Mashape's Voice - Inside and Outside mashapers Life Style

26 Jul 2010

US Immigration System Sucks, if you are a Founder

As a "non 'US citizen Co-Founder" with a US startup, I'm facing a lot of problems with immigration policies. I'm thinking, why I have to do this? Why I have to spend all this time on stupid bureaucracy instead of focusing on my startup? Well because I think that if you work into the technology area, and you want to succeed, there is no other place better than San Francisco. I mean, if you want to do finance, probably NY, London or Singapore is the best place, or if you want to work into the fashion industry, Paris or Milan will help you a lot. Every economy has his own place; you can succeed everywhere of course, but in the right place the chances are higher and the risk is lower.

Nowadays this topic is hot; people like Paul Graham (an essay), Fred Wilson (a post), Dave McClure and others have built a website to actively support the new Startups Visa. But even this one could not be the right solution. Today's startups require few dozen dollars to run, and with that visa you have to get at least $250k in funding, where 100k have to come from US accredited investors. Moreover it could take 2 or 5 years for the government to enroll this visa, if they will do it...Innovation is the only thing that can let USA to maintain his leadership for many years to come; in economics growth and wellness. But innovation comes from the margin of the culture, innovation is a dynamic underlying architecture of the present economy, it evolves earlier than big corporation, government and bureaucracy. Innovation comes from startups. Thus, startup DO NOT have to deal with governments and bureaucracy at all. Startups have to live into the chaos.

If you are not an US citizen, and you want to drive your company in US, it's like to have 2 startups: the real one and another one o deal with immigration. Deal with Visas, is the biggest time consuming (and stupid) task that I have seen in all my life. The Immigration System is old, and is not properly designed to resolve today's challenges, especially to give a primary way to come in US for founders. Probably those startups will not become Google, but they could have 10 US employees, and hundreds of startups with 10 US employees will overtake all the Apple and Google workforce.

Nowadays the Visa situation for entrepreneurs (only those who likely live in a Visa Waiver Country; i.e India is not in the list) that have a startup in US, is this:

Non Immigrant Visa: (means that you do not have any intentions to be a US citizen, one day. De facto, after 5 years with certain type of these Visas "H1B or O1", you can get a green card)

H1B: (the most popular) This Visa let you be hired from your company. So you can be the CEO, CTO or a developer of your company.

Pros - After five years you could get the green card (if lucky) and you can go in and out of US as many times as you want.

Cons - You must have a salary according to the country avarage salary for the same position. So if you want to hire yourself as a developer and your company is in San Francisco, you have to put you a salary of $6000/month. You can put yourself (virtually) as a part-time worker and have a lower salary, but anyway if you have rised an Angel or a Seed round, you have to throw away a lot of money in taxes. Moreover, in my opinion, at the beginning a founder should not have such a good salary, till the company is profitable or after a Round A. We don't have any salary. There is an annual limit quota.

Duration - Three years, extensible to six.

B1: It's a visa for temporary visitors, for businesses. Every time you come in US, you can stay here 6 Months maximum, than you have to leave, stay in your country for a while, like 3months, and then come back for another 6 Months period. You can come in US if you are a shareholder of an US company or if you have to do business (meeting, event, conference, business development like partnership, etc) in US for a foreign one.

Pros - Is the fastest visa that you can get, and to apply you don't have to take with you a lot of documentation.

Cons - You can't have salary nor be hired even by your own company, moreover if you do the "back and forth" a lot of times, the immigration can stop you. Do it just 2 or 3 times, than you have to change the Visa. You have to provide to the embassy that you have enough personal or company moneys to live in US.

Duration - You can use it within 10 years.

L: Is for international transfers who have worked for a related organization abroad for at least one year in the past three years. They will be coming to the United States to work in an executive/managerial (L-1A) or specialized knowledge capacity (L-1B)

Pros - If you already have worked into a foreign company for a couple of years it's easy to get.

Cons - For a brand new startup directly in US, it's impossible to get this one.

Duration - Three year period if they intend to join an existing company or a one-year period if they intend to join a newly established company. Extensions are granted in 2 years increments for a maximum of 5 (L-1B) or 7 (L-1A) years.

E2: This is an investor visa. If you got at least $50k/75k from your country in investment, and you have already spent 25% of that amount, you can apply for it. Must be real investment, money in the bank are not enough.

Pros - You can work legally, and travel freely in and out of the US

Cons - It's long to get it, you must be a national of a treaty country.

Duration - They can give you 2 years or 5 years, then you can renew it.

O1: It's available to people of extraordinary ability in the field of arts, science, education, business or athletics.

Pros - If you already got a lot of press in your country, it's fine. You can accept an employment and you don't have to maintain a foreign residence. You can freely travel in and out of US as you like. No duration limit.

Cons - It is expensive, it requires a lawyer and additional fees and you must have a lot of press from mayor media. Hard to get.

Duration - No limit.

J1: Is good for an internship. You can apply for it as a founder to make an internship into your company.

Pros - It's easy to get

Cons - You must be sponsored by an organization approved by the Department of the State (DOS). You must have sufficient funds to cover all the expenses and sufficient scholastic preparation. You must have a small salary

Duration - When you enter in US, an inspector makes the final decision of the duration of the stay.

Immigrant Visa: You become a permanent resident

EB5: This a visa for serious investors. It's probably the best to get a Green Card as soon as possible.

Pros - You get the Green Card almost immediately, and you become a permanent resident after 5 years.

Cons - You have to be rich, and put your own money. The minimum is $500.000, but is better to put $1.000.000. You have to invest (at risk) these amounts in US, and create at least 10 US new jobs. Moreover you have to invest only in one of 100 US government approved regional centers. Sorry guys, but this is not for us.

Duration - It's for the rest of your life :)

________________________________________________________________________

Moreover even if you get a Visa like the B1, don't be sure to enter in US, because the inspector of the Homeland Security have always the last word. He can decide whether or not you can enter and for how long. That is too much power all in one man, who (frankly) doesn't know anything about businesses and how they work.

To conclude, americans do not exist.

Americans are not composed by a population with a unified DNA like Italians, Mexican, or French; Americans are a melting pot of different ethnic groups. Probably the power of this country is just this: the difference, deeply rooted into the nation's structure. Let me repeat that: "Americans are a melting pot of different ethnic groups". Well the Immigrations System is killing this secret sauce that drove United States for hundreds of years...

Obviously there is a good immigration and the bad one. A well organized immigration policy is the one who can divide clearly the good and the bad one. Uncontrolled and illegal immigration must be stopped as soon as possible.

At the end, what my advice could be? Try to make an application for the Green Card Lottery, and wish to win one, seriously.

If you have further questions drop me an email at: knock.knock@mashape.com, I will be happy to help people who simply want to create a better world :)

Good Luck!

Augusto

(talk to a lawyer, these Visas above are extremely summarized to what interest to us. There are other type of Visas, but I think they do not work for startupers like us).

8 Jul 2010

The best invention, ever!

20 Jun 2010

WorldCup around you

Today a nice app is running on Mashape! WorldCup around you

The concept is very simple, you start choosing two different World Cup Teams.

The app shows you all tweets that are talking about two teams. What is cool is that all these tweets are geo-localized, so that you can see on a map where a tweet comes from.

Enjoy!

18 Jun 2010

Ubiquitous Computing

Around us we are seeing the numbers of devices and services growing exponentially. Five years from now this behavior will evolve into the essential of our lives and today's rate of innovation in mobile services is just about to take a quantum leap.

Our laptop's browser is the central part to access contents and interact with it; in a couple of years the device will be the pivotal part, just because is more fun and useful thanks to features such:

user's location
social network
personal data
phone specific functions such the camera and the accelerometer

Information will be available in a "liquid" format, means that it can assume the most useful shape for a particular situation or need. Between the 2013 and 2015 tabs such the iPad will surpass the laptop sales and by 2012 Android will be the most used operating system due to the wide adoption on multi mobile devices.

Already 20 years ago Mark Weiser, a research scientist at Xerox PARC, in Palo Alto, had a vision of this future. He imagined that dozens, even hundred of small computers would be available everywhere, and seamlessly support us in our everyday tasks, he called it ubiquitous computing. Unlike the personal computer, these devices would be un-tethered, user friendly, aware of their surroundings, and conducive to communication and collaboration in the real world, rather than on the screen.

Future devices will be hundreds of times more powerful when it comes to processing power and memory is really not so important in terms of the software you can now create for them. Application concepts that are now popular on phones and pads have been around for decades, what is different is that every device is connected, not just to other devices, but to rapidly growing power of software resources, social networks, and most importantly "geo" and "real time" data. There is a bar in NoHo, NY, (the new vibrant US environment for startups) called Tom & Jerry's that draws a large crowd of web site founders,bloggers and online marketers. It's famous because everyone knows your twitter handle once you go there. All the people want to go in a bar where everybody knows their name, and that is possible thanks to location services and mobile.

I think that with the accelerating of capabilities of HTML 5 soon we will not even have to go through the process of installing apps on the phone, just because the web and devices will be one unified thing, with our lives on top of that. Of course apps have a better experience in terms of interactions, people use web search today because they do not know how to find quality informations; on the iPhone I just lunch the appropriate app. So if web/browsers wanna survive they have to innovate going deeper into devices integrations and rise up an amazing user's experience. It has to change from a flat platform for generic contents to a rich and more customized one "around you".

Well, some people may not like this kind of future at all, but we're already living it, and if from some points of view could be controversial due to the end of privacy, on the other hand is just the natural human evolution; we are social animals; we want simpler stuff and have the maximum while doing less.

That is exactly why Device will be our Lives

8 Jun 2010

Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates

Find more @ Sad and Useless http://bit.ly/930NzS

16 May 2010

I need a VC [mistake]

Most of the times, founders think that they need VCs money [mistake]. Do you really need money?

There are plenty of companies that are doing very well, without any VCs money. Depends on what you wanna do, depends on what is your REAL vision of your company, etc. We see numerous companies be happy during angel and VC rounds (including us), but who knows that this is the most valuable road on a long term?

It's about 1 year that I wanna make a post in honor of "Peldi", the founder of Balsamiq, a quick and simple wireframe tool to create mockups (we love it).

Balsamiq is exactly a kind of company that don't need multiple round of financing and tons of millions to reach profitability. Balsamiq is what Giacomo "Peldi" calls a 5 stars restaurant. Small company, with just a few people, that is solving a small problem, but big enough to make millions a year and live well, very well. To give you an example, Balsamiq is on the same philosophy of 37Signals, a small company with less that 20 employees, but almost $50 millions [I guess] in sales a year. Do you have any idea of how big could be the net income with a such low burn rate??? They sold just a tiny piece of the pie to Jeff Bezos, the rest of the company is on the founder's hands, so they have a full control of their destiny.

Peldi, started Balsamiq as "one man" company in 2008 and it has reached profitability in less than 3 weeks. During these years he has been approached by VCs and Angels (like all startups that are growing fast, so fast), usually they look for a 30X return in 5 years. But Balsamiq is a "5 stars restaurant" focused on quality, customer services and usability; he wants to keep is company small, without any "Boss" around him. VCs want big outcomes; when you raise money from a VC they will demand a veto right over the sale of the company, they want an exit. Peldi didn't build Balsamiq with the idea to sell it, he doesn't want an exit, he wants happy customers and a successful lifestyle business.

When your are going to create a business, preserve your options as much as you can and you have to understand if you're going to build a 37Signals company or a Facebook one. Both ways are tremendous amazing and powerful but they need a completely different approach. The biggest mistake that you can make is acting like you are a Facebook one, and then you have a 37Signals company and vice-versa.

Out there we have a plenty of ways to build something powerful, it's all about to know who you are. Everybody knows the benefits of building the Facebook one, however building the Balsamiq one has a lot of positive points:

Full control of your destiny
Amazing net income % on the revenue
Family environment
No pressure from outside investors
Small, valuable community
Easier to keep the main thing, the main thing
Better focus
Probably, more satisfaction, because it's all about you, and few others

Congratulations to Peldi, who is changing the world little by little!

10 May 2010

Why the US system of Software Patents is a Failure

2 May 2010

Keep it lean!

Hi guys,

I want to share with you the "Dropbox lessons learned".

Since they have created one of the coolest service on the web, Drew and his team were amazing to scale their growth from a couple of thousands to millions of users, while keeping their startup, LEAN. I think that the most important slide is the number 10.

29 Apr 2010

Mashape got a Lemon! :)

Click here to download:

mashape-got-a-lemon-anxJABDspnzIabkvcuoB.zip (1216 KB)

9 Apr 2010

Mashape got Funding!

Hey World,

We’re very excited to announce our First Angel Round. Almost all startups have to pass over this step. So there is nothing surprising with that. But our story till now wasn't so easy. Most of the time Americans don’t understand how harder is to achieve the same milestones if you are outside of this world, than in the USA, if you are just a little guy with a big dream 7000 miles away from San Francisco. You have to get into the network when nobody knows you. We grew up in Italy; it’s not the kind of place where you can build the next big thing, you can do startups, obviously, but just into the fashion industry :) Down there nobody really believes in technology. For almost 2 years we tried to raise money from all the Italian investors (very few, I have to say). Someone said that this idea was too big, someone else that we were not good enough to realize it and was technically impossible to do it, others that we were too young, etc…

So, instead of giving up, we crushed in a garage in Milan on April 2009, to build up the alpha of Mashape. We coded for 10 months in a row, making more than 90.000 lines of code and creating an entirely new language, XML based (2 developers). On September we went at the TC50 as a Demopit with just a prototype version of the platform, but it was valuable and we started making some connections. Once the product was ready enough we moved (me, Mark and Mike; on late January 2010) to San Francisco with just few grants. We knew that we had to do something as early as possible because we were running out of money day after day, and our bank balance and pursuit of success were starting to die. So, we crushed at all the events, we called all the people and asked them for help, we presented at SFNewTech, and walked around the city up and down like homeless...I think that we were everywhere in SV during these last months, if something was up and running, well, mashapers went there!

During the last month we were approached by a couple of investors, and eventually we decided to keep going with a group that looks great and works very fast. It has passed less than 19 days since our first meeting to get the money in the bank. In Italy the same process could take 6 months: a startup has two main critical points, money and time, you can’t wait on these things.

The investment comes from admirable and expert people, someone call them YouTube guys others YouTubers; I just call them: Kevin, that was the 14^th employee and VP of Contents at YouTube; Dave, that was YouTube's second lawyer and before a Senior Corporate Counsel at Yahoo; and Dwipal, that was a PayPal engineer and later the 9^th employee at YouTube, so a very early engineer, and he has built the 80% of the features that all of us are using now, and scaled the service from a couple of thousand users to dozen of millions; he’s now the founder of PickV with Christina, YouTube's first employee. We got the money when we still had just $2000 in the bank (oxygen for no more than another month).

YouTube is backed by Sequoia Capital and later acquired by Google in 2006 for $1.65 Billion, now a +500 employees company that is making hundreds of millions a year and is almost profitable; it has changed all the media industry”.

Finally, we got a new advisor, Jude Gomila that is the founder of HeyZap, a powerful gaming startup that is revolutionizing the distribution and monetization of Flash games; it’s backed by YCombinator and Union Square Ventures . Most important I have to say a huge thanks to Travis Kalanick (almost everyone knows him in the Valley) that is a kind of our "Secret Weapon" that helped us on get things done, many thanks!

I know that we are just at the beginning of our road, but we’re going to work as much as possible to deliver real value to our users!

Last, but not least, whether the world recently is talking badly about United States of America, I still believe in this country and I believe that the “American Dream” is still alive, because if someday we’ll be somewhere with our company I have to say thanks to Americans.

Thanks to those people who believe in us!

Cheers!

Augusto

“The mind is everything. What you think you become” Siddharta, Buddhism's founder

NEVER, NEVER GIVE UP GUYS!

Mashape’s Voice