Startup Visa

I’m in Washington DC again – this time to talk about innovation. I’ve been here three times in the past year – the first time was to hear Bilski at the Supreme Court in November and then I was back in March to talk about and promote the Startup Visa . Yesterday, Thomas Friedman article wrote another great OpEd about the topic titled A Gift for Grads: Start-Ups . As with many Friedman OpEd’s, rather than just railing against the situation, he suggests several specific things that can be done – in this case by the current administrationb. His premise is that to solve the unemployment issue, especially among recent college graduates, we need three things: more start-ups, more start-ups, and more start-ups. And to do this, Friedman talked to Robert Litan (vice president of research and policy at the Kauffman Foundation) and Curtis Carlson, (CEO of SRI International) and came up with the following. ...

I promise I’ll write something thoughtful tomorrow and not torture you with more video and audio. Over the weekend, I did a fun interview with Howard Lindzon on StockTwits TV during his annual Lindzonpalooza event. We covered a wide range of entrepreneurial topics and gave each other plenty of good natured shit. Eek – I’m a looking a little chunky – note to self: more running, more swimming, less eating. Or maybe it was just the camera. ...

In March, I went to DC with Dave McClure, Eric Ries, Shervin Pishevar, and a bunch of Geeks on a Plane to discuss, advocate, and support the Startup Visa initiative. As part of the effort, we did two videos about the trip – one staring me and one staring Shervin. Ben Henretig of Micro-Documentaries produced them – they have some striking images of DC along with plenty of commentary from me and Shervin about why the Startup Visa is important. ...

While everyone is talking about health care, let’s not forget our friend the Startup Visa. Two good articles appeared this morning. The New Startup Arms Race : Eric Ries, who is part of the Startup Visa Initiative core team (and the creator of the Lean Startup Methodology) has a great essay up on The Huffington Post. Silicon Valley is losing foreign-born talent : Jon Swartz, the USA Today Silicon Valley tech writer has several good examples that supports his headline. Also, if you missed Thomas Friedman’s awesome OpEd this weekend titled America’s Real Dream Team – I encourage you to go take a look.

If you support the Startup Visa and have a blog or a website, put the Startup Visa Twitter Widget up on your site. _2gov_issue_id = 22; _2gov_default_tweet = “.@2gov Support Startup Visa! Tweet Congress https://bit.ly/aGr34n"; And – on March 2nd at 12 noon Pacific / 3 pm Eastern – we are going to do a Tweet Hall for the Startup Visa. All you need to do is tweet @2gov supporting #startupvisa exactly at Noon Pacific on Tuesday March 2nd. We’ll collect your Tweets and deliver them during our visit to the White House on March 4th.

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. ...