Some of them might have, but the H1B is an awful avenue for this. You are not allowed any side businesses while you are employed on an H1B visa (and you can't be self employed using it). If you are Indian, you are looking at what is currently an 11 year processing delay before you can get a green card, not counting the time it takes to get your H1B initially. If you're from other countries, the backlog is shorter, but it is still multiple years before you can leave your company to try self employment.
Assuming you get approved for a green card. It's possible to get an H1B and then get denied for a green card.
Academics and other similar figures of note can already apply directly for a green card, which I suspect many of the people on this list have done. If you want to expand immigration, a simpler, faster path to permanent residency is essential.
Comprehensive immigration reform was supposed to do that, adopting a more streamlined points system like Canada and Australia, but of course the bill ended up covering amnesty for undocumented immigrants too and the whole thing got shot down.
Unfortunately for most people an H1-B is the best path to a green card, and only once you have a green card are you free to be an entrepreneur etc.
The point remains: Increasing the number of H1Bs will not have a great impact on the number of founders, especially not in the short term, because the vast majority of them will end up shackled to an employer for years.
1. Jyoti Bansal - Founder of AppDynamics The guy in the above mentioned article was on H1B.
2. Kevin Systrom - Cofounder of Instagram was on H1B visa.
3. Jay Scaler - Founder of ZScaler an unicorn, was on H1B visa
4. Vinod Khosla - Founder of Sun Microsystems and well known VC was on H1B visa initially
Will list down some more in some time.
It's a shitty system that locks you in to working for other places for years.
The H-1B visa was created in 1990. Khosla started working in the U.S. in 1980 after graduating from Stanford, and founded Sun in 1982. It seems doubtful he was ever on an H-1B.
I don't think that's correct.