Trump’s Policies Are Already Sending Entrepreneurs to Canada and France

Canadian and French Policies to Attract Entrepreneurs and Researchers Impacting Silicon Valley

Last week, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security delayed the International Entrepreneur Rule to next March, and it is currently accepting comments on plans to rescind it altogether. The agency cited logistical challenges in vetting these new visas. The International Entrepreneur Rule was designed by the Obama Administration to support Silicon Valley and the high tech industry’s need for immigrant entrepreneurs and engineers. Immigrant entrepreneurs in the U.S. account for 44% of all startups.   The news has prompted a backlash from immigrant entrepreneurs like PayPal cofounder Max Levchin and leadership at the National Venture Capital Association, who argue that rolling back the rule will drive would-be job creators to other, more welcoming nations. This is already happening.

Canada’s Global Talent Stream Visa Program For Immigrant Entrepreneurs Targets U.S. Immigration Policy

To Silicon Valley observers, Canada has always seemed incapable of igniting a technology-driven economy, despite years of the government support for telecommunications, and a byzantine maze of government grant programs for research and development. Canada has remained a laggard in R&D investment compared to other OECD industrialized nations. Venture capital and government tax policy in Canada seemed to have a focus on short-term tax deductions rather than long-term gains as in California.  Then there was the demise of Nortel and the decline of Blackberry. There may be a new opportunity to bootstrap Canada into the high-tech industry big league: Trump Administration immigration policies that are already impacting Silicon Valley.  Not long after Justin Trudeau’s Liberals came to power in 2015, Trudeau sensed the opportunity to exploit Trump’s anti-immigration stances and the Liberal government swung into action to create the Global Talent Stream visa program specifically designed for rapid immigration for entire entrepreneurial teams. Since that time Trump has fulfilled his promises by slashing the H1-B visa program and announcing the end of the Obama Administration’s Startup Visa Program. Immigrant enrollments at U.S. universities is already down over 40%. Startup Genome, the acknowledged global leader in entrepreneurial ecosystems rankings, currently ranks Vancouver and Toronto 15th and 16th globally in its 2017 study, but those in the know acknowledge that Canada still lacks crucial technology ecosystem capabilities.  Nevertheless, Canada may be on the verge of a technology tidal wave.

Source: Trump’s Policies Are Already Sending Jobs to Canada | WIRED 

Source: Macron Inspires Entrepreneurs to come to France – Financial Times

Source: Trump Administration to end Startup Visa Program – Government Tech

Macron Determined To Make France “A Startup Nation” With Major Technology Initiatives

In 2015, long before Emmanuel Macron’s launched his campaign for the Presidency of France, as a minister in the Hollande government, Macron launched a significant new technology initiative, The Camp, on a seventeen-hectare campus just outside Aix-en-Provence, designed to inspire new thinking on crucial technology issues, and to incubate new entrepreneurial companies. The Camp will open officially this Autumn.  Now that Macron has swept the country in a stunning Presidential victory, it is clear that technology and entrepreneurship are crucial elements of his vision for France, backing it up with a 10B € technology-based economic development fund. The South of France generally, the Cote d’Azur and Provence are emerging as France’s technology center.  France’s nuclear research facility, Cadarache, just northeast of Aix-en-Provence, is the equivalent of California’s Lawrence Livermore Labs, and the home of ITER, the European nuclear fusion project. Prior to Macron’s 2015 launch of The Camp, the government had already established the Sophia Antipolis technology park near Nice, as a center for advanced telecommunications research and entrepreneurial start-ups.

The Camp, Aix-en-Provence

As if to underscore France’s rise on the global stage, France has recently leapfrogged the U.S. and Great Britain as the world’s new leader in “soft power,”  the ability to harness international alliances and shape the preferences of others through a country’s appeal and attraction.

 

 

Social Media May Finally Have Become Radioactive to Investors…

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds…

One would think that this should have happened sooner….but, well, there is a human tradition here…Wikipedia currently lists 342 social media apps, emphasizing up front that their list is not exhaustive. I can think of at least two more local social media startups, one of which has just announced significant new investments.  Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds, the now legendary book by Charles Mackay, first published in 1841, remains a classic text revered for its insights into social psychology and economic bubbles.

Investors of all stripes are so-called “birds of feather,” meaning that they tend to flock together. The risk averse nature of investing makes this inevitable… Like flocks of birds, the slightest unexpected and unwanted sound can set them off into flight.   This is even more true of much higher risk early venture investors.. The very term “due diligence,” meaning thoroughly investigating everything and anything related to a potential investment, implies “covering your ass,” (CYA).  No high risk investor wants to commit to any investment without partners.  Not being able to recruit other investment partners, suggests that you may be making a poor investment decision, and leaving yourself open to questions about the wisdom of your investment decision, or worse.

Over the years, there have been a number of “hot” venture investment industries, that attracted hundreds of millions of dollars, only to see the investment funds go up in flames, from over enthusiasm..  After these financial disasters, investors, like the birds, were unlikely to return to the same area again, no matter how attractive it may have seemed.  Only one of many examples, would be the “traffic shaping” networking equipment opportunity just before the 2002 Internet bubble. After being burned in this debacle, venture capitalists could not be enticed to invest in new opportunities in this area, no matter how promising..  A local Okanagan company here suffered from this phenomenon and eventually faded away.  It appears that the now very crowded and maturing social media industry may finally have joined other such oversubscribed areas of investment.

It’s About Time!

REBLOGGED FROM PANDODAILY

BY CARMEL DEAMICIS
ON AUGUST 14, 2013

VCs are cooling off their social media fervor. A new study out today surveyed hundreds of investors around the globe. VC’s in 11 out of 13 countries had less confidence in the social networking/new media sectors than last year. That dip was even more dramatic for the US, with VC’s ten percent less sure about social then they were in 2012.

The National Venture Capital Association conducts the “Global Venture Capital Confidence Survey” every year with Deloitte.  They ask general partners at different sized firms from the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific how confident they feel about a ton of sectors — clean energy, mobile, cloud computing — and geographies — domestic economy, global economy, emerging markets. This year’s survey took place in May and June 2013 and 35 percent of the responses came from investors in the States.

There’s a lot of interesting factoids to be found in the flood of numbers, but the stat about VCs losing confidence in social jumped out at me. It mirrors a trend others have noted: the social media bubbleis quietly, slowly, timidly deflating. This latest NVCA report shows that confidence is still high in social media compared to other sectors — it’s just less high than it was last year.

Social is not going out in a big pop, and it’s not disappearing anytime soon, but it’s also not what VC’s look to invest in first. CBInsights, a research company that studies VC investment trends, foundthat in the second quarter of 2013, social media companies got only two percent of VC Internet funding. They’re getting a much smaller piece of the puzzle now than they’ve seen in past years.

So why isn’t social the hot kid on the block anymore? I have a few theories: Facebook’s IPO was a bust, the market has gotten saturated, and there’s perpetual questions over mobile monetization of social platforms.

Facebook’s face flop of a public offering made people question whether its valuation was founded on real earning potential. Investors got nervous about social’s money-making potential. And given that Facebook is the biggest social beast of them all, investor anxiety may very well have informed decisions about funding smaller start-ups focused on social.

The market has gotten saturated, some people are tired of social, and there’s a cultural pushback ranging from mocking social media job titles to compiling lists of how social is ruining your life. How many networks can a person possibly join?

And as always, there’s the struggle to monetize social networks on mobile. Facebook and Twitter have gotten small pieces of the mobile ad pie, and Instagram has no mobile monetization plan. Granted, Facebook showed a possible turnaround with its recent earnings report, but it’s by no means out of the woods.

As always looking forward, time will tell whether VC interest in social media picks back up again, or whether they’ve moved on to a new sector love. Last I heard, VCs were the Romeo to cloud computing and big data startups’ Juliet.

[Image courtesy Wikimedia]