Foreign-Born Entrepreneurs Drive America's Unicorn Boom

Cakez0r 71 days ago |

> The next time someone talks about restricting immigration, show them this: Nearly half of America’s billion-dollar startups were founded by people born outside the United States.

I don't think the people that talk about restricting immigration care about the number of billion dollar companies that immigrants create

comrade1234 71 days ago | |

If anything they would love to stick it to them and maybe even steal a bit of those billions for themselves.

happytoexplain 71 days ago | |

Yeah, I don't think people of any country would appreciate being told that foreigners are better than them in some way, and that's why they should be brought in. I think most people would not assume that successful companies would be much rarer without those people - only that other people would be founding them.

pasquinelli 71 days ago | |

beyond not caring. that little factoid would turn a lot of people into xenophobes.

kylecazar 71 days ago | |

I think they would likely use it as further evidence

pseudalopex 70 days ago | |

Most people don't care how many billion dollar companies anyone creates in my experience.

watwut 71 days ago | |

You use Elon Musk as argument there and everyone left of center will join call for retroactive immigration restriction.

jongjong 71 days ago |

This seems more like a reflection of existing tech power structures and social dynamics rather than innovation.

The bottleneck to being a unicorn isn't so much innovation as it is access to capital. The chasm between the two seems to keep growing. Soon enough, they will be totally independent.

If current trends continue, I predict that in 5 years, for every unicorn startup, there will be many bootstrapped startups valued at peanuts providing far superior products for far lower costs. But they won't be able to access either capital or user traffic.

yahway 71 days ago |

Foreign born people who come from generational wealth can and do exploit'disadvantaged' business enterprises (DBE, MOBE, etc.) I am not tech field but AEC and the amount of businesses that exploit this is insane. It was created for blacks mostly, but used almost exclusively by Indians.

OutOfHere 69 days ago | |

To claim that a rule was created for a particular race is unfair to begin with, even if that was a motivation. Rules exist equally for everyone.

pluc 71 days ago |

To be fair, they now have about half the time to make it before you deport them so they have to be more productive.

lostmsu 71 days ago |

How many of them immigrated illegally?

zetanor 71 days ago |

Wow, I love foreign-born entrepreneurs.

dominotw 71 days ago |

spent way too much time looking for raw data for the graphs . is it in the article?

analognoise 71 days ago |

Counterpoint - this just indicates how screwed up things are. If you’re saying this as a positive thing, it isn’t.

Most people don’t want to compete with the global 1% - to import students from the Stanford of every country. Having policies your own population fails to thrive under does nothing but stoke division.

This is just ammo for the anti-immigration people, and they’re already at the “elect Trump, turn ICE into a military” point. How tone deaf do you have to be to see this as a positive thing?

OutOfHere 69 days ago | |

It is a positive thing. What do you think keeps the stock market pumping if not the acquisitions of smaller firms by large firms? Even if they're not acquired, their existence itself adds to the total market cap.

analognoise 68 days ago | | |

I think optimizing for the stock market is what's leading to political instability and making our country a worse place to live; I think it would be great if we threw a wrench into it (although admittedly, any thrown wrench would be smaller than the collective AI-psychosis it's currently undergoing).

OutOfHere 67 days ago | | |

I disagree completely. There is no "political instability" in this country. If you want an example of it, see the UK. As for whether the country is a worse place to live, it is that due to human-induced environmental toxins (fossil fuels, CO2, water pollutants, air pollutants, etc.) and due to an erosion of Constitutional rights, none of which has too much to do with the stock market. As for AI, it is meant to lead to greater automation of ridiculous human labor, followed by the grant of benefits to everyone. If you think AI is merely a psychosis, then you're fully removed from reality.