Ask HN: European founders in YC? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: European founders in YC?

28 pointsknarf22 comments

I know I've read about some founders from outside US and what they had to do to get working permissions, but I can't find the link. Anybody got that link or some other advice?

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YC has a lot of founders from outside of the US. There were four teams from outside of the US in our YC class, two from Canada, one from the UK and one team from Austria. I can think of at least four other teams from abroad from previous classes.

In fact there is a kind of UK YC inside YC. The UK guys really stick together and help each other out. If you can get a hold of any of them I'm sure they'll point you in the right direction.

Papers and immigration are always a difficult issue. In most cases you can get a work visa or whatever visa lets you attend conferences in the US and it will be enough for the 3 month YC session.

It's Germany in my case. Can you point out the Austrian guys?

I should probably add that in my case all founders would be from outside US! So the problem is not only in getting visas for some of the founders but also incorporating in the US as I figure PG has no interest in 6% of a germany based company. The link I remember contained descriptions of both (visas and incorporating at the same time).

If you incorporate in the US you'll also need an EU based organization for legal purposes (since you'll have a "Betriebsstätte" in Germany) that can be a subsidiary of a Deleware C-Corp. That's why we decided to incorporate in UK since a Ltd. is a valid legal form EU-wide and leaves all of the incorporation documents in English, which is easier for investors to deal with.

I intentionally didn't name any names, sorry. A lot of startups haven't launched yet and I don't want to out anyone who is in stealth mode.

Thought so. But had to try ;) Thanks though. Founders from austria sounds really intersting. Maybe they will read this and can contact me..

Living in Austria (Innsbruck) myself, I'd be curious to hear about it as well. I miss being able to talk tech with real live people every now and then.

How's YEurope doing btw? If you're from Innsbruck you might have thought about goin there too..? From what I see on their site it seems rather dead.. :(

I sent in an application for the hell of it, got turned down, and now that you mention it, their site doesn't look all that active.

I didn't like that thing neither. Was a bit too copycat without any innovation. Still it would be good to have s.th. similar in Europe (London,Berlin,Zürich?)

There is technoport/luxinnovation/123-gonetworking in Luxembourg, but it's not focused on web startups (they accept startups from all fields). You won't get any money, but they will help you with your business plan, give you access to coaches (lawyers, sale guys, financial people, technical people...), help you create the company or to get european subsidaries, 4 months office location/servers offered for free (internet + work computers included), and much more help. (like funding, business angel connections, etc.) All startups have offices next to each other, allthough the industrial ones are located on another site.

The url is http://www.technoport.lu/. You can email me if you want more information. We started there like a month ago, and it has been great so far.

One startup that started here was jamendo (http://www.jamendo.com/en/).

Thanks. Didn't lnow about those.

Seedcamp, based in London, is similar in some ways. We were at the local event in Berlin and that was quite nice. The bad news is that the deadline for the current round was just a couple weeks back and it's only once a year.

Where in Germany are you based? We're going to probably start a small, regular hacker meetup here in Berlin in the next month. Send me a mail (in my profile) and we'll let you know when we start...

The two that come to mind of the top of my head are Songkick and Clickpass, both from the UK.

Here was a previous discussion on the topic: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=158969

searchyc.com is your friend.

Yes it is. Thanks for the quick reply and the hint.

Just to clarify you are asking about founders from outside the US moving to the US and getting work permits. Not the otherway round, right?

If it's the other way (in Holland at least) it will be easiest if one of the founders/employees can be recognized as an knowledge migrant.

The first.

I am sure there are a few UK YC startups. Below is what I can recall off the top of my head.

The blogs in particular may hold useful info for you regarding getting visas and working in the U.S. plus the journey in startup as a whole - I particularly like http://www.kulveer.co.uk and http://blog.harjtaggar.com who are the http://www.auctomatic.com guys as they give a good level of detail throughout their journey.

However, http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/02/coming-to-america-getti... (or http://is.gd/1Vrf in short) by Peter from ClickPass could be what you were referring to and probably holds most of the answers you want in the most succinct form.

Anyway, I'm sure if you contact them they may be answer specific visa questions from their experience. Hope this helps.

---

  http://www.auctomatic.com
  http://auctomatic.com/about
  http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kul
  http://www.kulveer.co.uk
  http://twitter.com/kul
  http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=harj
  http://blog.harjtaggar.com
  http://twitter.com/harjeet
  http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pc
  http://www.collison.ie/
  http://twitter.com/patrickc
  [John Collison]
  http://twitter.com/collision
  
  http://snaptalent.com
  http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sharpshoot
  http://sharpshoot.blogspot.com/
  http://twitter.com/sharpshoot
  
  http://www.songkick.com/
  http://www.songkick.com/team
  http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ian
  http://twitter.com/soundboy
  http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=petesmithy
  http://twitter.com/petesmithy
  
  http://www.clickpass.com/
  http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=immad
  http://www.immadsnewworld.com/
  http://twitter.com/immad
  http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=petenixey
  http://www.webkitchen.co.uk/
  http://twitter.com/petenixey
  
  http://webmynd.com/
  http://webmynd.wordpress.com
  http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=amirnathoo
  http://twitter.com/amirnathoo
  
  http://www.scoopler.com
  http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ajmalasver 
  http://blog.projectbluespark.com/
  http://twitter.com/_aj
  http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dilanj
  http://meonearth.blogspot.com/
  http://twitter.com/_dilan

Awesome! Yes it seems that was the link I was referring to. Thanks a lot for all that stuff.

nice work Babul. Peter (Nixey) and Harj are the masters of US Visa stuff. Let us (Songkick) know if you've got any questions about applying to YC from the UK. Happy to chat on Skype. You can also grab me at one of our Hacker Meetups if in London at any point.

Thanks Ian. (bit busy next week so may not see you).

In case anyone wants to attend and does not know where/when it is, hope this helps...

  Hacker Meetups London
  04 September 2008
  Flat 1,
  103 Commercial Street,
  London
  E1 6BG
  (Five minutes walk from Liverpool St tube)
  (Google map: http://is.gd/4zZ)

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