
Sharing Scheduler App Buffer Raises $400,000, Gets Kicked Out Of US - joelg87
http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/20/sharing-scheduler-app-buffer-raises-400000-gets-kicked-out-of-us/
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kloncks
As an American, our immigration policies make me so damn mad. I know both Leo
and Joel quite well, having went through AngelPad together, and they were
building a solid company that should have stayed in America.

The fact that wealth-builders, and innovative startup founders that seek to
create new frontiers can't legally find a way of staying in this country is
preposterous.

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aspir
This is so unfortunate to happen to such a good group of founders. When Buffer
first launched, I sent Joel an email pertaining to cron jobs. I was just
learning to code generic hello world scripts, and he not only got back to me,
but his response was helpful and encouraging. The US lost a good team in this
gaffe, unfortunately.

I actually now use Buffer regularly at my startup (I should actually start
using it more), and to be honest, I never cared where you guys were based --
the product worked well. Just keep up the good work wherever you settle :)

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eschaton
How were they in the US in the first place?

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vetler
Seems they just moved here to do a startup, then applied too late for a H1B
visa. They don't seem too bothered by it. They get to live in Hong Kong!
Sounds awesome to me. [http://leostartsup.com/2011/12/why-we-are-taking-our-
startup...](http://leostartsup.com/2011/12/why-we-are-taking-our-startup-to-
hong-kong-and-other-crazy-stories-of-2011/)

I didn't think getting a H1B visa was that easy, though. You just move to the
US and apply? It doesn't work that way, does it? Don't you need to have a job
and somehow justify that you need a visa?

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mattmanser
This is definitely _not_ a failure of your immigration system.

They didn't even move to the US to start this, it started in the UK and then,
let's be frank, they went off to the US for a jolly holiday. Now they're going
to Hong Kong for a jolly holiday.

All props to starting a business, etc. but if you can't sell Buffer from the
UK and you can't sell it from the US, you're not going to be able to sell it
from Hong Kong.

To everyone saying the US lost a great team, they didn't need to be there. The
company was setup in the UK already running, it started in 2010. Joel was
standing in front of me practically a year to the day in the UK advocating
bootstrapping and now he's suddenly raised $400,000 for a trivial twitter app.
How on earth can you spend $400,000 on a tweet scheduler?

The guy's great, I think the apps great for what it is, yes they're having a
great time travelling the world. I appreciate people can change their minds.

Also they're probably a UK company and pay UK corporation taxes, not US ones,
but I'm not sure as their terms of service and their website don't explicitly
say who the legal owner of the app is or their registration number or
registration address (illegally I might add if they're from the UK). If he's
running it as a sole trader he should explicitly say so in his terms of
service.

EDIT: Joel's deck from Dec 2010 advocating bootstrapping:

[http://notttuesday.com/2010/12/17/joel-gascoignes-lean-
start...](http://notttuesday.com/2010/12/17/joel-gascoignes-lean-startup-
slide-deck/)

~~~
joelg87
Hi Matt,

You're absolutely right, it's not a failure of the US immigration system. We
looked into all our options, and we were working with a very good and well
respected immigration lawyer to apply for H1B visas. Unfortunately, they ran
out of visas on the quota for the year just before we applied. So, we never
even applied for a visa, and we certainly weren't rejected visas or kicked out
of the country, so it's not a failure of the immigration system. I do think
perhaps the system could cater a little better to people in our situation who
were very keen to stick around in the US and hire US citizens to build our
company. Nevermind though, we'll hopefully be back soon enough to do exactly
that.

I'm glad you saw me speak at NottTuesday just over a year ago. That's right
after I launched Buffer, and at that point it was me by myself and just a few
paying users and perhaps 100 users in total. I was still learning a huge deal
at that point, and quite frankly I'm still making all sorts of mistakes to
this day, but I think that will always be the case. I do like to think that
now with over 1400 paying customers (85,000 users in total) and a $200,000
annual revenue run rate, we _did_ sell Buffer from the UK, we _did_ sell
Buffer from the US, and I'm confident we'll continue on our non-linear growth
path whilst we are based in Hong Kong.

As for needing to be in the US, that's an interesting point to ponder. Shortly
after the NottTuesday talk I brought on board a co-founder. Then, a few months
later, being in the US enabled us to gain a place on AngelPad and with the
investment hire our first employee much faster than we would have otherwise
been able to. I still advocate bootstrapping, and indeed Buffer was
bootstrapped for 9 months to profitability before we thought about funding.
Without a previous track record, having that kind of traction is essential in
my mind. We're a US company.

We're having a great time travelling the world, but we're also working pretty
damn hard. In my mind, I truly believe both need to go hand in hand to be
truly successful.

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robkwok
Congrats guys! Sorry to see you go :(

~~~
LeonW
Thanks a lot Rob! Not to worry, I am sure we will be back in a few months! :)

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csomar
How did you move to Hong Kong? Are there any special requirements so you can
setup your start-up there and get a VISA?

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oceanician
Could you move to the Chilli Startup. Seems interesting over there. I've been
tempted to apply.

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fennecfoxen
I for one am ashamed that my country has mistreated them.

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sliverstorm
Hold on. If the average person reads 10 articles in the morning and 10
articles at lunch, why is the optimal time to send your friends articles some
_other_ time during the day?

~~~
rythie
Does the average person do that? I've seen nothing to suggest they do, except
you might.

Also, when is morning? people are in lots of different timezones that are
following companies and celebs.

~~~
sliverstorm
What I do has nothing to do with the article. It is the article claiming that.

