refugee-entrepreneur
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Payam Zamani and the trouble with getting what you wanted
He arrived in America as a refugee, then helped take AutoWeb public. The harder question came afterward: what should a successful business be for?
Vu Lam
Vu Lam is the founder and CEO of Katalon, one of the world's most widely used software test automation platforms, trusted by more than 30,000 teams. A Vietnamese-American engineer who arrived in the United States as an 11-year-old refugee, he built a career at Bell Labs before founding a string of technology companies including KMS Technology, QASymphony, Kobiton and Grove HR. Katalon began as an internal productivity tool inside KMS Technology and grew into a standalone company that raised $27 million in Series A funding in 2021. Lam is known for championing quality-assurance professionals and pushing testing into the AI era.
Lamine Zarrad
Lamine Zarrad is the founder and CEO of StellarFi, an Austin-based fintech that reports everyday bill payments to the three major credit bureaus so Americans with thin or no credit files can build a score without taking on debt. A refugee from Soviet-era Azerbaijan who sold pirated VHS tapes in a Moscow chemical lab as a teenager, he went on to serve in the Marine Corps, work as a National Bank Examiner at the OCC, and build three fintech startups in a decade. StellarFi raised a $15M Series A in March 2023 led by Acrew Capital, and its members average a 26-point credit-score jump in their first month.