I spent the first years of my life in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Even though I was young, I remember feeling like everyone’s goal was to fit in. There was little regard for individual rights, and ostracism was dangerous.
It was only later that I realized that incompatibility might be an advantage. Taking risks—taking a leap of faith to a new country, for example—can serve as an underappreciated superpower in achieving “impossible” ambitions.
A one-way trip to a foreign land
I arrived in the United States as a child refugee in 1979. Settling in a foreign land is a learning experience that will never leave you. I had to quickly learn the language, culture and traditions of this country, meet new people and be understood. Decades later, I credit this experience with giving me a relentless drive to launch successful technology companies and then look for the same spirit in others.
After studying computer science at Columbia University, I moved to Boston to study at MIT. Perhaps my eagerness for new experiences (as well as my need for money) led me to join the notorious blackjack teams at MIT after seeing a flyer on campus.
Our little group Win millions from card counting casinosInspirational books and movies 21. I was giving oxygen to the part of me that wanted to attach it to the man — that chip on my shoulder that came with being considered an outsider.
This is also where I started meeting people who wanted to take risks within a disciplined, quasi-scientific framework. I realized that these were my people. Later, this willingness to take calculated risks became an enduring connection to the immigrant experience.
However, it was not a sustainable lifestyle. I began to crave the satisfaction of using my skills to help people. I launched a website performance optimization startup in the early days of the World Wide Web. You wrote one of the first online payment protocols. I had a few exits and used that momentum to become an angel investor in some startups, and eventually became a Managing Director of Techstars Boston.
But one of the most important accomplishments in my career is being able to give other immigrants the opportunity to launch exceptional businesses by launching One Way Ventures exclusively for immigrant founders in 2018. I am motivated by my goal of advocating for people’s right to live and work. They set up companies wherever they please, and the launch of the fund was motivated in part by the presidency of Donald Trump and its rejection of immigrants.
Nearly seven years later, the decision to support exceptional immigrant founders – not only a moral choice but also a financial one – has performed well. Today, 75% of portfolio companies from our 2018 fund are still active and operating, and this fund is up 2.5x on paper overall. We’ve backed companies disrupting the industry like Brex, Chipper Cash, Nuvocargo and KarmaCheck. I hope we have helped strengthen the foundations of diverse entrepreneurship in the United States. By following our mission alone, we have accumulated a portfolio that is 56% minority-founded – significantly higher than the rest of the industry.
Why are immigrants a better bet?
There is a strength — not a weakness, as many might see it — that comes with building a life from scratch in unfamiliar territory. If people take this determination into entrepreneurship, they will objectively have a greater chance of success.
This has already been proven by multiple studies, and immigrants in the United States have done so Founded 55% of unicorns and 65% of the best artificial intelligence companiesAnd they are responsible for that 36% of innovative output.
As it turns out, people who immigrate as adults, who have nothing and no one waiting for them when they arrive, who have to learn a new culture and build a new network – are able to go to great lengths to achieve their goals.
They are flexible in understanding diverse cultures and therefore markets. They have a global mindset. They are less accepting of potential failure.
When faced with an existential challenge as a founder, they harness their belief that they can accomplish the impossible, and that they can hustle another month until they reach that major milestone — after all, they’ve beaten the odds before. You don’t see that ability to overcome difficulties with local entrepreneurs.
Often times, these entrepreneurs end up achieving much better results because They have led their company through intense pressure and acceleration.
I also see the power of the immigrant entrepreneur in the enormous community that has consolidated around us. Our mission has drawn together a powerful network of disparate immigrant communities around the idea that we have the right to go wherever we want and build what we want in peace.
Our belief in the power of immigrant entrepreneurs helped us convince not only founders to invite us to their cap table, but also immigrant founders from unicorn companies to join us as mentors to our early-stage entrepreneurs – we called this “Our Name.” Pathfinder Collective. We have dozens of limited partners who are mostly immigrant founders in whom we have previously invested – which is unusual in itself in venture capital. Since immigrants have to work to find and build a community, they are less likely to take it for granted and more keen to pay it forward.
When I look back on my unconventional journey to where I am now, I remember that at that moment I stopped worrying about making most Money, and I actually started to care more about doing good for others, so that I was able to do better in all aspects of my life and career.
Perhaps we as a nation can do the same. If we think more about directing our policies towards doing the right thing, respecting human rights, striving for equal opportunities, and if we stop worrying about building walls and letting people into the country because we realize that is their right, then as a country we will become stronger together with these people. Who chose this nation to search for a better life.
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