Where to begin?<p>1) Universities, and I mean through official channels, are not great at creating startups. I'd rather they focus on basic research. No, Google was not started 'by' Stanford, etc. The biggest company I know of to come out of a university (founded by a professor) is Broadcom in 1991. Anyone know of a bigger one?<p>2) Be skeptical of the "$416,442,265" in funding claim. How many of those companies would have gotten funding anyways? This is a tactic incubator programs use: claim affiliation with a successful startup that's about to get a lot more funding. Then the startup gets to employ a "co-founder" for peanuts.<p>3) I don't think universities do a great job of protecting the rights contingent labor. See: grad school. I can see this program as being very abusive to participants.<p>Further, this is _exactly_ the type of thing that H-1B critics would point to as an abuse of the system. Honestly it's odd seeing this done out in the open and celebrated.
This point is glossed over in the article but H1B visa workers cannot start their own companies and employ themselves. The best case scenario for anyone on this program is spend 2-3 years in university while building a network. You can't work on your startup during this phase. Get a GC and then start working on your startup idea. For some countries like China and India GC takes more than 10 years so this program is not an option for people in those countries.
This is quite brilliant. If quality of tech remains good, few interesting results can be expected in years to come.<p>There are few challenges for the founder(s) - 1. splitting time (and focus) between university duties and startup work will be tough. And 2. if a startup fail to get traction within 1.5-2 years, and its founders are unable to secure GC/extension, you can expect further dilution of focus.
Lol, with so many legitimate H-1Bs getting denied, I doubt USCIS will approve these visas.<p>Right now, US is bleeding talent either by losing H-1Bs (especially ones that are educated in the US) and future university students.<p>Guess what this mass of population would do in their countries in the years ahead?
“the program invites foreign entrepreneurs to work part-time at a school, either as a mentor or an adjunct professor. In return, entrepreneurs may get a cap-exempt H-1B visa that gives them the latitude to work on their own startups”<p>Seems like the bar to get accepted is pretty high