Government

I continue to be a strong supporter of legal immigration to the United States. A fundamental belief of mine is that entrepreneurs should be able to start their companies anywhere they want. A corollary to that is some of the historical success of the US as an entrepreneurial ecosystem has been being the place that entrepreneurs want to start a company. Today, it’s hard to get a visa to start a company in the US. Our legal immigration system is complex and expensive to navigate, and there are few choices for entrepreneurs, especially aspiring entrepreneurs, who haven’t already managed to get a visa. ...

One of the many great things about the Governor of Colorado is that he’s an entrepreneur, having started multiple successful technology companies, including BlueMountainArts.com (acquired by Excite for $800m) and Provide Commerce (IPO, then acquired by Liberty Media for $500m). He’s also a co-founder of Techstars with me, David Cohen, and David Brown. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that one of Jared Polis’ relatively early new initiatives as Governor is the Colorado Digitial Service . ...

If the majority of your understanding of how tariffs work is from Twitter, CNN, or Fox News, I encourage you to go read Trump’s China Tariffs Hit America’s Poor and Working Class the Hardest . And, if you think China is paying the U.S. directly for the tariffs, well, no … We have a lot of hardware companies in our portfolio so I’ve been living in the world of “what to do about tariffs” for several quarters. My fantasy at the beginning was “ignore and hope they go away.” This quickly evolved through “are there any ways around this” to land at “deal with the reality of increased cost, research, and compliance.” ...

I’ve been working on the Startup Visa since I first wrote about it 2009 in my post The Founders Visa Movement . After a decade, it’s clear that our federal government has broadly failed us on this front. In 2015, I announced the Global EIR initiative to try something different. Today, I’m happy to welcome the University of Michigan to the Global EIR network . Applications are now open to become a Global Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of Michigan’s Economic Growth Institution (EGI) . Interested applicants can learn more about the program , fill out an application form, and reach out to Millie Chu at Global Detroit. ...

Recently, Amy and I hosted a conversation with Scott Wasserman, the president of Colorado’s Bell Policy Center . For those not familiar with the Bell, it is a research and advocacy organization focused on economic mobility in Colorado. In his presentation, Scott presented a range of data about four major forces affecting our economy: demographics, public investment, technology, and inequality. As he went through his presentation, it became clear that while Colorado is home to a booming economy that many of us enjoy, there are many others in our state who are being left behind. ...

I have felt for a long time that election day in the US (by law, the first Tuesday after November 1) should be a national holiday. In some states, like Colorado, we now have an excellent mail in ballot system , but many people still physically show up at the polls to vote. The idea of voter suppression has never made sense to me, ever since I learned about the constitution and amendments 15, 19, 24, and 26 in elementary school civics class. I just went on Wikipedia and reviewed the timeline of voting rights in the United States , which reminded me of the awesomeness of the book Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History . ...

Mona List Overdrive has come true. And Pattern Recognition is on the horizon. I knew that Dominos was paving America’s roads , but I didn’t realize they were branding them. Farhad Manjoo has a good article in the NYT titled How Tech Companies Conquered America’s Cities . A key trope in sci-fi is that corporations will take over, well, everything. And, now that corporations are considered people (at least partially), why shouldn’t they take over? ...

I’ve been consistently public, for almost a decade, about my belief that we should significantly change our approach to immigration in the US, especially for entrepreneurs. As one of the original advocates of the Startup Visa , I continue to be bummed out that our government can’t seem to figure out why this is important or doing anything productive around it. But, I’ve been appalled the past few days, as Amy and I spend time in Germany, to watch the Trump immigration enforcement that separates children from their parents and detain the children in separate locations. While we had a joyful anniversary yesterday , I felt a bitter emotional undercurrent that upset me. ...

A law with good intentions, but horrible side effects, passed yesterday. You probably haven’t heard about it because of the brouhaha over 97,513 other things. It’s called SESTA/FOSTA and the EFF has a good summary of how Lawmakers Failed to Separate Their Good Intentions from Bad Law . Craigslist responded immediately (and rationally) by taking Craigslist Personals offline . Oh, and as a bonus, the CLOUD Act was buried in the Omnibus spending bill. EFF has an article from six weeks ago that explains why it is A Dangerous Expansion of Police Snooping on Cross-Border Data . The CLOUD Act is an aggressive undermining of existing privacy laws, but no one really cares about online privacy or your data, right? ...

Ian Hathaway, my co-author for my next book – Startup Communities 2: The Next Generation – has a great blog post up titled The Amazon Bounce Back . Colorado, specifically Denver, is in the final 20 cities bidding on Amazon’s HQ2. This open bid process is an absolutely brilliant move by Amazon for a variety of reasons. Enormous branding: Everyone, everywhere, is talking about Amazon. Amazon Amazon Amazon. We love Amazon. Absurd market information: The amount of data about each city that Amazon is getting out of this is incredible. Visibility into what cities are willing to offer: Amazon knows where its future leverage points are when negotiating with individual cities. While I’m glad Denver approached it the way they did, focusing on strength and resources of the community rather than by throwing dollars at Amazon, our state government still provided plenty of financial incentives. ...