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What notable startups have come out of silicon valley in the last 10years? It's been a long time since HP, Apple, Sun appeared - a few people with a high traffic no income social web site doesn't make an industry however many $M/Bn it's notionally valued.

No not in this case - but the visa is intended to start growth business, not just for people to hire a maid, pool boy and gardener and get a resident visa.

I worked for a european company that had a US sales office. It employed a receptionist and a US sales guy. If we added a cleaner the owner of the company now gets a US passport - was that what was intended?

As it happens the owner currently spends the winter there (in Florida) on a three month tourist visa waiver - I suppose having a startup visa might make getting through immigration faster. He has a house, yacht and private plane parked there as well but ironically couldn't get a US cell phone because he didn't have a SSN

Depends on what you mean by 'rich' - $1M, $10M, $1Bn ?

There have been classes of investment visa for people bringing $1M into the country. But then people simply used it to buy a house = $1M in some areas. So then there were requirements that it had to be invested in a business, so people formed a company, bought a house and leased it to themselves.

So the politicians upped the $$ requirement, but that leads to different problems. People with $100M in cash are often not very nice citizens - do you want to give Col Qaddafi, Kim Jung whoever, etc a US visa if they bring $100M of their people's money with them? How many of their family/ friends/ associates also get a visa?

I think the difference is that Japanese disruptive firms can engineer things like planes, ships, cars - US disruptive firms enable you to play games about birds on your cell phone.

It's because of the intense competition between Canada's phone providers.

Unfortunately the intense competition is limited to the golf course - the rest of the time they are free to fix charges, limit services and ensure that their friends in government keep out any competition

>only about my contacts

So Alice has to install Google talk to call you, skype to call Bob and SIP to talk to Carol

Meanwhile Bob has microsoft phone to talk to ....

It's going to hit Vancouver - the place is currently full of startup people that couldn't get US visas

It's still mind-blowing to me that a politician could read!

Most of the monetary requirements are to stop scams - ie where millionaire's kid bills family company abroad for $100K and gets to stay in the US running his company. It's also the reason for requiring qualified investors - to stop this just being family money recycled.

Although it is a bit silly that if you invented say a malaria vaccine and had a $Bn in foreign sales you would be deported!