Founders Without Borders

When Koji Kanematsu moved to the U.S. to launch his restaurant, he had experience, but zero credit history, no bank statements, and couldn't get a loan or a location. Instead of giving up, he served up persistence - founding Onigilly , the popular Japanese kitchen dedicated to bringing authentic, healthy Onigiri to America. In this episode of Founders Without Borders, host Harshita sits down w...

Akash Bhat came to the US dreaming of a career in sports media. Instead, he ended up in private equity, moved to investing, built a podcast, and finally pivoted to founding Leen , a cybersecurity company. His path proves that the most impactful journeys are rarely linear. In this episode of Founders Without Borders, host Harshita sits down with Akash Bhat, founder of Leen, to talk about his incred...

When a visa scare almost ended her dream, Liesel Vaidya turned fear into fuel — founding Imera, a platform helping immigrants and visa holders build better lives in the U.S. 🌎 In this episode of Founders Without Borders, host Harshita sits down with Liesel Vaidya (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lieselvaidya) , co-founder of Imera, to talk about her journey as an immigrant entrepreneur, the challenge...

Welcome to the last episode of Season 2! In this episode, we chat with Sneha Saigal -  the co-founder and CEO of Geeks and Experts , a platform for startups and scale-ups to hire fractional PR talent on a contract basis. Sneha has over a decade of experience working in early-stage bootstrapped and VC-backed companies across industries, from food tech to social impact, and has obtained her MBA from...

Welcome back to another episode! In this episode, we chat with ⁠⁠Gian Segato - a hacker,  writer, occasional investor, and exited entrepreneur. He founded and sold Uniwhere ,  a popular career management app for college students in Italy that went viral and was featured in several international media outlets from SkyNews24 to The Huffington Post .  He was born and raised in Italy and currently liv...

Welcome back to another episode! In this episode, we chat with ⁠Swarali Karulkar⁠ , aka Swara, a choreographer, movement therapist, and dance educator. She was born and raised in Mumbai, India, and moved to the US to pursue a career in dance therapy. She's the driving force behind ⁠BollyHeals⁠ , NYC's premier dance wellness brand. In 2017, Swara introduced the transformative BollyHeals and...

Welcome back to another episode! In this episode, we chat with Rohit Gijare , a dancer, choreographer, creator and founder of Exodus Artistry . Born in India and raised in the U. S. Rohit strives to blend aspects of both of his cultures through art. Dancing since the age of three, Rohit received formal training in Kathak, an Indian classical dance form. He further went on to expand his training in...

Welcome back to another episode! In this episode, we chat with Shai Unterslak ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ , Co-Founder of Based Social Company (formerly known as Everything Bagel) ⁠ , a startup in the consumer AI space. Shai is a South African software engineer and founder based in San Francisco. He sold his first company to one of Africa's biggest scale-ups at age 22, before moving to the US in 2023 to build a...

Welcome back to another episode! In this episode, we chat with ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ Mika Reyes , Co-Founder and CEO of Parallax , a startup that aims to help people send money and get paid from abroad faster and cheaper. She moved to the U. S. to study at Wesleyan University. Prior to starting her own company, she worked in product roles at LinkedIn , Kumu , and Ripcord . Mika is very passionate about broad...

Welcome back to another episode! In this episode, we chat with ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Arjun "Arj" Agarwal , Founder and CEO of ⁠Inaam , an Australian impact investing fintech company. He is a T edX speaker and a globally recognised entrepreneur and leader having worked across 3 continents. At 27, Arj is a social impact advocate working to bridge the global gap between capital, young people and entrepren...

Welcome to the first episode of Season 2! In this episode, we chat with ⁠⁠⁠ Alvaro Morales , Co-Founder and CEO of Orb , a flexible billing engine for modern pricing models and software. Alvaro grew up in Lima, Peru and moved to the US to start his undergraduate education at MIT . Prior to founding Orb, Alvaro was an engineering leader at Asana , where he saw the challenges of pricing, packaging a...

We're back with Season 2 of the show! Get ready to hear even more incredible journeys of immigrant founders and their stories of success, failures, resilience, and everything in between. To stay updated on the latest episodes, please follow Founders Without Borders on  ⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠ ,  ⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ , ⁠⁠⁠⁠ X , and  ⁠⁠⁠⁠Linkedin⁠⁠⁠⁠ .

Welcome to the last episode of Season 1! In this episode, we chat with Minn Kim ⁠ , Co-Founder of Plymouth⁠,  a company whose mission is to advance technological and scientific progress by enabling the world's most talented people to work in the United States. Minn is an ardent supporter of early-stage founders and has previously demonstrated her passion for the same at Ridge Ventures , On Dec...

Welcome back to another episode! In this episode, we chat with Renuka Apte , Co-Founder and CEO of Clockwork ,    a company that designs robots that liberates people from everyday mundane tasks with their first robot that helps with manicure. Renuka grew up in Pune, India and moved to the US for her grad school at Georgia Tech. With 13+ years of industry experience, she most recently led infrastru...

Welcome back to another episode! In this episode, we chat with Michelle Marcelline , Co-Founder of Typedream ,    a YC-backed all-in-one no-code creator tool to build your websites, link in bio, forms, blogs, and sell online. After being inspired by the movie, The Social Network , Michelle knew she wanted to move to the US to start her own company someday. After negotiating and convincing her fami...

Welcome back to another episode! In this episode, we chat with Dr. Rabia Khan , Founder and CEO of Serna Bio ,   a YC-backed biotech company building the world's first map of the druggable transcriptome. She was born and raised in Pakistan, went to school in Canada, and eventually moved to the UK where she started her company. In addition to running Serna Bio, Rabia is a member of the Board of...

Welcome back to another episode! In this episode, we chat with  Julien Denaes , founder of Alpin, which was acquired by CoreView in 2019. He was born and raised in Switzerland and decided to move to the US for his wife's postdoc, when he discovered the world of startups. He jumped in and failed at his first startup despite going through Techstars but then had 2 successful exits building enterp...

Welcome back to another episode! In this episode, we chat with Karthik Puvvada (commonly known as KP), founder of the Build In Public Fellowship . He is a serial entrepreneur, a passionate builder, a podcast host, angel investor and recently joined Utopic Ventures as a Partner. KP talked about how he knew he always wanted to be a founder but had to wait 12 years until he could become one because o...

We're kicking off season 1 with Nitin Pachisia , Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Unshackled Ventures , a venture capital firm that invests exclusively in immigrant founders. Nitin grew up in India and moved to the US for work. After 5 years of working at Deloitte, he moved on to work at a small startup called Kno where he met his future co-founder, Manan Mehta . After leaving Kno to start h...

Welcome to Founders Without Borders, a podcast where our host, Harshita Girase, dives deep into the journeys and stories of immigrant founders building generational businesses. To stay updated on future guests and episodes, follow us @foundersglobal on Instagram , Linkedin , and Twitter .