Successful Startups Founded by Immigrant Founders in the US

Immigrants make a significant contribution to the US economy and have made tremendous remarks in multiple industries. They are pioneering new industries and leading the growth of all these sectors. Earlier, there was a perception that immigrants willingly accept lower jobs and inferior working conditions. However, the circumstances have been changing, and immigrants are using higher technologies and innovations to reach heights. You should be aware that immigrants have started more than half of US startup companies that have worth equal to or more than $1 billion. Here, we will talk about successful startups in the US that have been started by immigrant founders. Let us learn more about the immigrant founders and discover their remarkable journeys. 

Guillermo Rauch, Founder of Vercel 

Founded in 2015, the company was first named Zeit and dealt with the creation of a real-time, event-driven communication library. In April 2020, the company went under a rebranding and was relaunched as Zercel. Guillermo is an immigrant from Argentina and co-founder of other companies such as LearnBoost. Zercel is a cloud platform as a service company designed for front-end developers and helps them access speed and innovative products.  

He is an immigrant entrepreneur who started discovering web development at the age of 11. He lacked communication skills and even learned English by watching and reading software manuals. Guillermo talked about how his own experiences inspired him to launch his brand. Coming to the US provided him the opportunity to experiment and help become one of the empowering immigrant founders. 

Tope Awotona, Founder of CEO of Calendly

Tope Awotona is one of the leading immigrant founders who is the owner of a billion-dollar company and is recognized by multiple media companies across the world. He is the founder of CEO of Calendly, a scheduling platform that allows teams and professionals to connect in an easier way. One can schedule, follow up, and get updates on the meetings. Tope is Nigerian-born and is even referred to as one of the wealthiest immigrant founders in the US. He used his entire savings to build the software platform and take Calendly to heights.

Patrick Collison, Founder, and CEO of Stripe

Patrick Collison is the founder and CEO of Stripe, which is one of the leading payment processing platforms in the US. The company now has more than 8,000 employees and is even funded by more than 51 investors. Patrick Collison and John Collison are brothers who founded the company together. Patrick is an immigrant from Ireland and moved to the US to pursue his dreams. The company’s valuation is more than $95 billion, and the platform is used worldwide by millions of entrepreneurs. Patrick is one of the immigrant founders who have paved the way for multiple entrepreneurs by providing them effective payment processing platform. 

Mohit Aron and Ajeet Singh, Founders of Nutanix

Mohit Aron and Ajeet Singh are Indian immigrant founders of Nutanix, which is a unicorn startup and reached a $1 billion valuation in 2013. Nutanix is a US-based technology firm and an American cloud company that deals with the selling of software, cloud services, and software-defined storage. The company has more than 6,000 employees and has headquarters in multiple locations, including California, San Jose, and the US. The company even filed for an IPO in 2015 but lost that year. The company has partnered with IBM and various other companies and is giving tough competition to big conglomerates across the country. 

Michelle Zatlyn, Founder and COO of Cloudflare 

Michelle Zatlyn is the founder and COO of the billion-dollar company Cloudflare. The Canadian immigrant founder faced multiple challenges and was even denied a work visa to live in the country. During her second attempt to move to the US, she met Matthew Prince, who later became one of the co-founders of the company. Founded in 2010, CloudFlare is a cybersecurity firm dealing with DDoS content mitigation and content delivery network.  

They provide multiple services such as edge computing, identity management, streaming media, reverse proxy, and more. The company has more than 2,000 employees, and Michelle heads the user experience department. Her extensive knowledge has helped her grow significantly. Despite facing multiple obstacles and challenges, Michelle has successfully co-founded the company and is one of the immigrant founders who have paved the way for numerous others.

Purvi Gupta, Founder of Lily AI

Purvi Gupta is an Indian-origin female who moved to the US to pursue her dreams. She faced multiple challenges and got the opportunity to work in the country after chasing down five visas and a green card. She is the CEO and founder of Lily AI. Founded in 2015, the company aims to build a shopping experience that targets the emotional context within the shoppers. The visual AI platform can be used to enhance the existing tech and connect with shoppers. The product attributes platform has 15 investors with more than $39 million in funding.

Jyoti Bansal, CEO and Co-Founder of AppDynamics, Harness, and Traceable

Jyoti Bansal is an Indian-American entrepreneur who co-founded the successful unicorn startup AppDynamics in 2008. He served as the CEO of the company till 2015. Later, the successful startup company was acquired by CISCO Systems. After serving AppDynamics, he started two more technological startups, namely Harness.io and Traceable.io. The harness is a software development platform that allows one to build, test, and develop software. On the other hand, Traceable is a dedicated platform that may help replace and consolidate security tools. The harness was founded in 2015, whereas Traceable was founded in 2018.

These are the successful startups owned by immigrant founders. There are various other immigrants who are using technological innovations and leading the path for multiple others in the country.