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PayPal founder helps steer super geek cruiser

The tech boat promises something for everyone

Floating, visa-free, start-up incubator, Blueseed, has welcomed PayPal founder and VC rock star Peter Thiel on board to lead the project’s seed financing round.

Blueseed is an audacious concept devised by Philip K Dick* Max Marty and Dario Mutabdzija. They aim to anchor a 1,000-passenger vessel 12 miles off the coast of San Francisco in international waters, allowing start-ups and tech entrepreneurs from anywhere in the world to live and work without the need for US work visas.

Under the plan, the international start-up passengers will be able to commute in and out of the Bay Area on daily ferry services via Half Moon Bay, entering the US on renewable tourist visas. While US-based companies can establish offices to utilise the existing talent on board.

“We’re very excited about working with Thiel and other partners to give entrepreneurs around the world the chance to pursue their dreams in Silicon Valley with the world’s first visa-free start-up incubator,” Blueseed said.

Blueseed currently estimates a launch time frame of Q3 2013.

The United Nations of startups meets geek kibbutz concept was spawned out of the Seasteading Institute, a group which promotes the development of floating cities as an alternative social system.

Marty and Mutabdzija were former executives at the Seasteading Institute and decided to launch the world’s first commercial seasteading venture.

The Institute’s Dan Dascalescu, a volunteer ambassador for the Seasteading Institute, is serving as CIO for Blueseed and is in charge of software infrastructure, document and knowledge management, and research and analysis. The visa-free status of the ship aims to tackle the rising VISA issues faced in the US.

Dascalescu’s research has found that across the US, 7,000 Computer Science Master’s and PhD graduates each year are foreign nationals, with many encountering difficulties in continuing their US residence and many being forced home.

Blueseed has also signed up a number of advisors in matters of admiralty law, immigration law, and maritime operations.

The project’s aim is to create a fully commercial technology incubator where entrepreneurs and creative individuals from around the world can live and work in close proximity to Silicon Valley and the investment and talent required to thrive and to create a living and working environment where visa challenged professionals can reside in close proximity to companies they would like to work with in the Bay Area.

Blueseed claims that this will reduce the need for Silicon Valley companies to move their operations abroad and will effectively bring jobs and revenue back to Northern California. ®

*To El Reg, the concept looks startlingly like an idea proposed by Philip K Dick in the short story What the Dead Men Say. ®

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