[bogomipz]

What is the reason for your distinction?

The United States is a nation of immigrants. To quote John F. Kennedy:

“Every American who ever lived, with the exception of one group, was either an immigrant himself or a descendant of immigrants”

[idlewords]

There's a big difference between immigrants and descendants of immigrants.

[bogomipz]

I am not sure what you are getting at but it's still very much a nation of immigrants:

Here's some data:

http://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/Annu...

[whatshisface]

Simple - descendants of immigrants have momentum, and when they found their startups at home it doesn't mean much beyond there not being some horribly compelling reason to leave. Immigrants founding startups is proof that there is a potential gradient strong enough to uproot them and fly them across the ocean.

[bogomipz]

>"descendants of immigrants have momentum, and when they found their startups at home it doesn't mean much beyond there not being some horribly compelling reason to leave."

Can you elaborate?

Because that sentence kind of reads like you are saying that entrepreneurship and all of the crazy risk taking involved in it are less meaningful if those entrepreneurs didn't fly across an ocean in order to get to Northern California.

[whatshisface]

>Can you elaborate?

There are startup scenes in countries with lots of problems because people don't like to and can't always leave home. Because migration is a choice between countries, immigration statistics are a "market-y" way to look countries as places to work.

For example, if we had a country with huge numbers of educated people but 40% unemployment, we would expect to see lots of web startups from people trying to find something to do - but this would not mean much for the health of their economy in the immediate term. We could pick up this signal by noticing that lots of people were leaving, indicating that being a founder doesn't have to have a positive expected value in order to be worth trying.

Likewise, a country with a great college to corporate campus pipeline might have an artifically depressed startup scene.

[aries1980]

It is not just flying. People need to familiarise themselves with all sorts of new things from shoe size to local law, using zed instead of s in sentences. :) This takes time and energy that could be used for something constructive.

[tjbiddle]

Zed is 'z' by the way :)

[flukus]

He was wrong about the exception though.

[bogomipz]

Indeed, it was most certainly the only group that arrived by foot and a ice bridge :)

[robotresearcher]

Two groups.

First, America the nation did not exist when people came to North America.

The second group were brought against their will.

Neither are what we usually mean by immigration.