More Than A Third Of The Top US Tech Companies Were Founded By People Born Outside The Country
According to a report from the Partnership for a New American Economy, nine of the top 25 U.S. public tech companies were founded by people born outside the U.S. That's 36%.
These are the founders:
- Sergey Brin, Russia (Google)
- Eduardo Saverin, Brazil (Facebook)
- Andrew Viterbi, Italy (Qualcomm)
- Pierre Omidyar, France (eBay)
- Cecil Green, UK (Texas Instruments)
- Edouard Bugnion, Switzerland (VMware)
- Jerry Yang, Taiwan (Yahoo)
- Francisco D'souza, Indian descent but born in Kenya and Kumar Mahadeva, Sri Lanka (Cognizant Technology)
- Eli Harari, Israel (Sandisk)
It's well known in the U.S. tech community that a lot of talent comes from abroad, especially when it comes to coders and engineers. In fact, many blame U.S. immigration policy for holding back innovation in America, and a number of tech companies worked for new immigration laws, leading to the creation of the H1B Visa Program, which makes it easier for companies to offer visas to high-skilled workers in technology and engineering fields. Mark Zuckerberg was a huge advocate for that program with his group FWD.us.
The idea is that successful innovation in American will be forwarded by allowing more foreigners to immigrate. And the fact that a third of these tech founders are first-generation Americans can't hurt the argument.
Here is the slide from Meeker's presentation. Click for a larger version:
KPCB