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Canada wants foreign entrepreneurs

Written by lisa on May 18, 2012 · Leave a Comment

Canada is looking to launch a new “start-up” visa to attract foreign entrepreneurs to settle in the country.

The Canadian government last week revealed its Economic Action Plan 2012, which highlights its commitment to support entrepreneurs, world-class research and innovators.

Citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism minister Jason Kenney said: “Our government’s top priority remains jobs, growth and long-term prosperity. Canada cannot afford to lose out in the competition for foreign entrepreneurs among immigrant-receiving countries.”

He added: “We need to proactively target a new type of immigrant entrepreneur who has the potential to build innovative companies that can compete on a global scale and create jobs for Canadians.”

The government also announced plans to build a fast and flexible economic immigration system focusing on meeting the new and emerging needs of the Canadian economy.

This will include changes to Business Immigration Programmes, which will target more active investment in Canadian growth companies and more innovative entrepreneurs.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) wants to consult with industry groups about setting up a start-up visa programme for innovative entrepreneurs in the coming months.

The scheme involves linking foreign entrepreneurs with private sector companies that have experience in working with start-ups.

Tim Simpson, a British expat running his own consultancy firm in Canada, said: “The Canadian economy has recovered well from the global financial crisis and has broadly replaced all the jobs lost during that time. But things have slowed down a bit since then, as Canada mirrors the fortunes of the US, which has seen its recovery ease up as well.

“Every country should actively be encouraging the best and brightest minds to its shores and Canada is competing with many other countries keen to attract entrepreneurs. The big plus point for Canada is that it is a great place to live.”

The retail sector is the single largest employer in Canada, accounting for almost two million workers. Health care, social assistance and manufacturing are the next biggest employers.

However, there has been a big shift towards natural resources. Mining, quarrying and the oil and gas sectors have seen a big rise in headcounts in recent years. At the other end of the scale, jobs in real estate and education have been shrinking.

In March, Canada added more than 82,000 jobs with the gains coming from its two largest provinces, Ontario and Quebec.

Justin Harper

15 May 2012

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/offshorefinance/9266499/Canada-wants-foreign-entrepreneurs.html

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Feds plan to hand-pick skilled immigrants, attract entrepreneur with new visa

Written by lisa on April 19, 2012 · Leave a Comment

From replacing the entrepreneur program with a startup visa to moving ahead on a proposal to cherry-pick immigrants based on occupation, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is rolling out a series of initiatives during several stops across Central and Eastern Canada this week.

On Tuesday, Kenney announced in London, Ont., plans to introduce legislation to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and allow provincial and municipal governments as well as businesses to hand-pick immigrants based on their occupation and whether their skills are needed.

Read more »

Categories: Entrepreneur Visa, StartUp Visa - Tags: , , ,

UK Open to Indian Investors

Written by lisa on March 31, 2012 · Leave a Comment

The British deputy high commissioner for western India, Peter Beckingham revealed new figures about India’s investment in the UK over last two years.

According to Mr. Beckingham, there were over 100 new entrepreneurs investing in the UK during the last two years. On arrival at Vadodara, the high commissioner interacted with entrepreneurs to foster more investment in the UK. Currently, the UK is looking for investment in areas of advanced engineering, the energy sector, automotive sector and oil and gas sector.

Mr. Beckingham also noted that Gujarat was an exceptionally prosperous state in India and the UK was open to all Indians wanting to come to the UK.

“We are open to Indians who want to study, invest or travel in the country as tourists. We are not restricting entry for such people. In fact, many Indian companies have been investing in the UK. Indians have been one of the biggest investors in the UK” the commissioner said in a meeting with officials of the Federation of Gujarat Industries (FGI) and the Vadodara Chamber of Commerce and Industries (VCCI).

The commissioner stated that the number of Indians studying in the UK has increased recently. With an aim to protect Indian students from fake universities, the UK government has already made a list of recognized universities on its websites in addition to removing the fake ones.

Hanna Eliasson

19 Mar 2012

http://www.migrationexpert.com/uk/visa/uk_immigration_news/2012/mar/0/488/uk_open_to_indian_investors

 

Categories: Country UK, Entrepreneur Visa, Entrepreneurs - Tags: ,

Singapore ‘fresh playground’ for entrepreneurs, startups

Written by lisa on February 29, 2012 · Leave a Comment

Singapore is becoming a magnet for foreign entrepreneurs looking to establish their businesses in Asia, attracted by its lower cost of living and wages as well as ease in attracting talent, although there are still some issues to be ironed out to make the destination more attractive.

Online rental room marketplace, Roomorama, for one, chose the city-state to be its Asia-Pacific base as part of its worldwide expansion plans and moved here in March 2011, said Federico Folcia, the company’s CEO and co-founder. The company first started out in New York, United States, three-and-a-half years ago.

He explained that Singapore was the “very best” option from the start when the company decided to move to this region rather than expanding into Europe. This is because there are more entrepreneurs moving here, which generates buzz, and the relatively lower wages and cost of living were also attractive points for consideration.

 

“You can tell that Singapore is establishing itself as the startup capital of Southeast Asia,” he said.

The fact that Roomorama’s other co-founder, Teo Jia En, is a Singaporean also played a role in the company setting up base here, as she has knowledge of the country and its technology environment, Folcia acknowledged.

Another entrepreneur, Roshan D’Silva, founder of Tripvillas, reckoned that the country was the “logical choice” to expand his vacation home rental service, which started in India. After all, it is the capital of tourism in Southeast Asia and one of the first stops for visitors to the region, he said.

He also pointed out that setting up a business in Singapore is fast because the process is easy and streamlined for entrepreneurs. “There’s no country in the world where setting up business is faster,” he said.

That Singapore is predominantly English speaking, and its legislation is in English, helped attract social games developer GamesMadeMe to the country too, revealed the company’s CEO Juha Paananen.

The Finnish executive had worked in Singapore for four years before starting the company with two other Finnish compatriots, and said that access to talent is another key attraction. Singapore is an international city and it’s fairly easy to recruit people from overseas–mostly from Asia but also from Europe, he said.

Razmig Hovaghimian, co-founder and CEO of Viki, an online, community-based video subtitling service provider, described Singapore as the “underdog” of the global startup scene, and this attracted the company to set up an office here. The video site has TV and movies, translated into over 150 languages by its translator community

Originally a class project by Harvard and Stanford graduate students in the U.S., Viki decided to grow, develop and market its product “under the radar” and the city-state offered them a “fresh playground” to flourish in, the CEO disclosed. It now has offices in Singapore, San Franciso and Seoul, South Korea, and is backed by venture capitalist firms such as Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Charles River Ventures, among others.

Not all positive

However, Hovaghimian disagreed with Paananen in that finding the right talent is easy.

He said this was not an issue initially when the team was still small, but as the company scaled from 20 employees to 30, hiring candidates with the right skillsets became more difficult. The United States, on the other hand, has a bigger pool of talent and has enough people to go around, he added.

Paananen added that Singapore’s big businesses should also be more startup-friendly. Based on his past work experience, he said established companies can be “really reluctant to try out anything new” and this might kill off new startups as the latter will need help from enterprises to help establish their businesses.

Additionally, while he sees a lot of money made available by Singapore’s venture capitalists (VCs), he noted that there are not many VCs here that are familiar with the tech industry. Many local VCs come from a finance background, whereas those in the U.S. are more in tune with IT.

The country’s small land mass and population also results in space constraints for offices and a limited domestic market for startups to rely on, noted D’Silva. Space, in particular, is a concern as it raises rental costs. As such, the government could set aside cheaper real estate here for startups as is done in the U.S. where these companies congregate in the cheaper parts of the city, the Tripvillas founder suggested.

Liau Yun Qing

27 Feb 2012

http://www.zdnetasia.com/singapore-fresh-playground-for-entrepreneurs-startups-62304017.htm


Categories: Country: Singapore - Tags: ,

Start-up floats a solution to tech industry’s visa problem

Written by lisa on December 9, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Blueseed Prototype

WASHINGTON – Getting a visa to live and work in the U.S. can be hard, even for highly skilled immigrants and foreign entrepreneurs looking to start businesses.

A California start-up company may have found a way to get around those time-consuming, hard-to-get visas. The company is planning to anchor a ship capable of holding 1,000 people off California’s shore — far enough away to be in international waters but close enough to Silicon Valley so occupants, using easier-to-obtain tourist visas and short-term business visas, can hop a quick ferry ride to meet with tech employers and investors on shore.

Max Marty, a 27-year-old who founded the start-up, Blueseed, came up with the idea after seeing so many of his classmates at the University of Miami’s business school head back to their home countries after failing to secure work visas.

“I thought: ‘This is terrible. These people could be here adding a lot of value,’ ” says Marty, who seeks to raise at least $10 million for the venture. “There’s a lot of job creation and job growth that could be happening if this situation were changed.”

Marty’s proposal comes amid deadlock in Congress over reforms to the nation’s immigration system.

The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a bill that ends the practice of giving out the same number of visas for high-skilled immigrants to all countries. That will make it easier for engineers and technology experts from India and China, who are aggressively pursued by U.S. companies, to enter the U.S.

Read more »

Categories: US Start-UP, US Visa - Tags: , , , ,

U.S. immigration chief getting serious about startups & immigrant entrepreneurs

Written by lisa on December 7, 2011 · Leave a Comment

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director Alejandro Mayorkas is getting serious about creating reforms that would make it easier for foreign entrepreneurs to settle in the US.

A group of VCs, academics and thought leaders recently petitioned Mayorkas about the roadblocks to foreigners creating startups in the United States.

To their surprise, Mayorkas responded immediately and quite positively, asking for more advice and promising swift action to welcome more foreign entrepreneurs.

Vivek Wadhwa, an entrepreneur, academic and columnist, was on the list of signatories petitioning the director and said he was surprised at Mayorkas’ response.

In an email exchange with VentureBeat, he said, “I expected this would be a battle I would have to fight through the media and through policy makers. I believe that Alejandro is serious in his intent and genuinely wants to fix the problem. The question is whether the bureaucracy will let him.

“If he does follow through, it will make a real difference. Great job-creating entrepreneurs … won’t be deported, they will be welcomed.”

This issue has been raging since at least the Startup Visa Act was first introduced in Congress in 2010. The Act has yet to undergo judiciary committee review.

In a VentureBeat post on American brain drain, Wadhwa wrote, “During the last 20 years, we admitted record numbers of international students and highly educated foreign workers on temporary visas. But we never expanded the number of permanent resident visas that allow them to stay permanently.”

For this reason and others, Wadhwa continued, “72 percent of Indian and 81 percent of Chinese returnees said that the opportunities to start their own businesses were better or much better in their home countries.” As a result, he said, America is losing new jobs and new businesses.

Last month, USCIS announced an Entrepreneurs in Residence initiative, spearheaded by Mayorkas. The goal of the initiative was “to ensure that our policies and processes fully realize the immigration law’s potential to create and protect American jobs,” as Mayorkas said at the time.

As part of the EIR initiative, USCIS asked industry experts to recommend policy changes that would have a positive impact on American entrepreneurship. In response, a group of leaders ranging from investors such as Fred Wilson and Brad Feld to academics such as Benn Konsynski and AnnaLee Saxenian to the United States Chamber of Commerce wrote Mayorkas an open letter.

In this letter, the group recommended improved training materials and certain “changes to the Adjudicator’s Field Manual (AFM) to guide adjudicators in assessing petitions by prospective entrepreneurs under the Startup Initiative.” In simple terms, the group found that the process of setting up a legal business and establishing residency in the U.S. was needlessly complicated for foreign entrepreneurs of small startups.

First, the group recommended a basic training video for government officials who decide on whether or not a foreign entrepreneur passes muster. These adjudicators, the group said, needed simple education on what a startup is, its phases of development and how it grows into a full-fledged business.

Second, the group stated that the manual for adjudicators needed some changes along the same lines, “to promote and encourage foreign entrepreneurs to start businesses in the United States, as well as facilitate the process of adjudicating those petitions.”

“We believe these changes will help level the playing field for entrepreneurs interested in starting businesses in the United States,” the group concluded.

In response, Mayorkas has written, “Your ideas are excellent, and I would like to follow up on them immediately.”

Mayorkas said the training video specifically was a good idea and that he wanted “a suggested training video outline identifying the major points you believe need to be communicated to adjudicators handling entrepreneurs’ petitions.”

As for the manual for adjudicators, Mayorkas wrote, “I will schedule and host a public engagement focused on the discrete sections of the Adjudicators’ Field Manual that are most relevant to entrepreneurs’ petitions, with the goal of revising those sections as needed. If you have suggested revisions already in mind, I would appreciate receiving them.”

The director finished, “I want to move as quickly as possible. We are focused on ensuring that the law’s full potential to attract foreign entrepreneurial talent is realized.”

Jolie O’Dell

30 Nov 2011

http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/30/startups-immigration-reform/

Categories: Entrepreneurs, StartUp Visa - Tags: , , ,

Study on Children of U.S. Immigrant Entrepreneurs

Written by lisa on December 7, 2011 · Leave a Comment

The Immigrant Learning Center (ILC) has recently released a report examining diverse issues related to immigrant entrepreneurship whose parents had their own businesses, which were usually small and local.

The study focused on the children of U.S. immigrant entrepreneurs, specifically Asian American and Latino graduate and professional students. They all grew up in households in the U.S. and some of them were born there while others immigrated to the U.S. in childhood. All of them have one thing in common: their immigrant entrepreneur parents and experiences growing up around the family business heavily influenced their desire to pursue an education in the U.S. and determined which jobs to work in the States.

According to the study, among the most vivid memories of several students are those that focused on the interconnections between their home lives and the family business. They spent long hours in the business environment. Parents differed in their approaches to the direct involvement of their children. Some encouraged this involvement especially with tasks that involved direct contact with customers in businesses such as restaurants and daycare facilities. In several cases, the children, who often possessed more advanced English language skills than their parents, served as vital language brokers. Other parents consciously shielded their children from assuming any roles in the business particularly from activities that involved manual exertion.

Education is very highly valued by immigrant entrepreneur parents and many parents viewed education as a vehicle for respect and stability as well as advancement, as a result, the young adults interviewed had achieved high education levels. Many of the people interviewed had pursued advanced studies. They related how their immigrant parents wanted them to excel educationally, get good, stable U.S. jobs, and live more comfortable lives in the U.S. than their parents had. ILC found that “there is an inherent appreciation among the adult children of immigrant entrepreneurs for the sacrifices their parents made to ensure that they have successful careers and lead normal lives in their adopted homeland”.

1 Dec 2011

http://www.migrationexpert.com/visa/us_immigration_news/2011/dec/0/466/study_on_children_of_u.s._immigrant_entrepreneurs

 

Categories: Entrepreneurs - Tags: , , , , , , ,

54 hours to launch: entrepreneurship on speed

Written by lisa on November 17, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Come happy hour this Friday when most of us are just leaving work for the weekend, a hundred or so strangers will be getting together in Frederiksberg for a 54-hour business marathon called Copenhagen Startup Weekend.

The event is part of a grassroots entrepreneurship movement begun by the American non-profit Startupweekend.org. In just four years, Startup Weekends have spread to more than 350 cities around the globe.

Denmark is one country that has really embraced the craze. Aarhus has had three Startup Weekends so far. Aalborg just had its first. And Copenhagen is hosting its fourth on November 18-20.

Alex Farcet, co-founder of Startup Bootcamp, a European business accelerator with locations in Copenhagen, Madrid and Berlin, organised Copenhagen’s first Startup Weekend back in April 2010.

“The people who take part in Startup Weekends are very special. They’re not normal. For one thing, they pay money to work really hard on the weekend, developing business ideas with strangers,” he told The Copenhagen Post. Read more »

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Create jobs and invest money in US for a faster Green Card

Written by lisa on November 5, 2011 · Leave a Comment

BANGALORE: If you don’t want to wait years on end for a Green Card in the US, there is a quicker route — the EB5 immigration visa. But it comes with a rider, you have to create jobs and invest money in the US.

The EB5 is an immigration visa that gets families a permanent Green Card in return for an investment of either $500,000 or $1 million and proof that the investment has created 10 direct or indirect jobs. It provides a short-cut to a conditional Green Card – a permanent resident card that allows an alien to live permanently in the US — within a year of applying, which can take about three years to convert to a permanent one.

“The programme facilitates foreign entrepreneurs’ capital investment that creates or preserves US jobs by supporting the establishment of new commercial enterprises or assist troubled US-based businesses in economically distressed areas,” Stephanie Ostapowich, public affairs officer, Office of Communications, Media Relations Division, US Citizenship and Immgration Services (USCIS) said.

A Green Card through other visa categories can take up to several years. Recent reports by the National Foundation for American Policy, which tracks immigration data, show that getting a Green Card for Indians who have received a university degree from the US can even take up to 70 years given the large number of visa-seekers and the limited number of visas available. Indian Green Card seekers who have a degree from an American University need to apply in the EB3 visa category.

THE PROSPECTS

“Failure to retain these talented individuals in the United States means they will go to work for global firms in other countries or US businesses will need to place them abroad, pushing more work outside the United States,” Stuart Anderson, the author of the report released earlier this month said.

Though the EB5 visa was created by the Immigration Act of 1990, lack of awareness and the complexity of the investment has kept Green Card seekers away. Investment experts like Greg Wing, the managing director of Green Card Fund, have now recognised this as an option to help start-ups in the US get funds.

However, things are changing with the visa gaining attention of both American businesses and government. Since the spectre of a global downturn resurfaced, Wing has been getting calls from businesses who would like to get EB5 funding several times a day. Which is also why Wing is now visiting Indian shores, to create awareness about the mechanism and raise millions of dollars from Indians in return for giving them a chance to live the American Dream.

“Since the economy worsened, I have been getting several calls for this route of funding. I just tell most of them not possible that businesseses are too risky,” he said. In the past 3 to four years the US government too has been promoting the EB5 visa actively by bringing in more clarity on regulations around the investments.

Investment under the EB5 category can be made in any project in the US, across industries. Visa-seekers can buy an existing business and run them, help troubled businesses, start their own business or give the money to regional centres like Wing’s that can identify the projects and make the investment for them. Applicants get a temporary Green Card after applying for an EB5 visa and making the investment and this is converted to a permanent Green Card once the applicant can prove that the investment has created jobs.

Shruti Sabharwal

20 Oct 2011

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/nri/visa-and-immigration/create-jobs-in-the-us-for-a-faster-green-card/articleshow/10420789.cms?google_editors_picks=true

 

Categories: Invest in the US - Tags: , , , , , ,

Asian entrepreneurs no longer just ‘copycats’

Written by lisa on October 22, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Asia’s entrepreneur community and startup industry has finally come of age, according to several U.S. companies which are leading a wave of activities from overseas to this region.

The opportunity in Asia, for instance, has become too great to ignore for two online entities, Techcrunch and Wall St Journal’s AllThingsD, which have both selected Asian cities as the venues to host their inaugural international expansions. Techcrunch Disrupt in Beijing, and AllThingsD’s AsiaD in Hong Kong, aim to attract Silicon Valley’s best-and-brightest to discuss and create the latest trends and innovations. They also bring American investment dollars and business networks to the region.

While this occurs at the top level, local entrepreneurs are driving the grassroots movement including StartupsHK, which has over 200 active founders, and its upcoming Startup Saturday event which will be attended by Dave McClure’s Geeks on a Plane.

This is validation that entrepreneurs in the region are no longer “copycats” but actually have the resources and vision to compete on the international stage.

Techcrunch editor Sarah Lacy visited China over six times in the past two years as part of a wider study of entrepreneurship in emerging markets and her findings were documented in her book “Brilliant. Crazy. Cocky: How the top 1% of entrepreneurs profit from global chaos”.

She convinced Techcrunch co-founder Michael Arrington to select Beijing as the first international venue for its popular Disrupt conference, to be held Oct. 31 to Nov. 1, pointing to China’s multiple, billion-dollar companies and huge domestic market.

Most importantly, the startups are not just a bunch of “copycats”, Lacy told ZDNet Asia. “There are certainly hundreds–if not thousands–of Chinese companies that are simple copycats looking to make a quick dollar. But this stereotype is way too overstated,” Lacy said. “Even some of the so-called ‘copycat’ companies are incredibly innovative in monetization and delivery because the logistical challenges are so great in China.”

She highlighted Tencent, Sina and YouKu, as Chinese companies which originally cloned ICQ, Yahoo and YouTube, respectively, but have since developed their own unique technology and products.

These examples of innovation have not gone unnoticed by AllThingsD, which selected Hong Kong as the host city for AsiaD, and the first stop of its world tour of the “D: All Things Digital” conference.

Tapping the human asset
Asian entrepreneurship has come of age and countries in the region have one distinct advantage over Silicon Valley: human capital.

AllThingsD’s producer, Kara Swisher, said in an interview: “There’s a lot more entrepreneurs. More math and science graduates.

“The U.S. has really fallen down on that. We benefited from immigrants coming to this country–Asian, Indians and all kinds of people coming to Silicon Valley and making the atmosphere vibrant. Now that we have our visa laws discouraging that, these entrepreneurs stay in their home countries to develop there. India’s very good at that so you’re going to see a lot of innovation [from there] because we don’t have enough Americans graduating in math and science degrees.

“The ability to provide a lot of people in engineering, science and computer science is clearly important, and China’s doing very well in that regard,” Swisher said.

Startup Saturday in Hong Kong is expected to attract over 400 entrepreneurs, investors and developers to engage on all things related to startups, according to co-organiser Jon Buford, who also founded the BootHK co-working space, and is working on his own invention production system, Makible. He has watched the scene develop over the past decade and believes the local market has reached a tipping point.

“We are starting to see some real traction for companies that were started in the last year or two, and some smaller successes within that generation,” Buford told ZDNet Asia. “To sum it up, it is small but it has heart. The people that are here are in it because they love what they do.

“Since we don’t have as much of an established ecosystem, this core foundation of a self-supporting community is important here. We want to give people something to build the other resources around, and I’m already seeing that happening.”

He described Makible as a mash between handmade-goods marketplace Etsy and crowsourced funding site, Kickstarter, adding that he was able to introduce the system because of Hong Kong’s unique position in the global manufacturing and distribution supply chain.

More entrepreneurs and businesses will recognize the city’s geographic and commercial potential in the coming years, he said.

“You just don’t have the same opportunity anywhere in the world than Hong Kong for doing this type of business as efficiently,” Buford said. “It is both a unique and fragmented market, but it also has resources that are still untapped. I think it will take domain experts in traditional fields to create these businesses.”

Swisher believes it is only time before Asia produces its own Apple or Google.

“As you see the convergence of all these entrepreneurs in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Korea, it’s inevitable you’re going to get world-changing companies,” she said. “It happens when you put money and entrepreneurs together, and have a strong ecosystem like there is in Silicon Valley. You’re going to get there eventually.”

Mahesh Sharma

21 Oct 2011

http://www.zdnetasia.com/asian-entrepreneurs-no-longer-just-copycats-62302604.htm

 

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