[IanWilson]

If I could, I would move my start up to SV in a flash. Its not just the VCs there but also the angels, where else can you find engineers who are worth 7 figures and can comfortably work for free or even invest themselves?

But this is an almost exclusively US club if you currently have a start up. It takes years to get a visa and go that route unless you already have, I believe over $1.5 million funding, which somewhat defeats the purpose of the move which would be to raise money primarily.

So if you have a start up in London and are not a US citizen and do not already have millions in funding you simply cannot move to Silicon Valley.

So if you are not a US citizen get a job there for the visa (not at all easy, remember all of this years allotment of visas disappeared on the first day) and work on your start up on the side or get the funding and go.

[mulcher]

or take a holiday there and aggressively pitch.. Also there is no funding minimum for instance for a US E2 visa.. but as the article suggests to me, the ycombinator startup fund might not be enough..

Also consider the following, the std. angel investment is $12k from ycombinator. That gives you 3 months, which is also about the minimum amount of time you can arrive on tourist visa.

Can you take that to get up and running and then move to silicon valley? If your idea is promising then you seem to be ok.. It doesn't seem that reality gets in the way here, either by immigration policy or the details of a ycombinator investment.