Government

Today, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) and Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) introduced the StartUp Visa Act of 2010. The group of us behind the Startup Visa project have been working closely with key members of each Senators’ staff on this and we are incredibly pleased with the proposed bill. Following is the text from the press release announcing the bill: “Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today introduced legislation to drive job creation and increase America’s global competiveness by helping immigrant entrepreneurs secure visas to the United States. ...

As the Startup Visa initiative continues to pick up momentum, we are now collecting stories from immigrants who have either started or tried to start their company in the US. We are interested in any aspect of your story and – while we’d like to be able to have your contact info – recognize that some people will want their story to be anonymous (which is ok with us.) We’re looking to collect as many stories as we can by February 27th (11pm) so that we’ll be able to put them together in an appropriate format for the Geeks on a Plane trip to DC on 3/4/10 – 3/6/10 which will include a delegation of folks (including me) talking about the Startup Visa. ...

My dad sent me an incredible thirty minute interview of Ayn Rand by Mike Wallace in 1959 which I just watched on my iPhone during a treadmill run. I’m a fan of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and, while I’m intrigued by a lot of Ayn Rand’s philosophy and writing, I don’t consider myself an Objectivist . One of the quotes I most love is John Galt’s statement “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine.” A while ago my mom made a painting out of this quote (it currently hangs in my partner Jason Mendelson’s house.) ...

As we finish up the year, I’m really pleased with the progress the Startup Visa gang is making. I started thinking about, writing, and working on this on 9/10/09 when I wrote the post The Founders Visa Movement . One quarter later, we’ve: Put together a core group of entrepreneurs, angels, and VCs who are working on this. Received a tremendous amount of positive feedback from entrepreneurs and investors who have struggled with this issue. Verified that this is a real issue, there is no current solution under the existing visa system, and even though there are plenty of immigration lawyers who say “no problem, I can get around this”, there aren’t clean solutions. Engaged with a number of Congressmen in both the house and the senate. Found a member of the house who is sponsoring a bill addressing the issue. Talking to several folks on the senate side to find a sponsor. Codified a first clean draft of language around this. Build lots of grassroots support and enthusiasm. Gotten plenty of discussion going in the blogosphere and mainstream media. Shortly after I started talking to people in Congress about this it became clear that this wouldn’t be a 2009 legislative issue given the massive financial and health care reform issues being worked on in Congress. So – we decided to use Q409 to “figure this out” with a goal of launching aggressively in Q110 with the goal of having this be part of whatever immigration reform activity happens next year, especially in the context of a renewed push for job creation activity in the US. ...

After having a few conversations yesterday about the Startup Visa, I realized that I never posted the Wall Street Journal OpEd on the Startup Visa that Paul Kedrosky and I wrote and had published on 12/2/09. I don’t know the rules about reposting OpEd’s – I assume that since we wrote it I can republish it. If that’s not true, I’m sure some one will tell me. In the mean time, here it is: ...

Last week I did an hour long interview with Jon Hansen on the Startup Visa Movement titled Diminishing Prospects: How U.S. Policy is Undermining Entrepreneurial Vision. The interview is embedded below and Jon has a longer post up on his blog titled Snakes in a Playpen: Why U.S. Policy Regarding H-1B and EB-5 Visas is Outdated and Ineffective . I haven’t done any long form interviews on this topic yet. I thought Jon did a great job of steering the conversation, pulling out some important perspectives, and helping cycle back to make sure the appropriate points were covered. If you are interested in this topic, I’d love to hear your reaction to this interview.

I’m getting three to five Startup Visa stories a week at this point. A few are straightforward but most are complex and intellectually frightening, including one I read through yesterday that almost caused my head to explode. When I was in Boston a few weeks ago I met with someone who told me their particular story very passionately and clearly. He then followed up with a short essay that he asked if I’d post publicly. While the story is a general one, it is short and sweet and nicely captures the sentiment that I’ve heard so many times since writing The Founders Visa Movement post. ...

Two things really tweaked me in the past 24 hours. The FTC rules to regulate product endorsements in blogs The US Antitrust Inquiry of IBM The FTC thing is just fucking stupid. Jeff Jarvis does a better takedown of it than I could ever do on his post FTC Regulates Our Speech. I’m not a journalist, nor do I pretend to be. I’m involved in some way in virtually everything I write about on this blog. While I don’t directly make money when you buy a product or service from one of the private companies I have an investment in, I have the potential of eventually making money if the company is more valuable. I do get a share of the ad revenue that appears alongside the articles and I get affiliate fees from some services like Amazon whenever I write about a book or movie, link to Amazon, and remember to include my affiliate link. These are all well known practices among bloggers that adding “disclosure to” in every post is tedious, pointless, and irrelevant. ...

Last week I was interviewed by the Denver Business Journal for an article on the StartupVisa Movement. Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) – who represents the district in which I live – was also interviewed. Kevin Mann – the founder of Take Publishing (one of the TechStars 2009 companies) and a UK citizen – talked about his story. Good – and important – stuff – Polis wants foreign company founders to be allowed to stay in United States . ...

In the few weeks since I wrote the post The Founders Visa Movement there has been a ton of positive momentum, input, ideas, and support. Thanks to the efforts of Dave McClure and Eric Ries, we shifted the name to the StartupVisa, figured out that the EB-5 visa was the most logical one to try to “modify”, and got a web site up about it. In the mean time, I’ve now had extensive conversations with three of my congressmen, all of whom get it, including one who is deep in working on some draft legislation around it. I’ve also gotten a CU Law JD/MBA student to work with us as an intern to help put some substance around the approach and proposal. I’ve also been taken to task by some folks who think I’m naive , misguided, or simply are against increasing the number of legal immigrants into our country. ...