAM IN ACTION
Pingback: Startup Visa Stories
Pingback: Nat Friedman: Startup Visa | Full-Linux.com
http://twitter.com/chazard @chazard

Brad,
great post. Could not agree more so i belatedly threw my hat into the ring on this in a post on my blog today.
http://hazard.typepad.com/hazard-lights/2009/11/i…

http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld Brad Feld

Chip – awesome – thanks for joining the movement!

Pingback: Diminishing Prospects: How U.S. Policy is Undermining Entrepreneurial Vision « PI Window on Business
Pingback: Hope for expat entrepreneurs in Dubai – a first step | Intilaq
Tim

Brad,

I support this movement. I think that the US could definitely benefit from a more flexible law for non-US citizen startup founders.

I am in that situation now and my lawyer said that the only way to start your own business *and run it* in the US is by having $100k+ and a strong business plan. With that you could get an investor Visa, found your company and run it in the US.

If you don't have that amount of money, you have to either travel a lot or rely on another company to sponsor an H1-B for you and allow you to work for another company, which would be your own startup.
Pingback: Startup Visa Canada | Bootup Labs Blog
Pingback: Startup Visa End of Year Update
Pingback: Startup Visa End of Year Update
Pingback: DREAMACTIVIST » 10,000 Nerds
Pingback: Eric Kerr | 2010 Predictions
http://perimeterinsurance.com/ stephen

I think this Founders Visa movement is a great idea. We are losing an important battle to India and China in the advancement of math and science related industry. When 30 years ago math and science were the most sought after subjects, now they have taken a back seat to less impressionable subjects. Doing this would allow the great minds of the world to spread and grow their knowledge here with in the US.

The Founders Visa Movement

Related posts:

Popular Tags

Categories