Universities Are Leveraging H-1B Visas to Fuel Startup Hubs | Hacker News Reader

Universities Are Leveraging H-1B Visas to Fuel Startup Hubs

news.crunchbase.com

61 pointsexotree20 comments

Where to begin?

1) Universities, and I mean through official channels, are not great at creating startups. I'd rather they focus on basic research. No, Google was not started 'by' Stanford, etc. The biggest company I know of to come out of a university (founded by a professor) is Broadcom in 1991. Anyone know of a bigger one?

2) Be skeptical of the "$416,442,265" in funding claim. How many of those companies would have gotten funding anyways? This is a tactic incubator programs use: claim affiliation with a successful startup that's about to get a lot more funding. Then the startup gets to employ a "co-founder" for peanuts.

3) I don't think universities do a great job of protecting the rights contingent labor. See: grad school. I can see this program as being very abusive to participants.

Further, this is _exactly_ the type of thing that H-1B critics would point to as an abuse of the system. Honestly it's odd seeing this done out in the open and celebrated.

H1B is abusive in nature. Most of the times it's a take it and shut up Visa. Sometimes you get a "mm we might start a naturalization process, but if we don't like you probably not".

A lot of H1B workers ended up with quite a bit of issues, a lot of them never got the Green Card process started. So, I don't see how this could be worse. At least they claim that they will help you so you might be more inclined to put it in your contract.

> have raised over $416,442,265

what a specific number! I'm wondering, was it something like $416,442,265.19, or maybe closer to $416,442,265.75?

It's not as big as Broadcom, but what about Akamai out of MIT?

This point is glossed over in the article but H1B visa workers cannot start their own companies and employ themselves. The best case scenario for anyone on this program is spend 2-3 years in university while building a network. You can't work on your startup during this phase. Get a GC and then start working on your startup idea. For some countries like China and India GC takes more than 10 years so this program is not an option for people in those countries.

> “Get a GC and then start working on your startup idea”

Practically speaking for many foreign tech workers, a visa such as the H1-B is pretty much the first step to getting a GC eventually, so advising they skip the H1 and go “get a GC” isn’t going to be all that helpful for many.

It’s pretty hard to go straight to a GC for most foreigners, even among those with excellent academic qualifications. How hard this is also often depends entirely on your passport lottery result - be unfortunate enough to be born with an Indian one and you are easily looking at a minimum 10 year wait times in a great many cases, and to live and work in US during that period you are likely going to need some kind of work visa like the H1.

Even for the best case scenarios (passport from a country with a current GC priority date etc) it still realistically often takes at least a year to complete the GC process.

I think you misinterpreted my comment. I never suggested skipping the H1B. I was actually laying down the sequence of steps needed in this program. Join Program on H1B -> Wait till GC approval -> Then start working for your startup.

That's actually incorrect, you can get a part time non university H1B as long as it doesn't impede your work. You need be fireable though, so no majority stake in the company.

But IANAL if you have a good lawyer he might tell you about some interesting workarounds in that situation though, maybe.

Yes, that's what I was aiming at. You can have a passive majority stake (you don't work for the company) or employment at the company with a minor stake. Note in the later scenario the majority stake must belong to an American citizen and as such you will need someone you can trust and who is American to go that route. May still be feasible for some folks but need to know these caveats before moving to a new country with your dreams.

This is quite brilliant. If quality of tech remains good, few interesting results can be expected in years to come.

There are few challenges for the founder(s) - 1. splitting time (and focus) between university duties and startup work will be tough. And 2. if a startup fail to get traction within 1.5-2 years, and its founders are unable to secure GC/extension, you can expect further dilution of focus.

According to the GEIR website, it only requires founders to spend 8 hours per week on university duties. One day a week does not sound to bad.

Lol, with so many legitimate H-1Bs getting denied, I doubt USCIS will approve these visas.

Right now, US is bleeding talent either by losing H-1Bs (especially ones that are educated in the US) and future university students.

Guess what this mass of population would do in their countries in the years ahead?

“the program invites foreign entrepreneurs to work part-time at a school, either as a mentor or an adjunct professor. In return, entrepreneurs may get a cap-exempt H-1B visa that gives them the latitude to work on their own startups”

Seems like the bar to get accepted is pretty high

Here is the official eligibility. Does make sense to set the bar high initially and loose it slowly afterwards.

Eligibility

-You graduated from a US university or participated in a US acceleration/incubation program, entrepreneurial boot-camp, etc.;

-Your company is underway in terms of incorporation, financing and corporate governance;

-Your company has been accepted as a member of the VDC; and

-You possess the necessary skill, experience and talent to qualify for an H-1B visa.

Why not EB-visa though? H1B is completely useless or even dangerous for startup founders. It's easier to live in e.g. Canada and incorporate in Delaware, than work in the US as H1B and be prevented from incorporating anything, effectively ending up as a high-performing slave wasting best years on somebody else's success.

there is no EB-visa, only EB green cards. But you need to get H1B first before you can jump through the EB hoops.

> there is no EB-visa

Citizenship and Immigration Services thinks there's 5 different subcategories of them.

https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/permanent-worker...

> only EB green cards.

Nope, Green Cards don't have categories, they require you to be currently admitted in an immigrant visa category (EB-1 through -5 qualify, as do a number of others, but not H-1B or other non-immigrant visas.)

> But you need to get H1B first before you can jump through the EB hoops.

No, you don't.

We'd be a lot better off if it were lower, seems like.

No.

Could you please not post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com