Anyone looking to move to the UK, I highly recommend the Exceptional Talent visa. It’s a true hidden gem: tier 1, valid 5 years, no work restrictions, no investment required. There are only 200 slots available per year for digital technology, but the dirty secret is the 70% acceptance rate.<p>I successfully applied through this process last year and am now living in the UK. The whole process cost about $3k and a month of paperwork, but it was totally worth it.<p>If anyone has questions about it feel free to email me at the address in my profile.
This is welcome move by the new Home Secretary, but the thing that terrifies me the most is the end of free movement when we leave the EU. As the director of a software development business, I have to contend with a very tight market for good developers.<p>After brexit takes place, any EU citizen I wish to employ will have to go through the Tier 2 visa route. There are 3 major issues with this. 1. It's capped at 20k people per year. 2. We do not have the deep pockets and the legal/HR team to navigate the home office to procure such a visa 3. It does not provide sufficient guarantees for bringing and settling down a family<p>On top of that, we also have to contend with many structural issues that makes the UK (London in particular) a less appealing place to attract talent:<p>- High cost and low quality of living in London<p>- Poor transport infrastructure (it's cheaper to eurostar London-Amsterdam than train London-Manchester)<p>- UK politicians and media do not stand up for the benefits of immigration and is willing to allow blanket demonisation of immigrants to go unanswered<p>- All the negative externalities associated with an overcrowded city (overcrowded public transport, knife crime, NOX pollution in excess of legally permissible levels)
I used to live with someone who started a fashion B2B in London. To get her visa she had to sell her £250,000 (equivalent) flat in Korea to use as capital for the business. One thing the article does not mention is how much capital you need to invest in the UK to get this visa. It is a lot higher than you think. Anyway, her company had been up and running for 3 years and doing well when her visa renewal came up. The crazy thing was that a renewal required a new capital cash injection into the business. Now, who keeps spare capital lying around when you want to make your business a success? You usually put everything you have into the business. She had to hire a good lawyer and produce kilograms of documentation in extreme detail to get her renewal. Very stressful for her and detracted from her business. I think it's reasonable to expect to hand over company accounts, bank statements and such to prove that it is a proper business but they go way too far. It is far too arduous and stressful. The stress is the main part. You never know if your paperwork is going to land on a grumpy persons Monday morning desk.
A real startup visa gives you a pathway to permanent residence. No one wants to start a company and worry that they will have to leave everything there after 3 years if something does or does not happen.
No details, and the proposed start date is after the proposed Brexit day: "The expanded route will launch in Spring 2019, further details will be announced in due course."
It's an interesting idea, but I think the main issue is whether a startup could get funded in the UK (or to be honest, most of Europe) the same way they can in Silicon Valley.<p>For example, the amount of money you can raise is often a lot less after here, with rounds being on the low side compared to the millions possible in the US. That means companies needing a decent amount of funding probably shouldn't be looking for investment in the UK, and should probably reconsider anyone in Europe in general.<p>They're also most hesitant to fund 'consumer' focused businesses over here compared to the US too. I remember asking where you could get investment for something like Facebook or Uber in the UK (after seeing that most entrepreneurs applying and accepted were running b2b companies), and basically being told that Techstars was probably the only viable option there. Seems like US accelerators and VCs are more likely to fund consumer focused businesses dependent on numbers and ad revenue compared to those in the UK, who prefer more of the Atlassian/Moz type approach (selling services to small companies).<p>But yeah, it's nice the route has been announced, just feels like we need more viable ways to raise money as well.
As a EU Citizen, whose grandfather fought for the freedoms in WWII alongside British pilots, those freedoms, including Schengen area freedom of movement that UK never bother to adopt, are being thrown away and they dare ask people to apply for a visa now?
Good luck with that.
What's the latest for the US? Did any of the ideas of making the US more accessible for foreign tech entrepreneurs I've seen in recent years come to pass?
If it is the same old entrepreneur visa, then one of the requirements is having £200K in the bank which means its not for early startups rather for well established or well-funded ones.
Meanwhile, the UK also wants to ID people before they are allowed to use the internet:<p><a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/digital-ids-to-end-online-mob-rule-and-anonymity-qq8lnwrcn" rel="nofollow">https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/digital-ids-to-end-o...</a>