First, on the interaction between US/India or Israel. Based on my limited experience, I don't think that model will work for software startup companies. To have a successful business, you need 1) understanding of the market; 2) a big enough market; 3) low production cost. For software, 1 and 3 are actually conflicting with each other. To outsource a piece of software work to India, you'll have to spend lots of time defining the problem upfront. Yet startup is shooting at a moving target, which makes the other party hard to catch up with the latest changes. I've spent 5 years from 2002 to 2007 working for a top-end outsourcing company in China, with main clients in US. The successful ones are 50 - 500 people company who has already established themselves and wanted to lower the production cost. Our experience with startup firms were quite painful, more than half of the time were spent in long distance calls.
Second, on the Founder Visa. Startup requires the founders to know each other well enough so that you will trust "the other significant half"'s decision almost blindly. You just couldn't grant someone a Founder Visa without knowing who he is going to partner with. This sounds like an 'arranged' marriage, it probably won't work out well under very stressful situation. Plus, legal process is always slow so personally I won't expect a new type of visa will be around anyway. In general, a successful software startup needs three ingredients: 1) close to market; 2) low production rate; 3) able to expand to global market. Since Australia economy ties into the global economy already, the problem entrepreneurs are trying to solve here might exist in UK or US as well. So that gives us a benefit of "staying close to the market" already. But for 2) and 3), the government could definitely help out a lot. Let's focus on production cost first because 3) is a nice to have. The goal of lowering the production cost is to make it as close to zero as possible. For an early stage startup, the main cost is the living cost. The lower the cost, the easier to get to "Ramen Profitable" stage.[1] For most entrepreneurs, the most typical choice is to live cheaply. Of course there is a limitation here. If the government could provide accommodation, transport or even food support for the first year. Done right, the funding could make it theoretically impossible to fail in the first year. Here is a concrete example. Let's say 30k will be enough for one year modest living in Melbourne. Let's assume that 1) the cost could be lowered to 15k with government help 2) the startup is selling lightweight enterprise software which charges about 20k. As long as the startup could sell to one customer, the business is 'established'. This way, the founders could feel more worry free yet still have the strong incentive to get paying customers. To make the proposal more realistic, we should also look at how to evaluate which startup to fund and how to measure the success rate of the program. "If it can be measured, it can be done". Since 90% startup fails in the first three years. It's quite easy to say whether the program is successful or not by looking at third year survival rate. One possible way for evaluation criteria is for the government to back professional angel investors' own investments. For example, investors will put their own 5k in each company they're willing to fund, then the government will boost that number up to 20k. Hence the number of the investment is so small to the investors that the funding filtering process will be much simpler yet the government could still focus on 'creating an entrepreneur ecosystem rather than get involved into the bets'. ( What PG said in this year's foocamp ) Hope this helps, Alex [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html On Sep 15, 6:46 am, hoops <missingmatt...@gmail.com> wrote: > When we start talking about visa's etc it opens up a huge bag of > worms. Are we after just coders ? or Entrepreneurs (E's for short)? > > I think we are after Entrepreneurs( are we or is it just coders?). So > if we are trying to attract E's then lets look at why would they > come ? Do we have a situation today where there are lines of > experienced tech E's knocking on the door and we are saying no, or are > we talking about a situation where anyone that has run a fish and chip > shop can call themselves an E? or are we only after high tech E's ? > > This is an important questions. I have seen situations with some of > my wife's family where under the older self immigration system in Oz > (where you could immigrate as an experienced businessman - I don't > know if it still exists) very experienced people hitting a culture > wall. simple things, but they are important - say how you network, or > just trying to do your old business the way you used to do it. Those > immigrates that do take this route are made of tough stuff, but ... it > often can take many years to get a return - ie. they have to learn how > to succeed Here. This is not always the case i know , but it can be > (again, i am talking about people straight off the boat, no previous > experience with Oz culture and lifestyle etc). > > If we look at the relationship with USA and say India - how big a role > did years of living and working in a US company or education institute > contribute to many of the success stories ie. the merging of cultures > and ideas. How much then has the success of india been due to > returning immigrants bringing back a different way PLUS a set of > contacts in the USA (effectively using their indian network and their > usa networks to build a business). How much of this ability to unit 2 > different networks helps say Israel ? (ie.working with family in NY > say to get started ?) > > What are we trying to achieve here - isn't it a patch (to use a tech > term) to our own culture to help kick start an E culture ? > > In short - I think a lot of the value comes from the ability to unit 2 > or more networks of people and/or cultures to deliver value, looking > at people off the boat isn't going to deliver that value without a few > years of learning. So instead do we start working with current > immigrants (students or long term work visas) and accessing their > ability to change to an E visa (they have at least in part tackled the > cross culture issues) or maybe it is US that need a reverse Visa - WE > go to india or asia or Israel and learn how they do business , and > merge their ideas with ours (they are after all our neighbours ?) and > bring that back. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach Australia mailing list. Guidelines on discussion: http://tr.im/ujKF No lurkers! 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