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Comment by danielharan | Hacker News Reader

This is a terrible idea.

VCs have proposed the same solution in Canada; the government canned the old investor visa and allowed founders to get a startup when they receive investment from some of our VCs. (There were many more investor visa than VCs can even process. We'll end up with less total job creation. You have to be careful what you lobby for, and how it will be implemented!)

What was once a process over which government had visibility is now in the hands of the private sector, with firms that have historically discriminated on age, ethnicity, gender, etc.

I'm not saying I wouldn't trust Sam Altman. I just wouldn't trust most VCs with this task.

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> What was once a process over which government had visibility is now in the hands of the private sector, with firms that have historically discriminated on age, ethnicity, gender, etc.

That logic would suggest companies shouldn't be allowed to hire non-immigrants without government approval either, since they've historically discriminated against people with non-immigrant hires too. But as far as I know, you're not suggesting you should have to apply to the government to get a job at your local IBM office, because that would be weird. We just make discrimination illegal and hope for the best. Why wouldn't the same logic apply to VCs funding foreigners?

Another problem there is the "we don't have oversight into how fair this will be, so now no one gets it!" which helps no one, including all those people you're trying to protect from discrimination.

If a company as large as IBM systematically discriminates, I sure hope they end up in legal trouble.

Me too. But that's the point - we let them hire people until someone shows they're discriminating.

Imagine a world where to get a job you had to ask the government for permission (which is precisely what immigrants have to do in our world). Then one day someone comes along and says, "why don't you just let the companies hire whomever they want?" And then do you really say, "whoa whoa, now that the employment process isn't under government supervision, now we can't tell if they're discriminating"?

Save for the fact that as an industry, the VCs are not even trying to be fair. Much as it sucks, asking the government for permission seems better than what that group would achieve.

Nobody's proposing to eliminate existing visa categories. Indeed, existing visas such as E-2 or EB-5 are good for allowing immigrants to start self-funded businesses. Sam's proposing a new category, for entrepreneurs that aren't bringing their own money.

No one was proposing that in Canada either... :(

What visa's did we get rid of in Canada?

FP says the "entrepreneur visa", IIRC it required putting up your own money:

http://business.financialpost.com/2013/01/24/startup-visa-pr...

Yeah, but did you read what people were doing with it. You can hire someone to buy a corner store/franchise and "run" it for a year and then just sell it to someone else coming it. I bet it brought very few jobs to the country.

The Canadian one seems like a case of starting with decent intent but ending up with a system that pretty clearly had the details written in a way that's mostly looking out for the interests of a few big finance-side players. The requirement that it has to be Canadian VCs and angels, and Canadian VCs and angels on a specific list no less, makes it look like the category is really about maximizing deal flow to a few Canadian investment firms.

I have an experience with that.

I was applying to the Canadian entrepreneurship program since 2010, so 4 years now. I was aware the processing time was long, so I was just waiting to be my turn to be processed. 3 weeks ago I've heard that the entrepreneurship program has been canceled in profit of the startup visa one. I mean that seems to be on whim and that's not really nice to wait 4 years for nothing but that's life I guess. I have started to contact the people on the accredited list, they seem to be overflow by the applications following the program. The big winners seem to be the organization on the accredited list, everyone else has been fucked.

Whoa - they just told you now? :O

I'm sorry you've had to wait this long.

This whole situation is insane. We could actually just let more people in; we need more for long-term demographic reasons and the current policy is just a xenophobic disaster.

They haven't told me anything yet, I've just read it in the news. They made it pretty clear that the current backlog of applications are going to be trashed, I guess including mine.

You don't have to be sorry, gov. != people.

What I dislike particularly it's the kind of hypocrisies you were denouncing. Canadian VCs had been lobbying for this kind of visa while other entrepreneur visa programs being shutdown. Now there are in position to determine who is getting Canadian residency based on their own interests. Like for example, I am posting this rant now under my usual handle, is it going to undermine our chances to get Canadian VCs' funding and be in Canada? Maybe or maybe not. I liked the ancient system where you have just to show you have accumulate more than $300k while being an entrepreneur whereas now it's the sole dick-sucking abilities that matters.

An incubator is different than VCs. If an incubator figured out a way to "hired" founders, that could be a hackaround if it didn't expose them to other employee rights assertion issues.

Down-voters: explain, please?

You don't think the experience from this type of policy being tried somewhere else is relevant? That it won't backfire?

The way you explained it, it seems you're blaming the VCs for something that was government's fault (it was the government's decision to cancel the old visas, instead of keeping them in parallel with the new one).

"Blame" is the wrong way to think about any major policy decision. Instead, you want to think of the effects of the new policy - whether or not anyone intends to do harm (most people don't), will harm result? The grandparent poster's experience with a similar policy in Canada is very relevant there. I don't personally have a position about founder visas - I'm a U.S. citizen, so they don't affect me - but I do think that having all the arguments for and against, particularly concerning unintended consequences, is pretty important.

The way I understood the poster, the harm came from the government canceling the old investor visas. That seems pretty easy to fix: just add new visas on top of the old ones. The consequences of the way it happened were pretty clear: a bunch of people who previously would use the old investor visas (where you could put up your own money, I imagine) now can't. The effects of this decision shouldn't have been surprising to anyone.

The problem is that you and I don't control what the government does. Government stupidity is a reality that has to be factored into decision-making. And maybe there's a way around it in this case - perhaps whoever drafts & sponsors the Founder Visa law just needs to be aware of the potential pitfall and make everyone else involved aware of why there need to be separate founder & investor visas, most of the time stupid decisions are made because reasonable people don't have all the information necessary - but it's still really important to be aware of it so you don't create unintended consequences. Saying "Well, I had the right idea, it just turned out to be a disaster because of other people" doesn't stop it from being a disaster.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll try to be more careful how I state things.

Also from the HN guidelines: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Asking people to explain downvotes is really a form of complaining about downvoting. People routinely downvote when they disagree.

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