Muhamed Yunus, from Flickr (CC)
Recently on the news was the interesting idea about funding entrepreneurs entry into the States. This idea is being led by Paul Graham, a big name in the Valley and the head behind YCombinator‘s innovative approach for micro VC funding [1].
But the idea may not be a good one. Why? ‘MOTIVATION’.
The idea
The idea behind is that the American government should create visas for entrepreneurs like they do for student visas, which would feed existing startups with the best brains available in the world. There would be an approval process like in the case of student visas. You can read more in his blog. This initiative is included in WhiteHouse2 [2].
While most of the Valley WoW’d his idea, i will try to reason some issues it may raise. It may help shedding some thinking on the downsides, to make the idea even stronger if it goes ahead.
Motivation is a huge issue
The idea seem to fail on motivation behind the involved parties motivation. The benefiting startups would do it based on cost per competence basis, therefore downgrading potential American candidates just because they are more expensive. But for me the most important is the target group. They are again treated like the ones applying trough the Green Card lottery, a system already in place that handles immigration issues in a Lotto-like way (need not to explain why this is devious to say the least).
Maybe Mr. Muhammad Yunus [3] would agree with me. The Bank of the Poor sustains it model in people’s motivation while joining micro-credit, namely: survival, peer-pressure and the consequent honor attached to the respect for the loan and circumstances involving it. There is a reason why most of the borrowers are Women.
In Mr Graham’s case, motivation is mainly working in the States followed by the related to working in a startup environment (not as big motivation as going to the States for less priviledged people). This would probably happen at lower conditions than the job market average (expected due to the power differences of visa holder and boss and the reason behind the idea itself) .
Summing up
Motivations that are not basic on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs will tend to discrepancies and an inneficient process. Consequences can be diverse and easy to imagine: use the Visa to entry The States only, escape for a better paid job ASAP after,…
A must read
Everybody should read Banker of the poor by Muhammad Yunus. It is an inspiring case of Humanity, a Business case and a eye-opener for what’s out there, behind our “pink and perfect little world”. To me it also contains an underlaying manifest of respect for Women’s role in society (present and future).
Notes
[1]If you like entrepreneurship and web concept innovation, you should know Paul Graham and YCombinator’s, inovative VC model. Briefly they invest small amounts in garage-like entrepreneurs (usually very young people) alognside with knowledge sharing and influence.
[2] WhiteHouse2 is a great and innovative idea itself, an effort by the new Obama administration to open legislation needs to the people by leveraging the power of Crowd-Sourcing
[3] Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his efforts on erradicating poverty trough Microfinancing
