The policy that was proposed last year—and I don't have any say over changes despite now all-but running the political game supporting StartupVisa—was that if you had gotten $250k in VC or superangel funding (where superangel was defined as being a US citizen, aka not jeff clavier, that hit some bar of annual investing) or $100k per immigrant co-founder, you gained a two-year visa. If, at the end of those two years, your startup reached $1M in annual revenue, raised $1M in funding, or hired 5 people, you got a green card.

As far as I know, that's still what the VC guys backing this are going for, though I do know that folks like Kauffman, Vivek Wadhwa, and a fair number of others think this policy doesn't go far enough as, quote, 9 out of 10 successful startups don't raise outside capital, unquote. Still, it's an improvement in my books and seems well worth passing. The biggest issue is making clear to the politicians that this is an issue well beyond Silicon Valley, as Pelosi said that she felt the Startup Visa was too narrowly focused geographically, which of course it isn't.

I'm also collecting stories of affected entrepreneurs and the jobs at risk without Startup Visa to post on the new tumblr in preparation for a push during SXSW: startupvisa.tumblr.com