TechCrunch: Y Combinator's Unauthorized European Clone
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Having said that, good luck to you guys at Yeurope.
Now, if only the US didn't follow the EU footsteps regarding immigration rather then the other way around...
As someone who is neither European nor American, moving to the EU was much simpler for me then moving to the US would have been. In fact, I would probably not have even gotten a tourist visa to the US these days (which used to be really easy a decade ago)!
The USA is no longer an immigrant friendly country, I'm afraid - not unless you come from a one of a small group of preferred countries like England or Canada.
Once I was registered to university I got a student's visa (valid for 1 year & renewable as long as I am still a student).
Once you manage to get a decent full time job and earn enough money (more then ~43,000 USD/year for Austria) getting an unrestricted work permission and a residency permit is not a problem.
Whereas in Silicon Valley starting a startup is considered an acceptable thing to do (by your landlord, your girlfriends' parents, potential cofounders, etc), and there are lots of investors ready to give you money if you show the least promise.
But I also think a society that is vibrant from a cultural perspective is equally important -- you need a multicultural mix of art, science and liberal thought to attract the fringe elements who _think_differently_ to your environment. The multicultural aspect is necessary now more than ever considering the global context in which technology is applicable. It is these fringe elements who create startups. Both Stanford and San Francisco provide that mix to the Bay area. You could say that Iowa lacks this, as does most of the USA between NYC and SF.
In Canada for instance, there is the right cultural mix, but a lack of intelligent capital. So I agree with you.
I know this has been done to death in the other thread, but that's what annoys me too... If they had come out right at the start and said, hey, Y Combinator is doing a cool thing here, we love the idea, we are going to work at it and try to offer the same opportunities to people in Europe but in our own way, it could have been a really cool thing.
I have to give YE credit for addressing the concerns of YC. Their site is no longer the same color scheme as YC. They've added the following text to various areas:
Front Page: " This site is inspired by, but not affiliated with YCombinator.",
FAQ: "Are you affiliated with YCombinator?
No, we're not. YC's program is quite revolutionary. We think of YC as akin to something like the first University, and we hope to bring that concept to Europe. "
FAQ: "Couldn't I just go to YCombinator?
If you have the opportunity to, you should! I'm sure it is a great experience. Some of us don't want or can't move to YC, either because of Visa Issues, or simply because they prefer to stay in Europe."
And they explain their name as "Why Europe" instead of YC's which is based on "The ``Y-combinator'', which is sometimes also called fixpoint combinator, was discovered by H. Curry. With its help it is possible to handle recursive functions in the Lambda Calculus." A very nice derivation for Y C is available at http://www.ececs.uc.edu/~franco/C511/html/Scheme/ycomb.html .
Should they change their name anyway? My answer would be only if YC asks them to, which they haven't (at least not in the public threads to date) because "Why Europe" as a name really makes sense as it is not the place people would normally go to start a startup given the intense regulatory environment there.
You got me laughing with that one, quite right. To be fair though, London is becoming increasingly competitive with New York for IPOs in the wake of Sarbanes-Oxley, so while you stand a greater chance of going to prison you might have an easier exit if that's the goal.