Entrepreneurs propose offshore startup colony
PALO ALTO, Calif. – Even here in the world capital of far-fetched ideas, this one is more outlandish than most.
Two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, frustrated by the shortage of visas that keep some of the world’s brightest science and engineering minds from building companies on dry land, have hatched a plan to build a startup colony in the middle of the Pacific.
Max Marty and Dario Mutabdzija say they plan to park a cruise ship 12 nautical miles off the coast of Northern California in international waters. Foreign-born entrepreneurs would live and work on the ship, building startups within commuting distance of Silicon Valley. They wouldn’t need the work visas that are so hard to come by. They would just need business tourism visas that would let them ferry back and forth to Silicon Valley once or twice a week.
The unusual project, called Blueseed, illustrates the fantastical lengths to which some in Silicon Valley are willing to go in their bid to bring more highly skilled foreign workers and entrepreneurs to its shores.
The high-tech industry has been lobbying lawmakers without success to increase the cap of 65,000 temporary work visas permitted each year. Strict limits on high-tech visas keep foreigners – many of whom were educated in the United States, sometimes at taxpayer expense – on waiting lists for years.
That brain drain threatens the continued growth of the high-tech industry and the U.S. economy, said Vivek Wadhwa, author of “The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent.”
“We are choking off the supply of immigrants and the lifeblood of Silicon Valley,” Wadhwa said.
But the 2012 elections, in which Latino voters played an influential role, have sparked new hope for sweeping immigration reform. And for the first time, Silicon Valley leaders think they have a real shot at getting more high-tech visas for foreign talent.
Executives have met with President Barack Obama and lawmakers. They are planning a nationwide social media campaign, or “virtual march,” to encourage people to use the Internet – email, Facebook, Twitter – to tell lawmakers they want immigration reform – a grass-roots tactic that last year helped Silicon Valley rally opposition to proposed legislation to combat piracy and established the high-tech industry as a political force.
Obama, in his State of the Union speech in February, called for “real reform” that would “attract the highly skilled entrepreneurs and engineers that will help create jobs and grow our economy.”
Immigration reform for high-tech workers is also gaining momentum on Capitol Hill, where a bipartisan group of eight senators is working on comprehensive legislation.
The Obama administration has its own immigration bill ready to go if congressional talks break down, but White House senior advisers have not tipped their hand to the high-tech industry on what specifically that would mean for it.
A recent study from the Kauffman Foundation found that the number of high-tech immigrant-founded startups has stalled for the first time in decades. The proportion of these companies in Silicon Valley declined to 44 percent in 2012 from 52 percent in 2005, according to the study.
Blueseed, which is targeting spring 2014 for its launch, borrows from the concept of “seasteading” – the libertarian idea to create floating cities that was championed by Patri Friedman, a former Google engineer and the grandson of economist Milton Friedman, and backed by venture capitalist and hedge fund manager Peter Thiel. Seasteaders want to build a flotilla of new sovereign nations on oil rig-like platforms anchored in international waters where people could live free from the burdens of taxes and government. Marty and Mutabdzija met while working at the Seasteading Institute.