The pattern · Immigration
Why do immigrants start more businesses?
55% of US billion-dollar startups have an immigrant founder. What the research shows, who lived it and what an immigrant carries in the suitcase.
Immigrants appear more often than expected among the founders of companies that changed markets. There are possible explanations: those who cross a border have already made the riskiest decision of their lives, learned to get by without a safety net, and see the new country with outsider's eyes, spotting opportunities that those born there let slip by. There's no single cause. But the pattern is consistent.
What the research shows
The National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), a US think tank, has for years tracked the origin of the founders of American startups valued at US$ 1 billion or more, the so-called unicorns.
In the 2022 survey, 319 of the 582 billion-dollar startups had at least one immigrant founder: 55%. A quarter of them (143) had a founder who came to the country as an international student. And nearly 80% had an immigrant as a founder or in a key role, such as CEO or vice president of engineering (NFAP, 2022).
Immigrants are a much smaller share of the American population than that 55%. In other words: among those who built the fastest-growing companies, those who came from abroad are far above their proportion.
The data is from the United States and from venture-backed startups. It doesn't automatically apply to Brazil or to every kind of business. But it helps to see something many immigrants feel firsthand: the crossing, when it doesn't break a person, tends to make them stronger.
Who lived it
Sergey Brin was born in Moscow, in 1973. In 1979, at age six, he left the Soviet Union with his parents and brother, in one of the last waves of Jewish families allowed to leave before the Gorbachev era. His father became a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland; his mother, a researcher at a NASA center (The Immigrant Learning Center).
Years later, at Stanford, Brin met Larry Page. The two founded Google in 1998. The boy who crossed a border at six helped create the tool billions of people use today without thinking.
In Bairo's journey
Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez was born in Colombia, in 1982. Since he was a boy, he told anyone who would listen that one day he would live in Brazil. It wasn't a plan; it was certainty spoken out loud, before any path existed.
The path came through a roda. Capoeira was the first thing from Brazil he learned with his body, before the language and before the country. In 2002, he arrived, brought by an education company, in a management position.
Then came the years without solid ground, as for so many immigrants before and after him. And there came, too, what the crossing teaches: starting over where no one knows your name, learning the rules of a country that isn't yours, and seeing opportunity where others see routine. Bairo says there are no coincidences or accidents. There are purposes, dreams and execution.
How to develop this trait
You don't need to move countries to use what immigration teaches.
- Look at your market with a foreigner's eyes. Ask why things are done this way. Many answers are "it's always been like that", and that's where the opportunity lives.
- Build a network from scratch, on purpose. Immigrants don't inherit contacts. Learn to introduce yourself, to ask and to give back.
- Turn difference into advantage. Language, culture and contacts from abroad are assets. List yours.
- If you're an immigrant, take care of your papers first. Regular status opens doors no talent can open. In Brazil, look for the Federal Public Defender's Office or migrant support organizations.
- Don't carry it alone. Immigrant communities, associations and entrepreneur groups shorten the road.