Half of VC-Backed Company Founders are Immigrants

Mark Heesen writes today in Venture Beat about of the value of immigrants for the US:

Imagine if Jerry Yang had stayed in Taiwan and had not been able to immigrate to the US as a child? Or Andy Grove remained in Hungary? Or Sergey Brin was now living in Russia? Companies that have changed the way we live, work and think would certainly not be headquartered here – and maybe wouldn’t exist at all.

This reminds me of the panel I participated in at AlwaysOn Stanford Summit named: "Does America still have lock on innovation?". My answer to that was definately no, and I mentioned on how important immigration is to the US in particular with regards to innovation and R&D. Since 9/11 it has become very difficult for foreign student to come to the US and I think that is a big mistake. Just look at Israel, one of the main reasons for why Israel has been so successfull at innovation is because we are a cultural melting pot for so long where peopled and cultures constantly have been mashed up.

Immigration is one of the cornerstones of innovation be it in the US or in Israel..

Technorati Tags: immigration, Alwayson, Venture Capital

Comments

[Uri L.]

True - immigration societies are more dynamic and "turbulent" regarding work and life-course models.

Here's an interesting video I posted a while ago, from AlwaysOn 2004 about Silicon Valley and the culture of Entrepreneurship -> http://gogelmogel.typepad.com/gogelmogel/2006/06/video_silicon_v.html

Interesting anecdote about Japan in the end :)

[Net]

True. Interesting about Japan.