I feel like an American who is forced to live in exile. Most of my friends and customers live in the US. I had two offers to join great SF startups. Both now worth > $1bn. Got rejected because of visa. I grew up in Germany and feel punished for life.


    • Heard from various people that it has become impossible to obtain visa to work in the US as a foreigner. Unless you get married. Won’t get any better with Trump.

    • Yeah… how ridiculous right? He is from Germany and complains about it as if it’s some sort of punishment. Give me a break.

      • I actually live in an Arab country where I was born being gay (keeping it a secret from those around; btw I can go to prison for having gay relationships here always better than getting the death sentence in some other Arab countries I’m grateful for that). I’m one sea away from the person I would hope to call my husband soon (not that that marriage will ever get recognised in my home country in my life time and I would be committing social suicide back there anyway).

        Meanwhile I’m working on a startup back in my home country not that it has the potential to get far in this shit hole but I got to work with a lot of high potential young people here and I hope that this country doesn’t kill that potential as it does with every generation. One way or another I will get off the ground and get where I want doing what I love. Well I’m grateful I grew up having the passion I have, meeting the people I met, getting the education I needed, the access to something called the internet, and the curiosity to discover and learn on my own.

        I grew up in this world and I know I’m being punished for life. So what? At least make the best of it while we’re here.

        hint: there are always more ways than you can imagine.

        • look man, if you have paying customers and you are slowly growing that startup of yours, it is a very good thing. where you are now doesn’t matter, at least you’re with your family and making money at home.

          If you want to have the startup excuse to leave your country because you wanna get homo with someone in the US or anywhere else, I advice to focus on that and forget about being a founder.

          starting up is a very energy-consuming and time-consuming thing, it is a life time engagement, not an excuse to have a gay free pass or a visa 🙂

          I got nothing against you, do whatever you want with your life, but you need to get your shit together and figure out what you want

          • Hey, I’m involved in three startups two of them very actively and both of those are already self-sufficient and close to a somewhat big investment.

            I have every excuse to want to leave this country starting but by not being limited to being gay and having a better environment with real potential.

            Yes startups do consume a huge amount of time and energy and maybe you are right about being spread too thin only time will tell if I’m making the rights investments or not.

            I didn’t plan on being where I am today and certainly didn’t expect to get into a serious relationship this soon but it happened. Nevertheless, I did know the direction I wanted my life to head to and well I still do.

  • The post says he grew up in Germany but is now living in an Arab country.

    The one thing I would say is try to go to another country. UK, back to Germany, France, Italy.

    Also being in an arab country, just know, you are probably benefitting greatly in that your living expenses are most likely nil or zero as most millenials of middle class or parents have worked abroad, live with family. Food is basically free as you eat at home or at your many relatives. Costs of living incl transportation is very inexpensive. As for creating a startup, labor, wifi access, space to work from, costs of customer aquisition & other startup expenses are minimal compared to here. It would be a lot tougher for those same startups to be profitable in the west.

    Also there are HUGE differences in work ethic bw here and there. Im in the US, with an award winning US startup and was attempting to connect to mid east startup scene and hire some employees in middle east. It was very very difficult to say the least. There were talented people but… lets just say there is a well understood mindset in the middle east and some countries, is people get to it when the get to it.

    They tell you they will be at meetings and they dont show. They disregard deadlines or regardless of their spoken commitment, rarely work more than few hours a day consistently. They are just much less motivated financially because their cultural lifestyle has showed them they just dont have to be. There really isnt grave consequences to not working hard. Here you will quickly lose your home, get evicted, electricity gets cut, cars get repoed within weeks of not paying. These are not uncommon. There most average people have never in their lives seen a middle class person lose their home. There it just doesnt happen so people are not as ‘hungry’ to respect their work commitments. It was a huge wake up call for me and the people around couldnt understand why I was bothered by it as they were conditioned to that being the norm.

    My point is you need to take stock and add up all of the benefits & resources you have where you live and take advantage to build your startups. You may hate working for a western based startup bc most startups i know here, put in no less than 7 real hours a day of work, several days a week. If your startups grow large enough a US investor will find you and bring the team here.

    Finally, if your partner is serious let them visit you there.

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