British Start-Ups Ready To Join Blueseed's Giant Start-Up Ship Off San Francisco Shore

Massive Visa Haven 'Start-Up Ship' Attracts Early British Interest

At least 15 British-based start-ups have expressed interest in spending a year on a giant boat, in order to build their companies in international waters.

Blueseed, itself a Californian start up, has said it wants to launch the enormous former cruise ship in order to build a haven for businesses outside of US visa restrictions.

Now, according to an interview with the company in the Metro, it's been revealed several of those interested are based in the UK.

Sam Bhagwat, chief financial officer at Blueseed, told the Metro that 300 companies are interested and around 15 are based in Britain. More than 80 are American.

"The immigration system was designed in and designed for a past era," he told Metro.

Blueseed said it wants to spend £30m retrofitting the cruise ship in the waters off San Francisco.

The idea is to provide entrepreneurs a place to run their start-ups just 12 miles from the city, but without dealing the legal complications of US law.

Above: life on the Blueseed ship

Buiness leaders will have to spend upwards of a year on the boat, according to the Metro interview.

If it launches on schedule - within about 12 months - it will feature swimming pools, a football pitch and cost £1,000 a month for those accepted on board.

Blueseed's pitch reads:

"Imagine a community that gathered one thousand of the boldest, brightest, and most talented tech entrepreneurs from around the world. Now imagine that this community was a part of Silicon Valley, the best place to scale a high-tech company... Well, that dream is becoming a reality."

It will allow businesses to hire foreign talent, without having to deal with complex immigration regulations, which restrict the number of educated foreign workers in the US to 85,000 a year.

The ship will apparently fly under the flag of the Bahamas - and allow its passengers to travel to the US on foreign tourist visas.

Below is their sales deck:

View more presentations from Blueseed

Update: a previous version of this article said the Blueseed ship will fly under the flag of Barbados, when in fact it is the Bahamas. The article also said start-ups will need to raise $500,000 to secure a place. In fact, the $500k requirement is for getting an EB-5 visa for permanent residency in the United States.

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