immigrant-founders
(12)
XX made room for the first check
Small cohorts. Experienced founders. A door into startup investing for everyone else. XX tested how much could change when the first believer pulled up a chair.
Polina Raygorodskaya and the value of a missed ride
A canceled ride in rural Virginia gave an experienced bus passenger a business to build. Polina Raygorodskaya turned the nuisance of finding a ticket into Wanderu, then spent twelve years making the connections work.
Nabeel Alamgir and the trouble with the middleman
After learning the restaurant business clearing tables at Bareburger, Nabeel Alamgir built Lunchbox to give operators more control over their customers. His next venture takes that argument across borders.
Alex Zhou and the Two-Hour Price of a Taste of Home
A grocery run in Kansas gave Yami’s founder a business idea. Thirteen years after opening with 200 snacks, Alex Zhou is helping Asian brands find shoppers across North America.
Asim Amin and the business of belonging
He arrived in Britain with a business plan and few connections. Building Plumm taught Asim Amin how to change direction; finding his footing gave him a reason to help other founders do the same.
Eric Yuan and the ten-hour problem
A long train ride gave Zoom’s founder a reason to make video calls simpler. Years later, Eric Yuan is asking a more awkward question: how much of the working day needs us there at all?
SparkBridge helps immigrant founders get past the cold introduction
The Vancouver incubator pairs Canadian market entry with hands-on startup building. Its pitch to immigrant entrepreneurs: local knowledge, useful introductions and help turning a business idea into something customers can use.
Asim Razzaq Put a Price Tag on the Cloud's Blind Spot
He left PayPal with a stubborn question: if engineers create the cloud bill, why are they the last people given a useful way to read it? Yotascale became his decade-long answer.
The Check That Comes Before You Have a Company Bank Account
Farooq Abbasi built Preface Ventures to fund the engineers behind enterprise infrastructure - and got in so early on DX that a $2.8M-funded company became a $1B Atlassian deal.
Josephine Chen
Josephine Chen is a Partner at Sequoia Capital focused on seed and Series A investments at the intersection of enterprise software, fintech, and crypto. Born in Massachusetts and raised largely in Taiwan before moving to the Bay Area at age ten, she brings a biomedical informatics background from Stanford and a career arc through Genentech, McKinsey, and Emergence Capital. She champions immigrant founders, bets on biology-meets-software breakthroughs, and has backed companies including Found, AMP Robotics, Anrok, Cresta, Abby Care, and Magic Eden.
Manan Mehta
Manan Mehta is the Founding Managing Partner of Unshackled Ventures, the only venture capital firm in the US built exclusively to back immigrant founders at the pre-seed stage - before product, before revenue, and often before incorporation. A first-generation American born to Indian immigrants in Sunnyvale, CA, Manan turned a personal experience of watching his H-1B co-founder get shackled by visa constraints into a $35M+ fund that has sponsored 200+ founders, completed 231+ immigration filings, and helped build a portfolio that has collectively raised $730M+ and created 1,200+ jobs. He sits on the Nasdaq board, once helped ink the $1.9B Skype acquisition as a banker, and brings to every pitch meeting the lens of someone who knows exactly what it costs to build from scratch.
Nitin Pachisia
Nitin Pachisia is the Founding Partner of Unshackled Ventures, the only early-stage VC firm in the U.S. exclusively focused on immigrant founders. Born in India and having navigated the U.S. immigration system himself, he co-founded Unshackled in 2014 with Manan Mehta to solve a problem he lived: talented immigrant entrepreneurs trapped by visa rules that punished risk-taking. Unshackled's model is unlike any other fund - it directly employs founders as their visa sponsor, enabling them to legally leave corporate jobs and build startups. Across three funds totaling $55M+, he has backed 80+ companies whose founders come from 35+ countries, helped create 1,100+ jobs, and maintained a 100% success rate on immigration filings.