𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐄𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐮𝐫 𝐑𝐮𝐥𝐞: 𝐀 𝐏𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐋𝐚𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐡𝐩𝐚𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩 𝐓𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧
The International Entrepreneur Rule (IER) has drawn recent attention after the US reaffirmed its support for the program, which aims to attract global talent and fuel innovation, economic growth and job creation. The updated policy allows immigrant founders to remain in the US for up to five years, giving them time and opportunity to focus on scaling their businesses.
By creating a more welcoming environment for immigrant entrepreneurs, the US can maintain its position as a global leader in innovation. Some of the world’s biggest tech companies began as startups founded by immigrants or children of immigrants, including Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, Sergey Brin of Google, Steve Jobs of Apple, Elon Musk of Tesla, Jay Chaudhry of Zscaler, Nir Zuk and Rajiv Batra of Palo Alto Networks, Aneel Bhusri of Workday, Brian Chesky of Airbnb, Tony Xu of DoorDash, Scott Farquhar of Atlassian, Ali Ghodse of Databricks, and Eric S. Yuan (he / him / his) of Zoom.
Many of us at Mayfield Fund also started our journeys in the US as immigrant founders, and many of our portfolio companies include at least one first or second generation immigrant founder as well, including Armon Dadgar and Mitchell Hashimoto of HashiCorp, Dheeraj Pandey of Nutanix and Devrev, Manish Chandra of Poshmark, Pradeep Sindhu of Juniper Networks and Fungible/Microsoft, Manu Gulati of Nuvia/Qualcomm, Rehan Jalil of Elastica/Symantec and Securiti, Lyndon Rive of SolarCity, Ankur Singla of Volterra/F5, Guru Pangal of StorSimple/Microsoft and CloudSimple/Google, Rajiv K. of Innovium/Marvell Technology and Auradine, Seshu Madhavapeddy of Frore Systems, Ben Bernstein of Twistlock/PaloAltoNetworks and Gutsy, Murli Thirumale and Gou Rao of Ocarina/Dell Technologies and Portworx/Pure Storage.
We all had to navigate a daunting immigration system as we launched and grew our businesses. I believe a program like the IER will make a tremendous difference in the lives of international founders—particularly those from India—who now face the same challenges. As I shared in an earlier post the Indian diaspora has had a massive impact in the US (see attached report), and this for sure will accelerate the impact of Indian American entrepreneurs.
Policies like the IER will become increasingly important in the era of AI, which brings with it the opportunity to build groundbreaking technology that changes how we work and live.
Please share a comment with your own insights and experiences.
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