Evidence that the tech-driven economy with thousands of new jobs of the future can be built by welcoming immigrants
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Immigrants can create a Trillion Dollar economy within a decade: all they need is knowledge, acceptance, equality, and rule of law – they can carve everything else for themselves
"Immigrant entrepreneurship is about overcoming obstacles and achieving dreams. Immigrants are intrinsically cut out for entrepreneurship. "
A report by US National Foundation for American Policy states that immigrants to the United States have started more than half (319 of 582, or 55%) of America’s startup companies valued at $1 billion.
The focus of this report is the most successful startups in the United States and how they demonstrate the role immigrants have played in silicon-valley and the startup ecosystem which gave them an opportunity and they gave back a thousand times more to society and the economy. The whole story of entrepreneurship in the UK, Canada, US is even more amazing.
I migrated from India in 1989 and have started 14 businesses in 9 countries. The paradigms of “venture capital”, “ startup” and “scaling” for “valuation” and “exit,” were typical to Silicon Valley, alien to most entrepreneurs in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. While rest of the world was stuck in the echelons of structures and elitist policies, migrants to the US already started creating billion-dollar ventures with thousands of new jobs.
Many countries have learned from the US and are running neck and neck with the US now. Indian produces a unicorn every 5 weeks. Unicorns are now spread around the world.
For the most part my entrepreneurial journey was in countries that were half-open and conditionally welcoming with half-hearted and hostile policies toward migrants. No wonder, nothing much has happened in those countries. Several countries in Europe are still stuck in a racially discriminatory mindset where a dark-skinned migrant is seen as a burden and a white migrant is welcomed as a “giver.”
Countries that broke free of that mindset have seen the fastest pace of entrepreneurship and growth – Singapore and Dubai in the east; Netherlands, Berlin, Ireland, Scotland, and England in Europe and much of the United States and Canada in the west. For obvious reasons the United States was the greatest magnet for migration for decades but the UK, and several Europeans have been quick to emulate the best of the American model. Dubai and Singapore have always been on the fastest trajectory to attracting migrant entrepreneurs and from Web 3.0 to Spacetech, EdTech, and FinTech. They have built the most attractive ecosystem in the world for diverse background founders and entrepreneurs. Europeans were slow to start but quick to catch up. While some European Union countries lagged and then got stuck in the quicksand of racism, others leaped forward. The success of Berlin ( and other clusters in Germany) the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Portugal, and Luxembourg was initially due to internal European migration driven by freedom to travel and work within the EU and then by opening up to students and founders from around the world.
I have personally experienced the success and failures brought by visionary or backward policies respectively. Despite numerous natural advantages, Cyprus, where I made a home in and started several ventures remains hostile to migrants and provides not even a semblance of rule of law, equality, transparency, or diversity. Treatment of migrants is inhumane and they are deprived of basic human rights by an insular society and system. As a result, it has missed the potential of fast-paced technology-driven growth and development remaining a backwater laundering money and selling passports to Russian, Ukrainian or Chinese oligarchs while its own most talented youth migrate to Northern Europe where they flourish in diversity and meritocracy. The situation is completely different in the “developed” ecosystems of the UK, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, and Norway where adherence to European values of equality, diversity, and rule of law is real. Migrants make a large number of startups today in Berlin, Stockholm, Oslo, Amsterdam, and Dublin. My own experience ( shocking from a migrant's point of view) in Norway is of no humane, open, transparent treatment of equality, and meritocracy. These are the values that attract the best entrepreneurs and founders of the world. In the Netherlands, nearly 75% of the startups seem to have a migrant founder or key team member. The situation is not altogether different in the UK or Germany, Sweden, or Norway.
The US study clearly demonstrates the value add of migration to the technology-driven future of the economy. These migrant-founded or driven companies are the fastest-growing employers in the US. The jobs of the future are being created in migrant-founded companies. When it comes to Artificial Intelligence and research-driven startups in healthcare, energy, computing, and Web 3.0, migrants tend to lead the way.
We should not forget that while the migrants form the backbone of several micro and small businesses such as hospitality, F&B, and financial services in the US and UK already for many years they are also at the top of the world’s most valuable companies. Google, Microsoft, IBM, Adobe, and many more tech giants are headed by Indian migrants or have them in key engineering and management positions.
Two-thirds (64%) of U.S. billion-dollar companies (unicorns) were founded or co-founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants.
80% of America’s unicorn companies (privately-held, billion-dollar companies) have an immigrant founder or an immigrant in a key leadership role, such as CEO or vice president of engineering.
In addition to the companies with immigrant founders, at least 51 of the 582 U.S. billion-dollar startup companies have founders who were born in the United States to immigrant parents.?58% of immigrant-founded billion-dollar companies had only an immigrant or multiple immigrant founders (i.e., no native-born founders).
Immigrant Women as Founders:
Many immigrant founders of U.S. billion-dollar companies are women. Sherry Wei, born in China, is the founder and chief technology officer of Aviatrix, a cloud network platform with more than 500 customers. She earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Purdue University. Aviatrix is valued at $2 billion.?
Among the most famous immigrant founders is the singer Rihanna, who immigrated to the United States from Barbados. She founded Savage X Fenty, a company that sells fashion and lingerie. Savage X Fenty is valued at $1 billion.
?Jen Rubio, an immigrant from the Philippines, is co-founder and CEO of Away, which produces luggage and travel accessories.
Joanna Kochaniak, an immigrant from Poland, is a co-founder and chief technology officer of Upside, which has 300 employees and a $1.5 billion valuation.
According to the research, immigrants have fueled the rise in U.S. billion-dollar startups:
Without immigrants today there likely would be fewer than half as many billion-dollar startup companies in the United States.
Overall, 86% of the immigrant-founded billion-dollar companies had solely an immigrant founder or immigrant founders or a majority of founders who were immigrants or an even number of immigrant and native-born founders; only 14% had a majority of native-born founders. ??
Cutting-edge startups are crucial to an economy because innovation is often expressed through entrepreneurship. The best ideas will never be applied or perfected without people willing to take a chance on those ideas, and billiondollar companies are among America’s most innovative businesses.
The collective value of the over 300 immigrant-founded U.S. companies is $1.2 trillion
This is more than the value of all the companies listed on the main stock markets of many countries, including Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Portugal, Ireland, Russia and Mexico. The collective value of the 50 immigrant-founded billion-dollar companies in 2018 was $248 billion.
The research finds that the privately held U.S. billion-dollar startup companies with immigrant founders have created an average of 859 jobs per company.
At least 10 immigrants have founded multiple billion-dollar companies: Al Goldstein (born in Uzbekistan, Avant and Amount), Noubar Afeyan (Lebanon, Moderna and Indigo Ag), Ignacio Martinez (Spain, Indigo Ag and Inari), Elon Musk (South Africa, SpaceX, OpenAI and The Boring Company), Mohit Aron (India, Nutanix and Cohesity), Ashutosh Garg (India, Bloomreach and Eightfold.ai), Ajeet Singh (India, Nutanix and ThoughtSpot), Sebastian Thrun (Germany, Cresta and Udacity), Ion Stoica (Romania, Databricks and Anyscale) and Jyoti Bansal (India, AppDynamics and Harness).?
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Immigrants Turn into Leading Employers
-???????The leading companies for employment among immigrant-founded U.S. billion-dollar companies are
-???????REEF Technology (15,000 employees)
-???????Gopuff (15,000),
-???????SpaceX with 12,000 employees,
-????????Stripe (7,000),
-???????Epic Games (6,356),
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-???????Better.com (5,800),
-???????Brandtech Group (5,000),
-???????HighRadius (3,635),
-???????Databricks (3,043),
-???????Instacart (3,000),
-???????Mu Sigma (2,665),
-???????KeepTruckin (2,592),
-???????Flexport (2,573),
-???????Axtria (2,463),
-???????Automation Anywhere (2,449),
-???????Indigo Ag (2,422),
-???????Rubrik (2,344),
-???????Talkdesk (2,200),
-???????Tanium (2,200),
-???????TripActions (2,200) ?
-???????Icertis (2,100).
Job growth in successful companies can be substantial. The number of employees at SpaceX rose from 4,000 in 2016 to 7,000 in 2018 and 12,000 in 2022. Stripe went from 380 employees in 2016 to 1,100 in 2018 and more than 7,000 in 2022. Gusto, which provides a payroll and human resources platform, grew from 300 employees in 2018 to 2,000 in 2022.?
More than 25 of the U.S. billion-dollar startups with immigrant founders produce cutting-edge products, platforms or services involving artificial intelligence (AI).
India, with 66 companies, is the leading country of origin for the immigrant founders of U.S. billion-dollar companies.
o??????Immigrants from Israel founded the second-most billion-dollar companies with 54,
o??????United Kingdom (27),
o??????Canada (22),
o??????China (21),
o??????France (18),
o??????Germany (15),
o??????Russia (11),
o??????Ukraine (10),
o??????Iran (8),
o??????Australia (7),
o??????Romania (6),
o??????Italy (6),
o??????Poland (6),
o??????Nigeria (6),
o??????South Korea (5),
o??????New Zealand (5),
o??????Pakistan (5)
o??????Argentina (5),
o??????Brazil (5),
o??????Spain (4),
o??????Portugal (4),
o??????Denmark (4)
o??????& several other countries.?
Employment-based green cards for Indians could exceed 2 million by 2030. That holds the prospect of hundreds of new unicorns created by Indian migrant founders.