Immigrant student entrepreneurs — Why We Visited 12 Northeastern Universities in 10 Days

Looking back at our 2019 East Coast University Tour

Unshackled Ventures
Nov 8 · 5 min read

At Unshackled we recognize that immigrant entrepreneurship journeys often start early. Last year, 1.1 million international students came to this country; and as universities become a hotbed of entrepreneurship, immigrant talent is often the driving force behind it.

Universities are the new Ellis Island and our task is to go where entrepreneurs are. For that reason, we visited 12 campuses across 7 east coast states over the course of 10 days. Here are some of our takeaways.

Student entrepreneurship is more alive than ever

On most campuses we engaged with students directly in small Q&A sessions. Many of them were current founders or students thinking about starting a business. We tried to dispel some of the common myths around starting a company on a visa: in fact, we were informative but there was space for inspiration.

Our message was: yes, you can start a company on a visa as a student.

The response was electric!

Here are some of the quotes we gathered from students, faculty members, and entrepreneurs:

It was our honor to have you at the lab. Thank you for your sharing and encouragement for our ventures and future entrepreneurs — CEO of IDEA, Northeastern’s Venture Accelerator

Thanks for some insightful discussions along with other panel members. It was really useful for all the aspiring entrepreneurs! — Attendee of MIT Panel

Thanks for the insightful talk. Keep inspiring! — Student at Boston University on LinkedIn

Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. I love what Unshackled is doing in the US by giving prospective immigrant entrepreneurs like me the opportunity to achieve our dreams. — Masters Student at Yale

Thank you again for taking the time to join us. It was great to hear more about the great work that you’re doing and we sincerely appreciate you finding the time during your tour to visit Yale. — Prof. Jennifer McFadden, Director of the entrepreneurship program at Yale

Thank you for visiting and inspiring us!!! — MBA at Wharton on LinkedIn

Thank you so much for sharing all those insights for helping international students/entrepreneurs starting companies in the US. I think you take a really practical approach to knock down barriers that prevent many international entrepreneurs from building their companies. — Biotech PhD at Brown

We left truly inspired by the caliber of talent we met and energized to continue doing more.

We’re doubling down our long-term commitment to students

Early this year we rolled out a fellowship program that brought 8 undergraduate students across U.S. campuses to work with us on a regular basis. We’re now expanding the program to other schools, including the 12 we visited in October. The reception was strong, with 41 new applicants in the 10 days post our trip and rising. Onboarding a fellow represents our long term commitment to each of these campuses.

Schools we’re launching our fellowship program in 2020

This is the kind of grassroots sourcing we are proud of

We invest in people, and often times people need to know you will be there for them. As a Silicon Valley fund, we could be restrained by geography or complacency, but honestly, we don’t buy that. By having dedicated time in each of these campuses, we can offer our best advice & guidance to the entrepreneurs — many of which are not targeted by VCs altogether.

And by using social media, we can amplify our efforts to reach more in those ecosystems. Take for example, on Twitter, the 16 tweets covering the university trip yielded 18.8k impressions, 541 profile visits, 47 new followers, and 31 mentions. On LinkedIn, posts by our partner Manan Mehta resulted in 63.7K impressions and 627 reactions of different types.

There are leaders for immigrants everywhere in our country

Finally, we’d like to say special thank you to those who hosted us and their teams. These people went out of their way to coordinate, plan, market, host and moderate incredible events. Without you on the ground, our ability to reach more international student entrepreneurs wouldn’t be possible. It’s only possible to change the narrative, by changing the narrators. So thank you! We look forward to the next opportunities to collaborate.

Michael Cima; Faculty at MIT; Co-Director of MIT Innovation Initiative

Timothy Miano; Program Director at MIT Innovation Initiative

Jennifer MacFadden; Associate Director, Entrepreneurial Programs at Yale SOM

Jodi Gernon; Director of the Arthur Rock Center at Harvard Business School

Chuck Collins; Associate Director, Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship at HBS

Jere Doyle; Faculty at Boston College and Managing Director at Sigma Prime Ventures

Mike Malloy; Program Director of Halcyon Incubator; Georgetown University

Sarah Maibach; Senior Program Manager at NYU Entrepreneurship Center

Debi Kleiman; Executive Director, Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship at Babson

Ian Mashiter; Managing Director of the BUild Lab at Boston University

Abhishek Balakrishnan; CEO of IDEA, Northeastern’s Venture Accelerator.

Neal Rooney; President of NYU’s InnoVention Society

Michael Retchin; President of Columbia’s CORE

Mariel Rosic; Dorm Room Fund Partner at Brown University


A special thanks to Brex & First Republic Bank for their support!

Unshackled Ventures

Written by

An early stage venture fund for immigrant-founded startups

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