Most Billion-Dollar Startups in the U.S. Founded by Immigrants

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2022/07/26/most-us-billion-dollar-startups-have-an-immigrant-founder/

by nikita • 4 years ago

18 16 4 years ago

AinderS• 4 years ago

So native-born are discriminated against for startup funding? I mean, discrimination is what we conclude in other cases of dis-proportionality, so why apply different logic here?

beecafe• 4 years ago

As they should be, natives clearly have lower average merit otherwise they would immigrate somewhere where they could easily get funding.

slt2021• 4 years ago

I feel like you missed sarcasm/irony in the parent post.

When things like disproportionate distribution of SAT scores/Ivy League admits/STEM jobs among racial groups are discussed - some poeple have an immediate conclusions that there must be some "institutionalized racism, bigotry, etc" that cause big difference in outcomes, disproportionate to overall population distribution.

But I don't see this argument brought up here in discussing founders of startups.

muzika• 4 years ago

It’s trendy these days, but really so illogical when you break it down.

gardenfelder• 4 years ago

The piece makes some sense to me. Growing up in the 50's and after, I became aware of an interesting observation: it seemed like people coming here from other countries started life working in sweatshops, the garment district and the like, but eventually ended up owning the companies. Just an observation. When I mentioned that to a high school teacher (forgot which), she said words to this effect: people come to this country with visions of greatness, and they keep those visions; people who grow up here (the U.S.) live with the problems at hand and don't see the potential.

mqnfred• 4 years ago

For anyone wondering, there are currently 45M first generation immigrants in the US (13.5% of the total population.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_S...

bakul• 4 years ago

The full report: https://nfap.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/2022-BILLION-DOL...

lapcat3• 4 years ago

There's a key fact missing from this discussion:

What % of the world's $1 billion startups are founded in the United States?

If the best economic opportunities are in the US, then it makes sense that a lot of people would come here for them.

2020 stats: World population 8.8 billion, US population 330 million (4% of world population)

If "talent" is approximately randomly distributed among the world's population — a reasonable assumption IMO — then you wouldn't expect Americans to be founding much more than 4% of the world's $1 billion dollar startups... unless economic opportunities are not randomly distributed geographically, of course.

If the US is "the land of opportunity", so to speak, the US allows significant immigration, and the US population is a tiny minority of the world's population, then it's not surprising that immigrants — in other words, the best that the entire rest of the world has to offer — would do well relative to Americans.

The story starts with Tomas Gorny moving from Poland to the US, and becoming successful. But... how many Americans move to Poland for economic opportunities? My intention is not to diss Poland (which has a population of only 40 million), but rather to point out that the opportunities in the US attract a very broad world talent pool, so there's simply more competition.

Immigrants to the US are not randomly distributed. We're not just randomly rounding up people in other countries and dropping them here. Ambition and a desire to improve one's situation dramatically is a common trait. Otherwise it might not be worth moving from one's homeland.

The tech industry is "centered" on the west coast of the US (or was, pre-pandemic). But most people in tech are not native born Californians. That's not surprising. It would be surprising if native born Californians were naturally more talented than everyone else. The reality is that people around the country, and around the world, moved to California for the economic opportunities that happened to be in California, for historical reasons. It would be kind of silly to say the explanation is that native Californians are naturally lazy, and other people not born in California are harder working.

pyuser5832• 4 years ago

But its not just America. Immigrants who migrate for opportunity tend to do better regardless of where they go.

Thomas Sowell (arch-conservative) wrote about this.

Germans who immigrated to Imperial Russia, Indians in South Africa, Chinese in Malaysia, Japanese in Brazil, etc. all do much better than “natives.”

When people spy opportunity elsewhere, and have the money to move, and snatch the opportunity- it turns out well.

lapcat3• 4 years ago

Well, there's heavy survivorship bias in the linked article, which talks about 582 startups founded in the US that are worth $1 billion.

Meanwhile, another comment here noted that there are about 45 million immigrants currently residing in the US. Only a tiny number of those are founders of the aforementioned startups. The article says nothing about how immigrants are doing overall financially compared to native born US citizens.

yucky• 4 years ago

If "talent" is approximately randomly distributed among the world's population — a reasonable assumption IMO

Why do you think this is a reasonable assumption? Is there any evidence of it?

bruceb• 4 years ago

Highly educated people in technical fields do well.

Being an immigrant isn't some magical power. Most of the successful people studied before they came here and often had educated parents who had STEM background (or money).

Not all Americans have this and so don't start companies.

We should enable smooth immigration for smart and driven people. But let's be honest about the background of these success stories.

We should also make sure all Americans have support.

fairity• 4 years ago

Being an immigrant isn't some magical power

No one’s claiming it’s a superpower, but there definitely seems to be some quality of immigrants that makes them more successful entrepreneurs. And, it’s not just highly educated parents, money, and technical backgrounds since the number of non-immigrants who fit that same profile far exceed the immigrant population.

If I had to guess it’s a combination of: hunger (sometimes literally), willingness to think and act unconventionally, work ethic, and persistence.

lapcat3• 4 years ago

there definitely seems to be some quality of immigrants that makes them more successful entrepreneurs

There are around 45 million immigrants in the US. 319 of them founded startups valued at $1 billion or more. The number who did not found startups valued at $1 billion or more is... around 45 million.

Many immigrants do have hunger. I mean literally, not enough money for food. We can't just look at the successful immigrants and ignore the unsuccessful ones.

jmpman• 4 years ago

I’d be interested in understanding the educational background of these founders. I’ve worked with massive numbers of H1Bs of questionable skills, none of whom will ever found a unicorn. Typically the rockstars are from the Indian IITs, European elite universities, or similar. We’re importing too much chaff, and could improve our filters to get the extremely high quality engineers.

Most Billion-Dollar Startups in the U.S. Founded by Immigrants

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