Foreign Founders

Pallavi Pande is a passionate Mompreneur from Portland, Oregon, and the heart behind DTOCS. Inspired by her childhood memories of dining on banana leaves in India, she introduced the concept the sustainable practice to the western world through DTOCS. She rescues fallen Areca palm leaves in India and is on a mission to replace your cheap paper, toxic plastic and expensive bamboo plates with my sus...

There’s a lot of ways to describe, Atal Agarwal, Founder and CEO of Immigrant First AI. He’s a repeat immigrant founder, community builder, investor, content creator and ironman athlete. In many ways he likes to tackle the most challenging problem that he sees, and that’s why I wanted Atal on the show. In the episode, Atal shared where he grew up and what he was like before reaching adulthood. He...

We’re starting of 2024 with a list of incredible guests. The first episode of the year is with Eric Melchor. He’s the founder of Innovators Can Laugh podcast, where he interviews European startup founders. He’s a self-described mediocre tennis player, and a Texan living in Romania 🤠🇷🇴 Eric’s story is powerful because you can hear from our short episode that he has gone through a lot and has went...

Before we get into the episode, I wanted to thank every one of the Foreign Founders community for an incredible 2023! This podcast started out as a way to “dog-food” our early-stage product, but I quickly saw that this platform was more valuable than the product we were building. It has been an immense pleasure and joy to be able to tell immigrant stories from all around the world, how * we are sh...

Tania Kottoor saw her friend struggle to find an Indian wedding dress for her special day, and realized that the existing way of getting cultural clothing from India was broken. You had to fly to India, and find clothes that may not be the right fit. You could decide to go to a South Asian fabric and custom tailor, but see that their designs were outdated. There were no great and affordable option...

My guest on the episode is Regina Trillo, founder of Nemi Snacks. Originally from Mexico City and now based in Chicago, Regina felt unrepresented the moment she stepped foot in Chicago grocery stores. Regina found brands portraying Mexican  cultura  in a stereotypical way and mostly using artificial ingredients. Nemi Snacks was founded with a mission to elevate Mexican  cu...

In 2020, like many others, Ray found that he needed to rely on alternative sources of income to make ends meet. In a short period of time, he noticed how much he loved being a freelance writer and DSLX was born. DSLX, short for dyslexic, is a mission-driven creative content writing agency for business who want to turn readers into revenue. In this episode we talked about DSLX’s founding story in B...

When I think of an archaic medical procedure, I think of an invasive and incredibly painful procedure with replacement parts that are not the most natural fit. When I think of the future state, I think of 3D printing personalized implants that are ready for medical procedures. Our guest today is Denys Gurak. He is a CEO and Co-Founder at A.D.A.M., a 3D bio-printing company with a primary focus on...

The Diversity Visa Program, better known as the Green Card lottery or the Visa lottery, has officially opened as of October 4th for the fiscal year 2025. Entrants have until Tuesday, November 7th at noon EST to register online at the State Department’s official lottery website (link will be provided in the show notes). For FY2025, the Diversity Visa program will make up to 55,000 green card number...

Welcome to another episode of Foreign Founders. Many of our listeners have written in to ask about wanting to cover immigration issues for entrepreneurs and founders. We have a special guest and “friend of the pod”, Sophie Alcorn. Sophie is the founder and CEO of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and a top U.S. immigration law attorney. She and her team supports international founders and g...

The U.S. Healthcare industry is humungous! Healthcare spending in the country accounts for 18.3% of the U.S. GDP in 2021, or $4.3 trillion. That’s $12,914 per person per year! But, healthcare spending and healthcare professionals are not evenly distributed, and some areas in the country are healthcare deserts. Today we have an immigrant entrepreneur, Ahmed “Eddie” Qureshi who is tackling this prob...

Are you an immigrant looking to get promoted, land a step-up job, or start a side business? On today’s episode, we have Varun Negandhi, who is an engineer and entrepreneur. He is a Sr. Engineer and Partner at EngSim, an automotive consulting company. And he is a founder at BeyondGrad where he helps immigrants boost their income with value-added courses. Varun caught my eye because he’s curating in...

Welcome back to the Foreign Founders podcast. Today, we’re covering Semyon (SEM-yon) Dukach (do-cake) ’s article on Crunchbase titled “Hey, VCs: Here are 3 Mistakes You’re Making In Pitch Meetings With Immigrant Founders.” This is a continuation from last week’s theme of global competition for talent, because Semyon starts out by stating that roughly 80% of graduate students studying computer scie...

Welcome back to another Immigrant Informational where we cover current topics in under 5 minutes! We’re covering Canada’s new tech talent strategy for founders. At the end of June 2023, Canada’s Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Minister Sean Fraser announced Canada’s revamped ‘Tech Talent Strategy’ with six new initiatives. This article is from our friends at Launch Academy, article is linke...

This episode is not just for marketers, it’s for founders, growth teams and accelerators who are looking to accelerate their growth through rapid iteration and experiments. We have Satwik Govindarajula, founder of Uptiq. Uptiq is an AI powered growth platform that helps teams plan and execute growth hacking experiments. Any startup team can brainstorm, prioritize, execute and track your experiment...

Have you always wondered what the world would be like if you’re able to not only own your own data, but use it in a way that is beneficial to you? Markus Lampinen, CEO and co-founder of Prifina, is solving this problem and we cover a lot of ground. Prifina’s mission is to empower individuals with their personal data, and create a developer ecosystem that allows developers and creators to build app...

What if you can build AI apps without learning to code, and build it in minutes? Our guest, Calin Drimbau, is building  broadn.io  to do just that. Calin believes that there will be a new “creator economy” that is built on top of the next phase of no-code infrastructure using AI. Calin talks about his background growing up in a small 200 home village in Romania to building broadn through...

Have you ever struggled to remember details from your last meeting or find a document created by your colleague on Google Drive, Slack or any other work apps? In this episode, we have Elizabeth Tishchenko, Co-Founder of Nevemind, where we talk about this pain! Nevemind is a productivity software that instantly answers any questions based on your personal data. Elizabeth shares her story of growing...

The long wait is over! We’re excited to kick off season two of Foreign Founders with Markus Pesonen, co-founder and CEO of Olo. Markus wants you to learn the language of your nervous system using Olo and say goodbye to your anxiety and stress. Olo is the most beautiful app I’ve experienced in a long time, the pure simplicity and beauty of the product keeps you at ease. In the episode, Markus cover...

Welcome back to the Foreign Founders evergreen series, where we cover topics related to current and future immigrant and foreign founders in under 5 minutes! Are you an international student on a F-1 visa thinking about starting your own business or startup? This episode is for you! It is possible to start a business while you’re on your F-1 student visa. More reading here by Deel Immigration (fka...

We want to help more immigrant founders build their company and startup, that’s why we’re creating this new series of informational content. We’re always looking for feedback and comments, please send them to foreignfounderspod[at] gmail.com ! We cover what’s different about the USCIS Visa Bulletin for April 2023, but for more information you can find that here: https://travel.state.gov/content/tr...

Thank you all for joining us on our journey in the last couple of months! We didn't think this will ever take off the way it did, so we're happy to announce that we're working on season 2 of Foreign Founders! On top of these changes, we have several initiatives we're working on! Our listeners wanted to engage with immigrant and foreign founders, and to build a community. So we're doing just that!...

Welcome back to Foreign Founders. Today my conversation is with Per Obiora, Co-founder of Kashew. Kashew is a marketplace for stylish, quality and affordable used furniture. Their goal is to make the process of buying used furniture as easy as buying new with a full money back guarantee and an on-demand delivery across the continental US. We chat about Per's upbringing in Berlin, to learning how t...

Welcome back to Foreign Founders. Today my conversation is with Maxximo, a musician and Founder of Maxximal. Maxximo is giving power back to the artists by challenging the status quo and creating the first AR powered music social platform. We explore his background growing up in Mexico City, how he was the only musician and artist in his family, and his journey building Maxximal in New York. I'm e...

Welcome back to Foreign Founders. Today my conversation is with Tavishi Gupta, Founder of Tern. Tern is the your ultimate travel planning app, and as she described it to me it's the Notion for Travel. Tern is Tavishi's third startup so there's a lot of startup wisdom here, but that's not it. We talk about Tavishi's upbringing as an "army brat" and how that helped her adapt well to new environments...