Building at Day Zero
Why the next iconic companies will be built by immigrant scientists and engineers.
The next wave of transformative companies in America will almost certainly be built by immigrants.
Immigrants are 15% of the United States population, yet they’ve founded nearly half of today’s unicorns. In frontier sectors like AI, the concentration is even higher: 60% of leading private AI companies in the United States were founded by immigrants. And when you look at who these founders are, a remarkable number come from engineering and science backgrounds. Nearly half of all PhD-level scientists and engineers in this country were born abroad.
This shouldn’t surprise us. Deep technical expertise paired with the resilience of starting from scratch in a new country is one of the most powerful combinations you can find in a founder. But here’s the catch: those qualities alone don’t give you a roadmap. A post-doc in the lab or an engineer moonlighting may have a breakthrough insight, but rarely a clear path and access to company-building. Is there even a market? Who’s the right first customer? Do you raise now or wait? Too often, those questions stop brilliant builders before they ever start.
That’s the gap we want to close with U-Labs.
U-Labs is an eight-week intensive program in New York City designed for immigrant engineers and scientists at the very beginning of their entrepreneurial journey. For eight weeks, we create a container for exploration: accountability groups, mentorship, immigration and fundraising guidance, co-working space, and conversations with builders who’ve been at the same uncertain starting line.
Those builders include Cristóbal Valenzuela of Runway, Emmanuel Straschnov of Bubble, Kendrick Nguyen of Republic, and Lauren Wang of The Flex Co. All founders who’ve turned an insight into venture-scale companies, and who know firsthand the challenges of going from idea to execution.
From day one, Unshackled has been built on a simple conviction: immigrants drive innovation. Meeting founders earlier than anyone else, before the market sees them, before they’ve raised a dollar, has always been our edge. U-Labs makes that edge explicit. It’s a program built for day zero, when the founder has more questions than answers but the potential is already there.
I know how powerful that spark can be. When I came to the United States at 19, I had no plan and no playbook. I stumbled, guessed, and learned one step at a time, each year unlocking new doors I didn’t know existed. That’s what it means to be an immigrant: moving forward without certainty, building possibility out of the unknown.
That’s what we’re building now. A space where immigrant founders can begin without needing all the answers. The next transformative startup is out there, waiting to be built. And based on everything we know, it’s more likely than not that a technical immigrant founder will be behind it.
Applications for U-Labs close in just four days. If you (or someone you know) are ready to take that first step, now is the time.
— Unshackled Ventures
Immigrants Start Here.
About Unshackled Ventures: Unshackled Ventures is the only early-stage venture capital fund that enables unrecognized and excluded immigrant founders to start companies in the U.S. Since its founding in 2014, Unshackled has proven its thesis that investing and supporting this population drives strong investment returns across key industries, including American infrastructure, generative AI, healthcare, space, and enterprise SaaS. To date, the firm has invested in over 100 companies and over 250 entrepreneurs.
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