Stimulus 2.0: It’s The Startups, Stupid.

Editor’s note: The guest post below was written by Reid Hoffman, CEO and Founder of LinkedIn. Reid has some strong opinions about how startups can help right the economy, and he offers some suggestions below. (You can also catch him tonight on Charlie Rose, or check out our interview we did with him at Davos). Reid is an investor in over 60 web ventures including Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, FunnyOrDie, Ning, Last.fm, Six Apart and Technorati.

While at Davos this year, the conversation spurred a lot of thought about how we can navigate through the economic crisis. Yesterday, I shared a few of these thoughts in a Washington Post op-ed to offer a Silicon Valley perspective to lawmakers.

I believe the real fix for the economy is massive entrepreneurship and innovation to create new jobs through new products and services. Here are a few of my proposals:

1. Small business loans. Apply a micro-lending model that has proved successful in developing countries, extending credit lines up to $50,000.

2. Abolish the limit on H-1B Visas. Remove the cap on H-1B visas and impose a 10 percent payroll tax beyond the benchmark salary for each visa. Then channel the proceeds from the payroll tax into US re-education programs.

3. Match funds for venture capital and angel investors. Match up to $100 million in stimulus funds for qualifying venture and angel investments if they create jobs in the US. Let these investors keep their normal return plus 50 percent of the returns on the matching funds, while the other half goes back to the government to revitalize further investment.

Read more . . .

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Tags: angel investments, angel investors, charlie rose, economic crisis, Innovation, LinkedIn, matching funds, Silicon Valley, small business loans, Startups, venture capital, washington post, web ventures

This entry was posted on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 10:02 am and is filed under Innovation, Innovation Toronto, Startups, TechCrunch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.