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Would A Startup Visa Bring Jobs To The United States?

Guest Author — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 22:29:40 +0000

Here’s an idea that’s been getting a lot of attention lately: A new U.S. visa just for foreign-born entrepreneurs.

That’s right. Come to America, start a new business, hire people to work for you, and Uncle Sam will give you a green card, just to say thanks. It’s an idea that lawmakers on Capitol Hill are considering, and its legislative incarnation – the StartUp Act – has bipartisan sponsorship from Senators Kerry (D-MA) and Lugar (R-IN).

Proponents of a so-called “startup” or “founders” visa say that giving foreign-born entrepreneurs the opportunity to obtain permanent U.S. residency could help jumpstart a job-starved economy. What’s more, they argue, attracting talent from abroad will help the U.S. remain a dominant economic powerhouse on the global stage for years to come.

The Startup Visa “movement”
The push for an entrepreneur visa began among some of America’s most preeminent venture capitalists – people like Brad Feld, Paul Kedrosky, and Shervin Pishevar just to name a few.

With their support (and some intense lobbying of Congress), the proposal became legislation in both the U.S. House and Senate in 2010. The 2011 Senate bill is a slightly modified version of last year’s legislation with all of the fundamentals of a startup visa intact.

But it still has to come up for a vote. Until then, the bill will remain in committee.

How it works

Assuming lawmakers eventually get around to passing the StartUp Act, here’s how it would work:

A foreign national must secure a minimum of $100,000 from an American venture capitalist.
After two years, the foreign national’s startup must have created at least 5 new jobs and have raised at least $500,000 in additional capital investment.
If the entrepreneur hasn’t raised at least $500,000 in additional investment, he or she must have generated at least $500,000 in revenue over a two-year period.
Current H-1B visa holders could also qualify for a startup visa if they start a new enterprise that creates 3 new jobs in two years.

As proposed, the legislation would reform the current EB-5 visa. An underutilized visa category, the U.S. grants EB-5 visas to foreign investors who contribute a minimum of $500,000 to a new or existing American enterprise. There are 10,000 such visas available annually, but only a few thousand have ever been issued in a given year.

After all, there are only so many people who have an extra $500,000 to spare for a green card.

The StartUp Act would simply reserve for immigrant entrepreneurs a portion of those EB-5 visas that never get used anyway – a strategy its supporters hope will assuage the concerns of those who oppose issuing more visas to more immigrants.

The aim of the StartUp Act is clearly to encourage the next generation of tech innovators to set up shop in the U.S. instead of wherever they currently reside. Whether it actually becomes law – and, ultimately, a source of significant job creation – remains to be seen.

Image courtesy: The Mechanical Turk

About Author: Adam Green is a freelance copywriter, business news junkie, and enterprise fraud management enthusiast. He’s also into tech “stuff” and makes it a point to keep up with exciting startups.

Wakanow Is The Expedia of Nigeria

Thomas Oppong — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:50:31 +0000

Wakanow.com provides consumers everything they need for researching, planning, and purchasing a whole trip. The portal provides direct access to a selection of travel deals and services through its North American and localized version in Nigeria. Addressing different consumer needs like families booking a summer vacation to individuals arranging a quick weekend getaway.

Waka, a Nigerian pidgin English word for walk, leave or go helps define the company’s mission via the website’s name Waka Now, a phrase that means ”Go Now.” Through partnerships with over 45,000 hotels around the world, the company hopes to drastically improve the online ticketing process involved in traveling to and from the continent.

Wakanow.com hopes to significantly change the way travel reservations are made in Nigeria and eventually, Africa. Using online travel reservation business models used by companies like Expedia, the company hopes to encourage a culture of online purchases for travel services in Nigeria.

Google Launches ‘Hotel Finder’(An Experimental Search Tool)

Thomas Oppong — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 18:27:46 +0000

Google has launched an experimental search tool called Hotel Finder, which is specifically designed to help users find the perfect hotel. Hotel Finder search options are:

Figure out where to stay: To help you figure out where the action is, Hotel Finder shines a “tourist spotlight” on the most visited areas of U.S. cities. We select an initial shape for you based on what’s most popular or you can draw a shape around the area where you want to stay, e.g. on the ocean or along Sunset Boulevard.

Get a good deal: In the “Compared to typical” section, you can see how each hotel’s price compares to its historical average, so you can tell if it’s good value for your stay.

Keep a shortlist: As you flip through the results, add the hotels you like to a shortlist to easily keep track of the ones that interest you.

Google has stated that Hotel Finder is an early experiment, and it’s currently only available for locations in the U.S.

eBay Founder Pierre Omidyar Invests $200K Into Nigerian Incubator

Thomas Oppong — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 00:11:28 +0000

Redwood City-based Omidyar Network, the philanthropic investment arm of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, said this week that it is funding an innovation center in Nigeria-Co-Creation Hub, to the tune of $200,000. The group said the new center, being create in conjunction with The Indigo Trust, will serve as a multi-functional, multi-purpose space focused on social technology ventures.

The hub has also received a $45,000 grant from the Indigo Trust, a unit of the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts of the U.K.

Co-creation Hub is a “non-profit, social enterprise centered around a shared work space where stakeholders from multiple walks of Nigerian life come together to collaboratively create tech-based solutions that address social challenges facing Nigerian society.

Founded by tech enthusiasts Bosun Tijani and Femi Longe the hub will accommodate about 50-60 tech start-ups at a time and will provide a pre-incubation services including: advice, training, mentorship and access to funding through a network of local and international partners.

Who Said Google+ Will Not Survive. 20 Million Strong In Just 3 Weeks And Still Counting

Thomas Oppong — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 11:19:10 +0000

Google launched Google+ three weeks ago and now the social network has recorded 20 million users and marketing has not even started yet. On Wednesday, Web-traffic watcher comScore Inc. estimated Google+ has had 20 million unique visitors since its launch, including five million visitors from the U.S. A Google spokeswoman declined comment.

ComScore, whose estimates are based on a “global measurement panel” of two million Internet users, similar to the approach Nielsen uses to measure television ratings,doesn’t have data on the number of minutes people spent on Google+.

Still, the growth of Google+ has impressed observers because access to it is by invitation only, meaning people can join only if a current member invites them.

“I’ve never seen anything grow this quickly,” said Andrew Lipsman, vice president of industry analysis at comScore. The only other site that has accumulated as many new visitors in a short period of time is Twitter in 2009, he said, “but that happened over several months.” via Wall Street Journal

Kauffman Foundation Unveils “Startup Act” Proposal To Accelerate The Growth of Startups

Thomas Oppong — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 15:21:11 +0000

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation has presented a proposal to jump-start the ailing U.S. economy and increase job creation by accelerating the growth of startups and young businesses.

The “Startup Act” proposal was unveiled at the National Press Club in Washington by Kauffman President and CEO Carl Schramm and Vice President of Research and Policy Robert Litan, followed by videotaped remarks from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Senator Jon Tester (D-MT).

The Startup Act will focus the attention of citizens and policymakers on the central role that high-growth startups must play to assure continued U.S. economic strength.

“With a recent Kauffman study indicating that new companies are starting smaller and staying smaller, and with our unemployment crisis, it is more important than ever for policymakers to create an environment that makes it easier for more startups to survive, grow and add jobs,” said Schramm.

“I want to thank the Kauffman Foundation for its leadership around the Startup Act,” said House Majority Leader Cantor. “It is imperative we take every possible step to spur job creation, and get our economy back on track. Now more than ever, our nation needs entrepreneurs to have the confidence to create and start their own businesses, and grow our economy.”

Specific changes in government policy that the Startup Act proposes include:

-Welcoming immigrants capable of building high-growth companies to the United States by providing “Entrepreneurs’ visas” and green cards for those with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math.

-Accelerating the formation and commercialization of new ideas by creating differential patent fees to reduce the patent backlog and providing licensing freedom for academic innovators.

Read the Startup Act here

14 Reasons Why Your “Brilliant” Idea SHOULD Be Shared

Thomas Oppong — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:51:33 +0000

Most prospective entrepreneurs are paralyzed with fear, growth and development. The simple belief that your idea can be stolen and developed by somebody else could be your biggest hindrance to that business you want to create. You don’t need to spill of it, but it’s sure better to share what you have in mind than keeping it to yourself.You can’t lose something you don’t have, and with the current rate of technology, every day counts. Make that idea count. Get out there and solve that problem. Somebody out there is waiting to try it and give you that feedback that can enhance it. The reasons:

You need feedback to make it better for the actual user
You can’t do it alone. A business cannot be built by one person.
Nobody else can match your passion and excitement for the idea.
You won’t find very many people that can drop what they’re doing and take your idea
The level of details needed to build it is best known by you.
You never know where the connections you make now may lead in the future.
You are in the driving seat of that idea and its vision.
You need others around you for support, but also for motivation.
The idea may need support and assistance to pick start.
The person you share with could lead you to that investor you are thinking of.
Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.- Howard Aiken
In the end it all comes down to execution. I bet you there are thousands of ideas stuck in people’s minds and they have refused to act on them because of fear.
The more you share, the more new ideas you’ll have.
Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people. Eleanor Roosevelt

22 Startups Emerge Out of WeWork Labs Incubator In 3 Months

Thomas Oppong — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 18:52:05 +0000

Three months ago, Matt Shampine, Jesse Middleton and Adam Neumann opened a startup incubator in SoHo, WeWork Labs. Fifty talented, aspiring entrepreneurs were hosted at the space and immediately got to work brainstorming million-dollar ideas. Now there are 22+ companies in the SoHo space.

WeWork labs offers entrepreneurs great space to build their own products, their overarching goal is to foster collaboration among intelligent, creative and driven individuals who may not have otherwise had the opportunity to connect.

The 22 startup companies are:

Onepager helps small businesses create a web presence that they can be proud of with the ability to set up a custom domain.

GuyHaus delivers monthly man supplies. “Everyday in America, millions of dudes wake up to find that they are almost out of shampoo, toothpaste, razor blades or toilet paper,” the founders tell us.

NoiseTrade is a simple way for artists to share music in exchange for fans’ email addresses and zip codes.

Sfter’s mission is to improve the signal to noise ratio when consuming content from your social streams.

Fitocracy is a web and soon-to-be mobile app that gets people addicted to their fitness by turning it into a social game.

Spindows is a video speed-networking platform for the enterprise. It allows people to quickly meet relevant people inside their own organization, based on tags.

Moglue is creating a desktop platform that allows publishers, amateur authors and artists a way to create interactive ebooks and release them as apps for iOS and Android devices with one-click publishing.

LetsConfirm wants to fix booking appointsments and make it much more simpler.

OpenInvo is a marketplace for ideas and a platform for open innovation.Companies can access it for ideas from outside sources and provide people with incentives to participate.

Consmr is ‘Yelp for the supermarket’. The company provides a destination for users to rate, review and check in to grocery and drugstore products.

Rembly “tackles the intricacies of personal relationships with the goal of creating a new culture of thoughtfulness.”

Startup Giraffe solves the execution problem. It helps people turn ideas into actual products.

Siftee helps professionals manage content and build valuable networks on Twitter.

We can all use all the help we can get managing our productivity, Timerdoro turns the hour glass for you while you work.

Tout is an email productivity tool. It templates frequently sent emails so you can send them faster and get analytics on whether your day-to-day email activity is being effective.

Classroom360 develops educational software. Produce interactive tools that teach and reinforce the learning of various common core standards.

Tentative.ly keeps track of upcoming and ongoing event. Save event details from across the web, then decide later with friends.

ReadSocial creates a single social layer across ebooks, websites and digital magazines, regardless of device or DRM.

CrowdScanneris developing a platform to help conference organizers stimulate discussions between people in the same room, face to face, with mobile applications.

KeywordSmart’s mission is to help stock photographers succeed by getting their images into the right search results.

StyleMusée is a social shopping platform that connects you with designers based on your personal style.

Amazon Launches Wag.com, An E-commerce Site For Pet Products

Thomas Oppong — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:51:32 +0000

Quidsi, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon.com, has announced the launch of Wag.com, an e-commerce site selling pet-related products. Quidsi also runs Diapers.com, Soap.com, and BeautyBar.com.

Wag.com carries thousands of pet products – from food, treats and toys to collars, habitats and grooming essentials – across all the brands.The offerings include mass and specialty branded food, litter, toys, vitamins and medicine, grooming supplies, clothing and accessories.

Wag.com will only be available to shoppers within the United States. The company promises its orders will be delivered within 1-2 days, with free shipping on orders over $49.

Quidsi is an e-commerce company and parent of Diapers.com (baby care), Soap.com (health, beauty and household essentials), BeautyBar.com (prestige beauty), and Wag.com (pet care).

Quidsi was acquired by Amazon in November 2010, but the company has stayed at its original New Jersey headquarters and continues to be run as an independent subsidiary.

21 Best Questions And Answers On Quora For Entrepreneurs

Thomas Oppong — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 18:50:26 +0000