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Immigrants are profoundly entrepreneurial people: they leave behind everything they know for a new country and new opportunities, often at a financial risk. This willingness to embrace change and build a new life from scratch means it should not be a surprise that in the US alone, 43% of Fortune 500 companies have been founded by immigrants.
But there are obstacles that governments around the world put in front of such people and those they subsequently want to hire for their startups. In the US, for example, the number of H-1B visas (which allow companies to hire foreign talent) is capped and only 65,000 such visas can be issued in total each fiscal year.
And while large corporations have the financial and legal resources to navigate routes like the H-1B or Global Talent visa in the UK, startups typically lack these means and so can miss out on talent even when they’re developing technology in a field that only has a handful of experts around the world.
John Dearie, president of the Center for American Entrepreneurship which lobbies policymakers for changes, points out that “the United States is the only industrial democracy on the planet that does not have a visa category specifically designed to attract and retain foreign-born entrepreneurs”.
Dearie is joined on this episode of Beyond the Breakthrough by three people who have first-hand experience of the challenges, and opportunities, around immigration: Alice Li, executive director of the Center for Technology Licensing at Cornell University; Desmond Cheung, senior associate at Foresight Group; and Dorian Haci, founder and CEO of neural implant startup MintNeuro.
Simon Hepworth, director of enterprise at Imperial College London, leads the discussion, which marks the third and final part in our mini-series in partnership with tech transfer association TenU on building spinouts.
Further listening
Part 1 of this mini-series: The key ingredients of successful spinout teams Part 2 of this mini-series: Funding for all — unlocking diversity in spinouts
Alice Li previously joined the Beyond the Breakthrough podcast for an in-depth conversation about Cornell University’s ecosystem. Listen to that episode here.