Yahoo Finance Startup Radar: VCs on immigrant-founded startups you need to know
Immigrant entrepreneurs are a driving force behind many of the world's largest VC ecosystems, creating some of the most well-known names in tech.
According to research by the National Foundation for American Policy, over half of US unicorns were founded by immigrants and nearly two-thirds were founded or co-founded by immigrants or their children. Examples of these include Stripe, SpaceX and Instacart.
"Immigrant entrepreneurs often have to go through tremendous hardship when they uproot their lives, get a one-way ticket to a foreign country, and start from scratch," said Semyon Dukach, founding partner of One Way Ventures. "From that tremendous hardship, often comes a tremendous capacity to carry a sustainable company all the way to success."
We asked four VCs who have invested in immigrant-founded startups to share two companies—one in their portfolio, one not—that they think are worth highlighting.
Buddy "Buddy is the first conversational AI tutor for kids and a leading language app for children, which is topping the charts in the App Store's Kids and Education category.
"Their mission is to use AI tutoring to provide affordable one-to-one English tutoring to 500 million children while helping to solve the global teacher shortage. Conversational AI is the only approach that combines scalability and high-quality education to achieve this goal. Founder Ivan Crewkov founded the company when he saw his own daughter struggle with English after immigrating to the US." Rallyware "Rallyware is an all-in-one SaaS field engagement platform for companies to effectively onboard, train, and continuously engage their workforces. It was founded by a Ukrainian-American CEO and has over 100 people still working out of Kharkiv, Ukraine. Founder George Elfond took Rallyware from inception to a cash flow positive company that is making a global impact.
"They're a great example of how AI can be adapted into the workforce to enhance the capabilities of our team members—by creating data-driven training and upskilling experiences for each individual—not simply replace them as many people fear."
Paloma "Paloma Health supports the 1 in 8 women in the US living with hypothyroidism. Its virtual specialty clinic is a welcome alternative to traditional clinic visits and lab tests, providing easy access to thyroid specialists, at-home thyroid test kits, medical support and prescriptions. Paloma gives patients control over their own health so people can access care on their own terms and better maintain their physical well-being.
"The proof is in the results: patient happiness and symptom improvement. At the six-month mark since using Paloma Health, patients rate their satisfaction 4.5 out of 5, compared to 2.6 before Paloma. In particular, they are seeing improved BMI and energy levels. Paloma is on a roll, now accepting health insurance, and voted one of the Best At-Home Thyroid Tests of 2023 by Verywell Health." Debbie "Debbie is a habit-shifting rewards platform that, using behavioral psychology, gives users a framework to get out of debt and reach financial health. Debbie creates a rewards system for paying off debt and provides tools to become cash flow positive.
"Americans' total credit card debt crept over $1 trillion for the first time earlier this year. Debbie seeks to break the debt cycle by leveraging cognitive behavioral therapy to help users gain an awareness and understanding of their spending behaviors. By offering rewards for milestones, Debbie can help shift users' habits over time."
Pine Park Health "Pine Park Health delivers onsite primary care in senior living communities. The company partners with senior living community operators, sends in nurse practitioners weekly to care for residents, and then takes the risk on these patients through Medicare programs and Medicare Advantage contracts. Through their technology, they detect early signs of trouble in patients and manage them. Pine Park Health providers use PineCONE, a chart-reader tool that triages patients' issues and guides providers on which patients to see.
"The company started working with a half dozen communities in the Bay Area in early 2021, with only 90 patients, no health plan contracts, and a rudimentary tech stack. Since then, they have expanded to 160 communities across California, Arizona, and Nevada and now manage a panel of around 4,000 primary care patients from a pool of approximately 20,000 residents in our communities. They've signed 24 payer contracts across the three states, including our first global risk agreement with a national MA carrier. They have an initial group of 250 patients attributed to a total cost of care arrangement. They will launch several new markets in 2024 and expect to have a significant portion of their patients under global risk arrangements in 2025." NovoPayment "NovoPayment is an impressive banking-as-a-service startup founded by Anabel Perez—who spent two decades as a banker in Venezuela—and Oscar Garcia Mendoza. Together, they have spent over a decade refining a tech stack that enables banks to build their own digital banking services rapidly and on a single platform. Financial institutions can leverage the full-stack platform to expand their digital capabilities, including payment and card infrastructure. They can also benefit from NovoPayment's ability to act as a bridge between Latin America and the United States, which could help open up greater financial ties between the two regions.
"With today's finance landscape seeing more and more fintechs and challenger banks disrupt the status quo, NovoPayment is positioned to be the infrastructure on which they conquer the world."
Félix Pago "Founded by Manuel Godoy and Bernardo Garcia, two Latinx founders from Venezuela and Mexico, Félix Pago is an AI-enabled fintech allowing thousands of families to send money remittances from the US to Mexico through a WhatsApp-enabled chatbot.
"The money remittance corridor connecting the US to Mexico is a $60 billion-plus a year business and Félix is allowing families to save time and money when sending funds back home. The company has been growing at an impressive rate while keeping operating expenses lean. H20 decided to double down on its initial investment recently." Ponte "Founded by Lorenza Velez and Stephanie Murra, two Colombian natives that recently graduated from HBS and are living in San Francisco, Ponte Labor is the new way to hire in the hospitality sector. The US is going through a labor shortage and the company allows hotels and restaurants to hire pre-qualified frontline workers through the company's labor marketplace.
"Lorenza and Stephanie are a duo to follow closely and they bring the track record to succeed; both previously worked at a fast-growing fintech startup back home and held C-level roles."
More Startup Radar articles:
Featured image by Images By Tang Ming Tung/Getty Images
This article originally appeared on PitchBook News
