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03/02/10 | Uncategorized

Women 2.0 supports the Startup Visa Movement

Did you know 60% of the Women 2.0 executive team are immigrants to the US from places like Canada, Israel, India, Singapore, Belarus? That’s 6 out of 10 key members! The Startup Visa, in the end, is about removing barriers to innovation — designed to attract top global minds, to the US, to launch their companies, create job opportunities and hire local US workers.
To support the Startup Visa movement, Shaherose Charania of Women 2.0 went to Washington DC in February 2010 to be political!

Founded by Eric Ries, Dave McClure, Shervin Pishevar, Brad Feld, Paul Kedrosky, Manu Kumar, and Fred Wilson, Startup Visa raises awareness and affects policy regarding the EB-5 visa, which enables investors from other countries to get a visa in exchange for starting a business in the US with $1M in capital (or $500K for economically targeted areas) and the creation of at least 10 US jobs.

In fact, the tech companies of Google, Yahoo!, and Paypal have one thing in common: Immigrant Founders.

More startup founders, more female founders.

* * *

Women 2.0 Co-Founder and CEO Shaherose Charania (pictured, right) along with several others met with government representatives from immigration, commerce, and education for their perspective on how to garner more support for Startup Visa. The visit to Washington, DC helped further the Startup Visa movement to reach the creation of an Act supported by Senator Kerry and Senator Lugar. Aneesh Chopra, the US CIO came to our meeting!

Now having sat in a room with an number of representatives from different parts of the US government, Shaherose walked out with a deeper understanding the complexities of government. She jokes that running a country is clearly more difficult than running a startup 😉

* * *

The Startup Visa organizers were armed with pages and pages of tweets in support of Startup Visa (pictured, right).

@2gov made it possible for citizens to show support for Startup Visa using tweets — collecting, printing, addressing and delivering the Startup Visa message to specific elected officials — even if the government officials aren’t on Twitter.

To learn more about the Startup Visa and how you can support the movement, click here.

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