BRAIN
DRAIN
With no imminent fix from
Washington, a project called Blueseed has proposed a solution of its
own. The company plans to anchor
a cruise ship 12 miles off the San
Francisco coast where immigrant
entrepreneurs can live on the ship
and work on their startups. They
would not need visas because they
would reside in international waters. By the end of 2013, about
1,000 immigrant entrepreneurs are
expected to live on the boat, according to Blueseed chief financial
officer Sam Bhagwat.
Meanwhile, several countries are
offering perks to persuade entrepreneurs to start businesses outside
the United States. One initiative,
Startup Chile, gives $40,000 to
foreign entrepreneurs who launch
companies in the South American
country. The government-led initiative also offers them free office
space and Spanish classes and connects them with investors and mentors. Such aggressive recruiting tactics by other countries — coupled
with strict immigration policies
in the United States — could hurt
America’s long-term competitiveness in the global economy, according to Wadhwa.
“Over time, the economic
growth that should be happening
HUFFINGTON
11.11.12
here is happening in other countries,” Wadhwa told Huffington.
“NOT SURE I CAN FIX THIS”
Darash’s story began with an early
love of computers. As a boy in Jerusalem, he visited his aunt, who
was a programmer for an Israeli
software company. It was the mid1980s, and computers were still
rare. Darash, who was 11, had never seen one before. He was captivated. “I had a million questions,”
he recalled. A week later, his father
returned from a business trip with
a new desktop. Darash taught himself how to code. Still curious, he
took the computer apart.
“I remember my father coming into my room and seeing all
the pieces on the floor and saying ‘What did you do?’” Darash
recalled. “And I said, ‘I wanted to
see how it works!’”
Two decades later, that same
fascination with computers
brought him to the University of
California-Berkeley on a Fulbright
scholarship. After finishing his
dissertation, he considered a career in academia, but was drawn
to the open-minded, risk-taking
culture of Silicon Valley.
“I felt like I’d reached a place
where I could just be me,” he said. “I
could say my crazy ideas and people
would say ‘Oh, that’s actually interesting.’ It was like living in the best