26% of the US population are immigrants and their children. A typical successful technology startup has 2.09 cofounders. Based on this data alone, how many of these companies would we expect to be founded or co-founded by immigrants or their children? Is it just 26*2.09?

I'm trying to refute the argument that immigrants are uniquely innovative because around 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded or co-founded by an immigrant

This is outside my wheelhouse as far as stats go. I can say that the term "immigrants" is far to vague to make assumptions from.

I get what you're trying to do, I just don't think you have enough data right now

I think that kind of depends. First off, successful startup doesn't necessarily mean fortune 500 company. Even if we were to make that assumption, we don't know exactly what percentage of cofounders are immigrants, because those 40% of the companies could all have more than one, or just one immigrant cofounder

An immigrant from Somalia is going to be very different from an immigrant from Canada.

@Nicholas1166 - NY Is it enough to prove that the statistic given in the argument is meaningless?

To be honest friend, I don't know. That's a subjective question. The main issue is that you're extrapolating the startup company cofounder number onto the fortune 500 companies. If fortune 500 companies had, say, only one founder on average, or ten, it would tremendously disrupt your data

Also, like micbwilli said, immigrant is a very broad term. You could also try splitting up immigrants by national origin, which I think would prove a similar point. If that data isn't available, you might be able to find data on immigrant entrepreneurship pre and post 1965, which would also probably be useful

hmmm

I'm trying to phrase it in a way to sound like I'm not necessarily *disproving* it, I'm just using the available data to show that 40% really isn't that amazing

If I could find the average number of co-founders among Fortune 500 companies, that would solve it pretty easily

Maybe I could mitigate this by finding the average number of co-founders in the top 10 Fortune 500 companies?

Because I'm definitely not sitting here and counting up all 500

Number of founders per company is going to be highly variable

Plenty in the fortune 10 will have one founder

Like Sam Walton, Steve Jobs, etc

@Jacob make the sample size argument

the top 500 companies isn't a bad sample size tbh

this is what I have right now

The US has around 350 mil people. Versus the 8 bil on the world. For these purposes lets exclude all Blacks from populations that can do this lol

I'm not sure I follow the logic here

Vc once i finish pooping?

1. Assume for not revealing your power level in this class that the same proportion of all pops have the capability to be tech startups.

ya sure

oh this isn't for class

I'm trying to start writing articles for America First Media

Good idea

I should too

that would be cool if you do

we could review each others' articles

im in vc

okay give me a minute

FUCK

I forgot I lost my earphones

uhhhhhh not sure if I can do this right now

okay I'll just get in for a bit right now

while I'm home

@ophiuchus That's true, but I rephrased it so it's not a specific claim, I'm just saying that it's fairly normal for businesses to have more than one co-founder, so if they're 26% of the population, co-founding 40% of companies isn't amazing

@here ummm Im kind of stumped on this homework question. I really don't know how to respond without revealing my power levels and getting a bad grade because of it.