Andrew McCalister continues his account of his four month internship in Silicon Valley

Week 2: The Best of British

Apart from my duties at Heyzap, the last week has been taken up shadowing the top 20 U.K Cleantech entrepreneurs around the Valley.

UKTI, with the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and Polecat, was running its annual mission that takes the fastest growing businesses from a specific sector out to Silicon Valley for a week of wining and dining. This year it was the turn of the Cleantech sector.

Apart from forcing down fantastic food and drink at the evening celebrations (one such event took place at Michael Birch's house, founder of the social networking site bebo.com) it was a truly fantastic week.

I got the opportunity to meet an enlightening group of entrepreneurs who were truly on top of their game, developing and researching a broad range of products from Axial Flux Motors (Evo Electric), and it's not the same device used in the Back to the Future movie as I asked, to home energy monitors (DIY Kyoto). However, as always, things have to be put into perspective. These represent the top entrepreneurs, not the average!

A tip of the cap really has to be given to UKTI, the TSB and Polecat. It takes a lot for an organisation, especially in the U.K, to realise they aren't the best at something, in this case entrepreneurship and venture funding, and then act on it. UKTI did just this....how refreshing.

However, remembering back to my previous post that discussed the prospect of the UK's best entrepreneurs moving out to Silicon Valley, especially with the possibility of the start-up visa. There was no answer from the TSB to the question I posed about talent drain. After all, there must be a fairly strong reason that one of the shining lights of U.K entrepreneurship, Michael Birch, now lives in San Francisco!


Week 3: The Start-up Visa

As you can imagine with an office in Silicon Valley that has a 50% British workforce, the conversation can very often circulate around visas.

Generally this consists of trading techniques in avoiding deportation, spliced with random letters of the alphabet in reference to document types (J1, H1B, O1,etc). To any outsiders it must sound rather odd.

Recently there has been a sense of urgency about these chats due to changes in legislation. Many founders who move to Silicon Valley do so on an H1B Visa. Unfortunately this is no longer an option, meaning you have two alternative strategies.

Firstly, you could apply for an 'Extraordinary Ability' (O1) Visa, but as you can imagine with an application that asks if you have previously won a Nobel Prize or Fields Medal this is rather tough to obtain. Secondly, you may apply for an Investors’ Visa (E2), again the hurdles are rather high. $200,000 will have to be invested in your company, which of course you would have had to pitch for remotely. However, common sense has prevailed. Say hello to the Start-up Visa. It has been gaining some significant traction, with backing from Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar (Democrat and Republican respectively).

In addition, it has signed support from over 100 of the top VC and angel investors, including the likes of Fred Wilson and Ron Conway (the full list can be seen here).

One of the major positives of the movement is that permanent residence is actually obtainable! After two years, if the company has created five full-time jobs for American citizens and has generated either $1M in revenue or received $1M in funding, automatic legal residence is supplied.

As I'm sure you will agree, not exactly a big ask for any aspiring start-up!

The language used in describing the Visa has also had a significant impact on its momentum. I was recently at a discussion with Eric Ries (one of the creators of the Start-up Visa) and he emaphsised their push on 'job creation', not 'immigration' which is always a touchy subject.

If you want to find out a bit more, or even show support, read more here.

Read Andrew’s first blog here