A friend sent me this Charlie Rose interview with Wilbur Ross.

I initially thought of just deleting it, but 10 minutes into the interview I had to put aside what I was working and focus on what Mr. Ross was saying.  He raises some important points that affect the VC and start-up community in the US and the future of technology entrepreneurship here.  Mr. Ross is one of the richest Americans with an estimated net worth close to $1.7 billion.  He has a reputation for taking command of failed companies and restructuring them.  Most recently, he has had immense success with restructuring the American steel industry. I recommend you taking the time to listen to the interview if you have 30 minutes to spare.  However, here are some quick takeaways:

When asked what he saw as some of the biggest challenges facing the United States in the future, Mr. Ross immediately said there was giant and increasing chasm with the state of R&D in the US and its competitors (and not in a good way). He claims that for every graduate with an engineering background in the US there are seven graduates with the same background graduating from each China and India. When Charlie Rose commented that this was partly because India and China have vastly greater populations, he quips back, "seven engineers to one, is still seven engineers to one".

Mr. Ross goes on to state that if this trend was to continue and there are no reasons to believe that it will not exacerbate even further in the next few years, 90% of the world's engineers will reside in Asia. This does not do any favors to the US manufacturing industry, and cannot be very good for the high-tech industry in the US either. His solution - Graduate More Engineers.

Playing devil's advocate Charlie Rose comments that the US still does have some of the best universities in the world. I think that approach only goes on to strengthen Ross's point about how, not only is the US not taking the initiative to graduate more students in the fields of science, engineering and technology, but also that many of these students who are graduating from US universities are international students, which the US is not doing enough to retain. Hence the double whammy where on one end you are attracting some of the brightest and best talent in the world, investing in their education and technical growth, but at the same time losing this talent to foreign companies and foreign countries due to the lack of nuanced immigration policies to encourage these graduates to stay in the US.

The immigration issue really hits home as one of the core issues impacting the entrepreneur community. A significant part of the VC and start-up community are made up of immigrants and there really isn't much being done to help, encourage and retain this talent by the Government in its current immigration initiatives. (See www.startupvisa.org for greater coverage on this topic and stay tuned for future blog posts on this as well).

Give the interview a listen, Ross and Rose raise many other salient points about the clean-tech and the government policies needed to drive growth (Ross champions the Chinese Government's approach to the issue -but that is a story for a different blog).