Government

The Startup Visa movement is picking up a lot of speed. I’ve had more positive conversations about it than I have about any other government related thing I’ve been involved in or worked on in the past few years. David Binetti and the gang at @2gov have set up a way for anyone to make a $50 contribution to the Startup Visa effort. This is an anonymous donation and you have to be a US Citizen to make the donation – just go to the contribute page. If you want to contribute more than $50, just email donate@2gov.org . ...

I received an overwhelming response to my post last week titled The Founders Visa Movement . There were tons of comments – both positive and negative (many constructive on both sides), lots of emails, and plenty of tweets. I sent the comment thread on to the senior staffer in my congressman’s office who I was talking to and got a thoughtful response from him. I’ve got a series of calls set up this week to talk with several other of my congressmen (and women). In addition, we are in the final stages of getting a CU Law student to intern with us at Foundry Group on this project to help pull together more substantive material, options, data, and support (we hope to announce this next week). There is no question in my mind, after hearing the response and thinking about this more, that the time to do something about this is right now. ...

In April, Paul Graham wrote an inspired post titled The Founder Visa. In it he proposed the idea of creating a US Visa for founders of startup companies – 10,000 / year for founders of companies that are started in the US. There was some chatter around this at the time (I think it’s a brilliant idea) but then the discussion died down. I sent the link to Paul’s essay to a few congressmen (congresspeople?) that I know with an offer to discuss it further and give some substantive examples. I just got off the phone with a senior staff member of one of my congressmen who had read the essay and was interested in hearing more. ...

I’m really proud of my Congressman Jared Polis. Jared was one of the first people I met when I moved to Colorado in 1995 (we met in early 1996) and have been good friends ever since. Jared has a great article about his first few weeks in Congress up on the CNN website titled Commentary: Congress is like going back to college . There’s also a fun video. Jared – you look very serious in that suit and tie.

Today’s Washington Post article titled Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages was no big surprise. However, while I was taking a shower (in a hotel in the Houston suburbs of all places) it occurred to me that this presents an incredible marketing opportunity for Apple. If I were king of Apple (or say, a board member with deep White House ties), I’d be on the phone with “the appropriate person” with the offer of “a Mac on every desk in the White House along with an iPhone for every White House staffer.” I’m sure there is some law that prevents Apple from giving this away from free so I’d offer it “at cost” just to Mac-enable the White House. ...

I’ve been an unabashed Obama supporter for a while. I’m glad he’s going to be our next president and am optimistic about his leadership. I’ve been enjoying listening to some of the punditry ricocheting around about his coming administration now that I don’t have to listen (or – in my case – try to ignore) the endless analysis about the campaign. A few requests on my part have come to mind as I start to synthesize what I’m hearing. Of course, I’m not so arrogant to believe that President-elect Obama – or for that matter – anyone in the administration – will care about my specific requests, but since this is my blog afterall I thought I’d toss my thoughts out into the wild. ...

I didn’t come up with this idea – Om Malik did. But he’s absolutely right – Obama needs to look outside the beltway for many key positions, including FCC Chair. Tom Evslin is an absolute star in my book and as Om states: “Tom Evslin, who is a retired telecom executive, is the kind of person I would expect to be in the FCC. He knows the machinations of the big companies and at the same time is an Internet liberal who can keep broadband providers and their anti-consumer tricks under check.” ...

Fred Wilson has the best post I’ve read so far from the 700 of so feeds I follow on how he feels about the election. It’s titled Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States . Fred – like me – decided a while ago to believe in Barack Obama and I’m sure he’s as happy as I am to see him elected president of the United States. Fred states clearly the six things he thinks we’ll get from an Obama administration. ...

Where is James Carville when you need him ? Finally, Obama is taking a line from Clinton’s playbook.

Santo Politi has a great post up today titled Election 2008 and Price of Crude . We were in a meeting together today and he mentioned it (but didn’t mention the content.) Santo’s cynicism is right on the money as well as his concerns. It’s definitely worth a read.