international-founders
(6)
The Refiners taught founders to cross the invisible border
A plane ticket could get you to Silicon Valley. The Refiners built a seed fund around everything it took to belong there.
Alex Chernavsky and the trouble with the next step
The BusinessRocket founder has built a business around the chores that follow a business idea. His approach comes into focus when the software stops and somebody has to follow up.
Charly Esnal and the distance between arriving and belonging
The Argentine entrepreneur built Base Miami to help Latin American founders enter the U.S. market. At Mana Tech, he is working on the harder part: making the right introductions count.
Maria 01 turned a hospital into a shortcut for startups
In Helsinki, an old hospital puts founders down the hall from venture capital. Maria 01’s real business is making the right people easier to find - with desks, introductions and a €2,000 accelerator among its tools.
doola
doola is a New York-based fintech that helps entrepreneurs anywhere in the world start and run a U.S. business. Its 'Business-in-a-Box' platform bundles LLC and C-Corp formation, EIN registration, U.S. business banking access, bookkeeping, tax filing, compliance and e-commerce analytics into one back office, plus an AI Co-Founder. Founded in 2020 and backed by Y Combinator, doola has served 15,000+ founders across 175+ countries and is pushing agentic company formation directly into tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Replit, Lovable and Vercel.
Arjun Mahadevan
Arjun Mahadevan is the co-founder and CEO of doola, a New York based company that turns the headache of starting a U.S. business into a few clicks. Built after his own frustrating attempt to incorporate a company across borders, doola handles LLC formation, banking, bookkeeping and taxes for founders in more than 175 countries. A Wharton and Penn dual-degree graduate and former Dropbox growth PM, Arjun walked away from a comfortable big-tech job at 24 to build a 'Business-in-a-Box' on the belief that talent is everywhere but opportunity is not. He hosts the 15-Minute Founder podcast and writes a newsletter read by a large weekly audience.