[throwaway743824]

"People founding startups are a very small subset of overall immigrants."

True, even less create successful startups in a timely manner (even though they contribute overall). Which makes them so hard to target.

"Also, most people who do start startups are also competent, if not educated, enough to probably qualify under a more traditional points based system."

There's only so many ways to measure something and dropping out school to work for random Internet companies and starting your own before you have kids, which is a common profile for entrepreneurial people in Europe, tends to not tick a lot of them.

The US immigration system desperately needs reform, I just don't think any country has managed to create a formal system that is better for entrepreneurship than the realities of running your business illegally in the beginning (or at least pushing the meaning of a business visa). With some reservation for not having looked into the European startup/freelance visas.