{"id":10001,"date":"2015-04-20T21:23:54","date_gmt":"2015-04-20T21:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thetlawfirm.com\/2015\/04\/how-techs-titans-are-recruiting-start-ups-in-their-immigration-patent-reform-fights-2\/"},"modified":"2015-05-06T12:21:38","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T12:21:38","slug":"how-techs-titans-are-recruiting-start-ups-in-their-immigration-patent-reform-fights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetlawfirm.com\/es\/2015\/04\/how-techs-titans-are-recruiting-start-ups-in-their-immigration-patent-reform-fights\/","title":{"rendered":"How tech\u2019s titans are recruiting start-ups in their immigration, patent reform fights"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0J.D. Harrison<\/a>\u00a0April 20
\nJohn Chambers, chairman and chief executive officer of Cisco Systems Inc., was one of several executives from some of the country\u2019s largest tech companies who spoke last week at 1776. (Chris Ratcliffe\/Bloomberg)<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

It\u2019s common for start-ups to pitch ideas to or seek support from their industry\u2019s largest players. Whether they\u2019re soliciting investments or advice, or perhaps trying to sell their company as a potentially lucrative acquisition, entrepreneurs are always looking to get the attention of top technology executives.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, though, the roles reverse.<\/p>\n

During an event last week in Washington, top executives from some of the nation\u2019s largest technology corporations instead solicited \u2014\u00a0sometimes explicitly, sometimes subtly \u2014 the help of a jam-packed room of\u00a0entrepreneurs. Rather than trying to sell their company\u2019s services or some new innovation,\u00a0though,\u00a0the executives were selling\u00a0the benefits ofpolicy changes<\/a>\u00a0they want from Washington.<\/p>\n

It was a sales pitch split into two parts. First,\u00a0that what\u2019s happening in Washington has implications not merely for today\u2019s Silicon Valley elite, but also for new and small ventures \u00a0vying to become tomorrow\u2019s tech titans.<\/p>\n

\u201cGovernment has huge implications on the success of every company, especially the smaller companies,\u201d John Chambers, Cisco\u2019s chairman and chief executive, said during the forum sponsored by tech lobbying group TechNet at the 1776 start-up campus in Washington. \u201cAnd when we go in to talk to leaders, they\u2019re actually more interested in talking to smaller companies than they are talking to companies like ours.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that second line, the second half of the message seeped\u00a0through \u2014 that is, that the changes the\u00a0executives\u00a0believe their industry needs won\u2019t happen without a united push from both ends of the technology sector\u2019s size spectrum, including start-ups.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe in the high-tech community need to get our message tighter,\u201d Chambers said.<\/p>\n

So what does that message entail?<\/p>\n

Moments into the forum, several speakers on the panel began beating theimmigration reform<\/a>\u00a0drum, calling on Congress to make it easier for employers to bring in skilled workers from around the world. In large part, they said, that means lifting the current cap on what are known as H-1B visas, which are set aside\u00a0for workers with advanced degrees in high-demand fields like science, math and engineering.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur national strategy has been to welcome these students to our universities and then they must go back to their countries,\u201d John Doerr, one of the wealthiest venture capitalists and a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, said during the event. \u201cWhat kind of strategy is that? That is brain dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chambers followed up by explaining the political hurdles in Washington, noting that smaller, targeted immigration bills \u201chave been held hostage to the prospect of a larger immigration bill.\u201d Moments later, Kim Polese put the issue into context for entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery entrepreneur is competing with large companies for the top tech talent, so we absolutely must reform high-skill immigration,\u201d said Polese, chairman at ClearStreet, a financial-planning software company. She pointed to surveys showing that roughly 70 percent of engineers in Silicon Valley were born outside the United States. Keeping the talent pool\u00a0small, she said, hurts new companies the most.<\/p>\n

\u201cImmigration is the lifeblood of our start-up economy,\u201d Polese\u00a0said. \u201cWe need to fix this permanently. Otherwise, we\u2019re really starving our start-ups of the talent they need.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly urgent, the executives agreed, is the push for patent reform. Many in the technology community have for years been calling on lawmakers to completely overhaul the current system, which they say\u00a0makes it too easy for so-called\u00a0patent trolls<\/a>\u00a0to purchase vague or ambiguous patents for the sole purpose of suing and charging inordinate licensing fees to those that use the technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to do is get a patent system that really works,\u201d Chambers said. \u201cOne that protects the small entrepreneur\u2019s investment but also doesn\u2019t slow down our growth and production.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once again, enter Polese: \u201cBy the way, start-ups are really being impacted by this, because trolls are not just coming after the big companies, they\u2019re coming after the start-ups, too,\u201d she said. Polese later pointed out that most early-stage firms \u201cdon\u2019t have deep pockets to defend themselves, so they usually have to settle or go out of business.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words: We\u2019re all in this together.<\/p>\n

Randall Stephenson, chairman and chief executive at AT&T, brought up another pressing agenda item for large companies across all sectors \u2014 and that\u2019s tax reform.\u00a0He noted that the U.S. taxes corporate profits and investment gains at a higher level than any other developed country.<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s digital world, Stephenson\u00a0said, \u201ccapital markets are extremely liquid, and capital will flow to the highest return as efficiently as we have ever seen in history.\u201d In other words, pleading with U.S. companies not to shift their operations overseas, he argued, is akin to asking them to \u201cfight gravity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGravity always wins,\u201d he said. \u201cSo instead of throwing up barriers around the United States, and saying you can\u2019t pull that capital out of the country or you can\u2019t bring that capital back in from overseas, we have got to put in place a tax system that\u00a0works for\u00a0businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

In hammering the point home to the entrepreneurs back in the room, Stephenson\u00a0zeroed\u00a0in\u00a0on the impact\u00a0the tax code<\/a>\u00a0has on the very lifeblood of start-ups: funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if you taxed profits at a level vis a vis the rest of the world, and then did the same with capital, what would happen to investment?\u201d he asked, suggesting\u00a0that reducing taxes on investors\u2019 returns would likely encourage them\u00a0to pour money into new and growing businesses. \u201cIf you don\u2019t have investments, you don\u2019t have jobs, and if you don\u2019t have jobs, you don\u2019t have growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shepherding these changes through Washington\u2019s political maze will require a concerted effort from the entire tech community,\u00a0Chambers said, and it\u2019s not merely about convincing policymakers of the merits of each individual measure. Rather, it\u2019s about convincing\u00a0them to fundamentally change the way they think about growing businesses and the economy, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cGovernment is used to moving at a much slower pace and acting like a safety net now has to change dramatically,\u201d Chambers said. \u201cIf they don\u2019t move rapidly to change our tax policy, if they don\u2019t move rapidly to encourage entrepreneurship, if they don\u2019t evolve the education system to create the skill sets that businesses need for the future, not for the past\u2026 that\u2019s where we could mess up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follow\u00a0J.D. Harrison<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0On Small Business<\/a>\u00a0on Twitter.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adams also came to understand how important it was that his carefully crafted photos were reproduced to best effect. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-civil-law-es","category-attorneys-es"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetlawfirm.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetlawfirm.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetlawfirm.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetlawfirm.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetlawfirm.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10001"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thetlawfirm.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10005,"href":"https:\/\/thetlawfirm.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10001\/revisions\/10005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetlawfirm.com\/es\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetlawfirm.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetlawfirm.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetlawfirm.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}