Re:Immigrant founder of indee.tv stuck in Vancouver due to v...
by kingsley_20 on Tuesday September 29, 2009 @05:58PM
(#851408)
Right now, if I wanted to found a startup without taking some of the risks Sharan took (the LLC route), I'd have to get enough funding to pay myself ~70K/year as salary. Then, and if I had respectable funding, and some well known/ respectable people on the board, I can set up shop and have a US Citizen co-founder "hire" me as an H1B.
So the system as it stands forces immigrant founders to raise funding, even if you had a completely bootstrappable business plan. That's where the bar is set now, and it definitely dissuades people, and that's why I think many of us advocate lowering it. Substitute it with education, experience or endorsements maybe?
But it raises some real issues with the whole startup founder plan. Does a company with (what looks like) 4 people and a few seed investors count as a startup? This seems like a really low bar. I think pg's initial essay kind of glosses over the difficulty of defining a startup - or for that matter even a "startup investor".
I go both ways on this issue. I think letting smart, driven people into the US to work is awesome. But I'm not sold that being the founder of a "startup" is the right bar.