The Startup Visa Act continues to gain momentum on Capitol Hill, thanks to grassroots support of all of you. Without lobbyists or PACs, we're getting the word out in DC and nationwide that we have an opportunity to act - this year - to create jobs right here in America by supporting entrepreneurship and innovation. As bills in both chambers of Congress pick up supporters and co-sponsors, it's more important than ever for citizens who care about this issue to call, write, and tweet their representatives.

On our most recent trip to DC, the Startup Visa team produced two new videos to encapsulate our work to date, and hopefully inspire future action. They feature two of the rock stars of the Startup Visa team, Shervin and Brad, looking like, well, rock stars. Please take a look and, if you're as inspired as I am, please take a moment to help spread the word, embed these videos, or take another action outlined below. Thanks!

Shervin Pishevar, activism at 30,000 feet.
"My big belief in the Startup Visa Act: Entrepreneurship is very much representative and symbolic of what America's all about."




Brad Feld, the Startup Visa Act.
"When you think bout the economic stress and economic crisis we've been going through in this country, and you think about future economic growth, there's no question that entrepreneurship and innovation is a huge driver of future success."



Want to get involved? We have a list of ways on the StartupVisa website:

1. Go to our campaign page & tweet your support NOW! (<30 sec)
   
2. Write your local newspaper & tell them you support the Startup Visa Act
3. Call your senators & let them know you support Startup Visa legislation
4. Add the Startup Visa Widget to your blog or website
5. Follow the #startupvisa hash tag on Twitter and voice your support
6. Contribute to Startup Visa so we can spread the word!

In particular, we are also working on a letter of support from university presidents and entrepreneurship professors across academia. If you know someone who might be willing to sign on to that letter, please contact Brad Feld, who is organizing the letter.
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The Huffington Post published an op-ed on the Startup Visa movement that I've been working on for some time. I've quoted from the article extensively below, but I hope you'll take a moment and read the whole thing. I believe we have a unique opportunity to pass the Startup Visa Act this year - if we continue to stay focused on delivering the message to lawmakers that this is something their constituents want. So, as a reminder, if this is something you support, please get involved. You can literally make a difference with as little as a tweet, by using 2gov at http://startupvisa.2gov.org/. Once you've done that, let us know if you want to do more. You can find a list of ways to get involved at StartupVisa.com. Thanks!

The New Startup Arms Race

America's future prosperity depends on our ability to maintain this lead. But today, it is getting harder and harder to maintain. A quick glance is the rear-view mirror reveals that other countries are catching up and at an alarming rate. Part of this is due to their determination to overtake us, but part is due to structural changes in the nature of entrepreneurship.

Startups are the lifeblood of our economy. In the past two decades, they have accounted for nearly all the net job growth in our country. Many of these companies are started by entrepreneurs, and are now household names: Google, Yahoo, eBay and Intel. But many more are true American success stories, out of the limelight, quietly creating jobs and securing our future.

Take the example of Indiana's Passageways. Paroon Chadha came to the US for his graduate education, and was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug immediately after school. He started Passageways Inc. immediately upon graduating, and has spent the last 8 years struggling to work around visa restrictions. Luckily for the rest of us, he was able to find his path to a green card, and now employs 24 Americans in West Lafayette, Indiana. For every success story like Paroon's, there are dozens -- hundreds -- of similar cases that end in failure.

Like other industries -- from publishing to automobiles -- entrepreneurship is in the process of being disrupted by globalization. The cost of creating new companies is falling rapidly, and access to markets, distribution, and information is within the reach of anyone with an Internet connection. The result is a profound democratization of the digital means of production.

[...]

If the next Facebook, Google, or Amazon begins in another country, the economic growth that it sparks will benefit us, too. But the jobs will be created over there.

The United States is locked in a new arms race for that most precious resource -- the future entrepreneurs upon whom economic growth depends. Substantial research shows that immigrants play a key role in American job creation. For example, over 25% of the technology companies founded between 1995-2005 had a key immigrant founder. These companies produced over $52 billion dollars in sales in 2005, and employed 450,000 workers that year. Similarly, 24% of all the patents filed in the US in 2006 had a foreign resident as inventor or co-inventor.

If we allow other countries to welcome these immigrants, support them and nurture them, we will lose out in this race. We will not lose on their products -- after all, most of them are global. We will not necessarily harm investors, either: as capital is increasingly global, they will be able to invest wherever good ideas are born. The cost will be felt in jobs -- thousands of new jobs that could have been created here, but weren't.

Read the rest of The New Startup Arms Race at Huffington Post. Special thanks to everyone who's helped advance this movement, especially Brad Feld, Shervin Pishevar, Dave McClure, Dave Binetti and Abheek Anand. And an extra special thanks to the volunteer copyeditors who reached out via twitter to help improve this piece.
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As I write this, I am traveling at 30,000 feet on Virgin America's excellent IAD->SFO nonstop, following an intense few days of conversations in Washington, DC about the Startup Visa. This trip was designed to build momentum following last week's announcement that Senators Kerry and Lugar have introduced a Senate bill to make the Startup Visa a reality: the Startup Visa Act of 2010. This follows Congressman Jared Polis, who has introduced a similar bill as part of comprehensive immigration reform in the House.

Our trip was bipartisan, bicameral, and bi-branches-of-government. Everywhere we went, the Startup Visa received a fair hearing, despite the fact that we have no lobbyists, no PAC, and no organized presence in Washington. On the flight to DC, we had over 5000 registered voters join our "tweet hall" and generate a huge stack of paper which we delivered to members of Congress, courtesy of 2gov.








Your support has been critical to everything that's happened with Startup Visa. After so many of you stepped forward to show your support in last year's 2gov campaign, I got a call out of the blue from a member of Senator Lugar's staff. He gave me the opportunity to answer questions about our proposal, and share the stories of immigrant entrepreneurs who are creating job all over America, including the Senator's home state of Indiana. I firmly believe that without your grassroots organizing, this meeting would never have taken place, and who knows if, months later, the Startup Visa Act would have been introduced?
 
Having bills introduced in both chambers of Congress is a huge accomplishment. But it's still just the very beginning of the marathon required to get a bill to become law. For those who want to continue to press the case for the Startup Visa, here are five ways you can help today:

1. Go to our campaign page and voice your support
2. Write to your local newspapers, and let them know that you support the Startup Visa Bill
3. Call your senators, and let them know about why you support the Startup Visa legislation
4. Add the Startup Visa Widget to your blog or website
5. Contribute to Startup Visa so that we can continue to spread the word!

And, on an unrelated note, we also had an entertaining night at the DC Lean Startup Meetup featuring me and Dave McClure, in what was billed as a "Lean Geek SMACKdown." You can judge for yourself if we lived up to that promise:


Lean Startup SmackDown from Frank Gruber on Vimeo.
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I've been promising big Startup Visa-related news on Twitter for a few weeks. There is news, it's very exciting, and I still can't share it. Soon, I promise. But in order for this idea to progress into legislation,  we need your help. Whether you're a US citizen or an immigrant, entrepreneur or investor, founder or employee, there's something you can do. This is especially true if you live outside the echo chamber of Silicon Valley. There are four ways to get involved below. Even if none apply to you, see if you know someone who could help. Thanks!

1. If you are an immigrant founder who has helped build a company that has created jobs in the US, we need you to tell your story. If we receive your story by February 27th, it will become part of our Geeks on a Plane DC delegation (including me) talking to lawmakers. We've created a place where you can tell your Startup Visa story anonymously if you'd like. Or, if you'd prefer to do it by video, you can upload to YouTube - just use the "startup visa" tag.
   
   
2. If you're a startup investor, and you support the goals of the Startup Visa proposal, we'd like you lend your name to our efforts. You can read about the latest iteration of the proposal at StartupVisa.com. If you're willing to publicly sign on to a letter of support, please get in touch. If you'd be willing to talk to the press about your support, please leave a comment here as well.
   
   
3. If you are a US citizen that is employed at a company with at least one immigrant founder, we'd love to hear your stories, too. Part of our belief in advancing this legislation is that more startup founders means more jobs and economic growth for everyone. The fact of Americans standing up for our values - of openness, meritocracy, and entrepreneurship - is especially powerful.
   
   
4. If you're registered to vote in the United States, and you'd like your elected representatives to know that you support the Startup Visa, you can register your support in just two minutes at http://2gov.org/visa. Although signing up is about as much work as a tweet, the impact is much larger. 2gov does the work to produce hard-copy reports of constituent sentiment and delivers them to the appropriate officials. So by signing up, you're sending a message directly to the decision-makers who depend on your votes for their jobs.

I hope you'll choose one of the steps above to help out. If you have other ideas, please feel free to leave them in a comment.

I know that sometimes campaigns like this can seem overwhelming. But your support has already had tremendous impact. The good news I hope we'll get to announce in a few days is the direct result of the twitter campaign you helped launch last year. At some point, I hope I'll be able to tell you more. For now, take my word for it. You are making this happen. Thank you.
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When I started writing about the lean startup, my aspiration was to do more than just share a handful of tips and tricks that work for consumer internet startups. I believe the only way to improve our chances as entrepreneurs is to develop a working theory of entrepreneurship. This belief led me to the lean startup, and to an amazing 2009. I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to everyone who's helped to make that a reality, especially you who are reading this right now. So far, 2010 is shaping up to be an even more amazing year; read on to find out why.

In a forthcoming article I've written advocating for the Startup Visa, I wrote this:

Like other industries – from publishing to automobiles – entrepreneurship is in the process of being disrupted by globalization. On the whole, this is a good thing for America and for our civilization. The cost of creating new companies is falling rapidly, and access to markets, distribution, and information is within the reach of anyone with an internet connection. The result is a profound democratization of the digital means of production.

Re-reading it recently, I was struck by an idea that I don't think is too widespread yet: that entrepreneurship is an industry. Sure, when entrepreneurs create startups that grow up into mature companies, they become part of an established industry, with its own ecosystem, norms, partners and best practices. But until that happens, we entrepreneurs have our own ecosystem, of investors and service providers, norms and even some "best" practices. The two ecosystems have diverged significantly in the past fifty years - and especially in the past ten. The reason is that the underlying theory that powers established business, the theory of general management, is increasingly inadequate for managing startups. And yet, so far, we lack a coherent theory to replace it. My belief is that the lean startup is that theory. Together, we are part of a movement that is redefining entrepreneurship.

Every once in a while, I get an inquiry from a startup asking if I'm ready to "jump back in the game" and start a company. My realization for 2010 is that I'm already in the game. This is just like a startup to me, complete with distribution and product development challenges, ecosystem design and many, many customers. Only now the stakes are higher: my aspiration is to impact our entire industry. So my priorities for 2010 are projects that will expand the lean startup industry-wide. As always, I'll look to you early adopters for guidance and help. Here's a preview of what I'm working on.

1. The Lean Startup Cohort program. The more I work in the realm of theory, the more I crave the messy realities of thorny startup problems. In 2010, I hope to work with a limited number of high-growth startups in an intense fashion. This is by far the most difficult project I've undertaken, but I believe the impact will be worth it.
   
   
2. Teaching at Berkeley (and beyond). Steve Blank has asked me to co-teach his MBA entrepreneurship class at Berkeley Haas, starting January 19, and to revamp the curriculum to make it a full introduction to the lean startup. This is just the first of several academic projects I hope to work on in 2010. Academia has a vital role to play in the new entrepreneurship, answering many questions that need urgent research attention.
   
   How you can get involved: Steve has always had a very liberal policy on auditors. If you'd like to attend this class at Berkeley, just let me know in a comment. If there's sufficient interest, I'll post details.
   
   Even if you can't attend, you can help shape the curriculum. Do you have a suggestion for a guest speaker or case study that illustrates a particular lean startup concept: minimum viable product, continuous deployment, validated learning, the pivot? Please leave your suggestions as a comment. Bonus points if you can find a relevant official HBS case study from their archives to suggest as well.
   
   
3. Startup Lessons Learned conference. This is still in the early planning stages, so I don't have many details to share yet. I've been blown away by the level of demand you all have expressed in having a forum for the whole community to come together and share what we're learning. My hope is to create a one-day event in San Francisco sometime in the spring. Details soon, I promise. In the meantime, feel free to nominate speakers or notable companies you'd like to hear from in the comments.
   
   For those that can't travel to SF, I'm also working on a way to simulcast to event to cities where there's sufficient interest. If there's one thing I've learned in all my travel in 2009, it's that entrepreneurship has gone global in a big way, and I'd like everyone to be able to participate in this event.
   
   How you can get involved: We're going to need volunteers to help spread the word and advise on topics we should cover. If you'd like to be part of this, let me know in a comment. Similarly, let me know if you'd like to host or attend a simulcast party in your town.
   
   
4. Writing a book. I'm just starting the publishing process that should lead to a book for a general business audience in 2011. Talk about long cycle times! Not much to share on this front yet, but I will especially need your help to get the word out about this.
   
   How you can get involved: If you'd like to be part of the early-reader and evangelizing team for this, let me know in a comment. I'm especially interested in people who are interested in helping with pre-orders.
   

Most of all, the best thing you can do to help this movement grow is to be an entrepreneur yourself. As you face new challenges, successes and failures - please share what you learn with the rest of us. As always, I'm eager to join the discussion in the new year. Have feedback on what you've heard so far? Let's hear it: good, bad, crazy? Let's get 2010 underway.

To kick it off, take a look at this propaganda video on the new entrepreneurship, courtesy of Dave McClure, KISSmetrics, and GoaP:



Update Jan 4: Replaced embedded video with YouTube version. Also, clarified details for auditing the Berkeley class in the comments below.
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I've been trying very hard to avoid turning this blog into a travelogue. Normally, I try to make my post-event writeups more than just a transcript, by including reactions and comments. On this speaking tour, that's been simply impossible, so I've decided to let the following collection of videos, podcasts, and slides batch up for a little while. If you're interested in more real-time updates during my speaking tour, please tune into my twitter feed.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy all this multimedia content. In addition to some of my recent talks, you can learn more about the Startup Visa movement and enjoy two really interesting lean startup case studies.

My Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Seminar courtesy of Stanford Ecorner (audio podcast only for now, video coming soon):

if you'd like to follow along with slides, they are here:

2009 09 29 The Lean Startup At Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Seminar

View more presentations from Eric Ries.

From high atop the BT Tower in London, this brief BT Tradespace interview:


Why do we need a Startup Visa? A Tale of 2 Erics:


Also in London, I took up a lot of airtime during day two of Seedcamp. You can read highlights on their blog, or watch this short video:


Seedcamp - Day 2 Highlights from Seedcamp on Vimeo.


Or watch my full #leanstartup presentation at Seedcamp in London:


And two bonus videos that are well worth watching (weally):

Timothy Fitz, who worked for me at IMVU, giving an in-depth presentation on the details of the continuous deployment system that we built there.


With accompanying slides:

Continuous Deployment

View more presentations from TimothyFitz.

pbWorks (formerly pbWiki) was one of the first companies that ever invited me to join their advisory board. I like to think that had some small part in causing their subsequent success. Judge for yourself by watching David Weekly's #leanstartup case study (pbWorks):


Thanks to everyone who has helped plan, organize, record and attend these many events!
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It's been an exhilarating first day here in Washington DC for the Geeks on a Plane tour. We met a number of policy makers from the White House and State Department, and had a solid Startup2Startup all about government policy and entrepreneurship. After a full day of talking, debating, thinking, and strategizing, we feel about read to take some good old-fashioned action. Will you join us?

In a previous post, I asked readers for suggested topics that the US government needs to know about startups and entrepreneurs, and got some really interesting responses. I've done my best to represent those perspectives in the meetings I've had here over the past two weeks. In my presentation this morning, I emphasized three key areas: reducing the personal cost of failure for entrepreneurs, innovation-friendly legal reforms, and access to the digital means of production (slides from my White House presentation are available at the end of this post).

However, there's one additional issue that has come up throughout the day today. We have a serious structural barrier to entrepreneurship: a glitch in US immigration policy. We can remedy it by creating a special visa for startup founders. The idea is to enable up to 10,000 people per year to enter the United States if they are here to found a company that will employ US citizens. I think the benefits are a no-brainer. Let me quote from Paul Graham's original essay:

The biggest constraint on the number of new startups that get created in the US is not tax policy or employment law or even Sarbanes-Oxley. It's that we won't let the people who want to start them into the country.

Letting just 10,000 startup founders into the country each year could have a visible effect on the economy. If we assume 4 people per startup, which is probably an overestimate, that's 2500 new companies. Each year. They wouldn't all grow as big as Google, but out of 2500 some would come close.

By definition these 10,000 founders wouldn't be taking jobs from Americans: it could be part of the terms of the visa that they couldn't work for existing companies, only new ones they'd founded. In fact they'd cause there to be more jobs for Americans, because the companies they started would hire more employees as they grew.

Brad Feld is working on promoting this idea inside the halls of Congress. Today at Startup2Startup, some additional pieces fell into place. First of all, Dave McClure introduced the idea of modifying an existing immigration program. The EB-5 visa is designed for foreign investors to get a green card if they are willing to bring capital to the US and create at least ten full-time jobs. Unfortunately, this program applies to the investor who holds the capital, and not the entrepreneur who discovers how to put that capital to use. A small change in the law could have a big impact on entrepreneurship in this country, and that's what he proposed. When Dave presented this to the White House and State Department audience, he got a favorable reaction. That's when the second piece clicked, a few hours later. At Startup2Startup, we decided to generate some grassroots momentum to help out. It's actually part of a lean startup story.

David Binetti is an entrepreneur with some credibility in this area, having worked to create the original USA.gov. Recently, he's been engaged in a customer validation exercise around a new concept for a political action-oriented social network. When that concept didn't pan out, he decided to pivot. His latest effort, called 2gov.org, makes it easy to contact your local, state and federal governments with just a tweet. For more on his lean startup journey, you can take a look at this slide presentation. 2gov.org automatically routes your tweet (aggregating it with everyone else who's expressed a similar point of view) to the right legislator or agency. Because it checks your registration against voting rolls, members of congress know that the contacts being received are from actual voters, not just astro-turf. In other words, the service transforms tweets into professional reports that are sent by snail mail, fax, and email - the channels that actually have attention paid to them.

He was at today's event, and the Geeks on a Plane had a brainstorm. Let's use 2gov.org to raise awareness of the Startup Founders Visa movement in congress. To that end, we're tweeting about it, and would like to ask you to join us. If you are a US citizen, tweet your thoughts on the Startup Founders Visa, using the #StartupVisa hashtag and including @2gov. 2gov.org will take care of the rest. In order to have your tweet included in the printed packet that your representative will receive, you'll need to register at 2gov.org (it really only takes a minute).

The Geeks are doing their part. Will you lend us a hand (or at least a tweet)?

2009 09 18 The Lean Startup Geeks On A Plane Edition

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