Immigrant founders of recent billion-dollar companies immigrated to the United States from 25 different countries. Their stories tell us it is still possible to achieve success in America even if you don’t start out with money or connections.
Despite the lack of a startup visa and other obstacles, such as often waiting many years for a green card, immigrants continue to shine as entrepreneurs. “Immigrants have started more than half (50 of 91, or 55%) of America’s startup companies valued at $1 billion or more,” according to a recent study from the National Foundation for American Policy.
The diversity of the countries today's immigrant entrepreneurs come from should be heartening for Americans. “The leading countries of origin for the immigrant founders of billion-dollar companies,” the study noted, “are Canada and Israel with 9 immigrants each, India (8), the United Kingdom (7), China (6), Germany (4), France (3), Ireland (3), Russia (3), Australia (2), Ukraine (2) and 14 other countries with one entrepreneur – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Denmark, Iraq, Italy, Lebanon, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.”
Some may be surprised that a country as small as Israel would produce so many successful immigrant entrepreneurs in America, such as Adam Neumann, a co-founder and CEO of WeWork. Neumann came to the United States from Israel as an international student and attended CUNY Bernard M. Baruch College in New York. WeWork has revolutionized the shared office space concept and is now valued at $47 billion, with more than 6,000 employees – even though the company was only founded in 2012. The company has filed for an initial public offering (IPO).
Houzz is the rare billion-dollar company started by a husband and wife team, Adi Tatarko and Alon Cohen, both born in Israel. The idea for Houzz developed out of the couple’s frustration with trying to find good information online to renovate their home. Since 2016, Houzz has grown from 800 to 1,800 employees and its value has risen to $4 billion. Other billion-dollar startups with an immigrant entrepreneur born in Israel include Cybereason, Gusto, Infinidat and Tango.
While Americans don’t often think of our neighbors to the north as a major source of immigration, Canadians have founded a number of highly successful companies in the United States. Many people may not realize that one of the founders of Uber, Garrett Camp, is an immigrant from Canada. Camp came up with the idea for Uber after becoming frustrated dealing with taxis while seeing a girlfriend. The company is now valued at $76 billion, with nearly 10,000 U.S.-based employees. As of May 10, 2019, Uber will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Canadian immigrant Stewart Butterfield is co-founder and CEO of Slack Technologies, which has 1,000 employees and is known for its popular business communication tool. Slack also has filed for an initial public offering. Cloudflare was co-founded by Canadian-born Michelle Zatlyn after studying at Harvard Business School and coming up with the concept of a shared security network of websites with her U.S.-born partners. Other billion-dollar companies with a Canadian immigrant founder include AppDirect, Instacart, Wish and Moderna.
The three founders of Avant not only arrived in America without wealth or connections, they came here as children. Avant CEO Al Goldstein arrived as an 8-year-old refugee from Uzbekistan with his family, John Sun (born in China) was the child of an international student and the father of Paul Zhang, born in China, was sponsored by a family member, allowing Paul to immigrate. Today, Avant has over 500 employees and a valuation of $2 billion.
India remains a major source of immigrant entrepreneurs. The primary reason Indians were not the number one country of origin in the National Foundation for American Policy study is that several billion-dollar companies with an Indian-born founder had a recent IPO or a lucrative acquisition – both signs of success – and were no longer considered billion-dollar startups. Jyoti Bansal waited 7 years for his green card before he could start AppDynamics, which was acquired in January 2017 by Cisco for $3.7 billion. Current billion-dollar startups with an Indian immigrant founder include Actifio, Mu Sigma, Rubrik, Sprinklr and Zenefits.
Whether it’s Vlad Tenev, the Bulgarian-born immigrant co-founder of the investor services company Robinhood, or Yony Feng, the Chinese-born co-founder of the popular fitness company Peloton, the message by now should be pretty clear: In America, if you have a good idea for a business and the skill to implement it, then it does not matter where you were born.
