Helping immigrants navigate life in the U.S.

From Nepal to New York City, Liesel Vaidya is the co-founder and CEO of Imera, a venture-backed platform focused on expanding access and opportunity for immigrants. Liesel previously served as CTO of a digital health startup, where she built award-winning products that transformed access to care for survivors of sexual assault. Originally from Kathmandu, Nepal, she understands firsthand the barriers immigrants face when building a life in a new country.

00:00 Introduction and Background

01:06 Starting the First Company, and raising $9 million

02:51 Challenges and Lessons Learned

05:34 The Birth of a New Idea

09:52 Introducing Imera - bridging the knowledge gap for immigrants

14:02 Community Building and Partnerships

17:03 Future Vision and Goals

Connect with Liesel:

• Website: www.withimera.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lieselvaidya

Enjoy the episode!

#ImmigrationTech #ForeignFounders #StartupStory #EntrepreneurshipJourney #ImmigrantSuccess

If you love this episode, please share and review the podcast! It will help more immigrant and international founders find these content.

You can find us here: https://linktr.ee/foreignfounders

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Measure and manage all your ad campaigns with RedTrack.io

Vlad Zhovtenko is the CEO and co-founder of RedTrack, the AI-driven analytics and automation platform for media buyers. He has been an active player in the digital advertising space since 2000, and has held multiple marketing and managing director roles in the industry. Beginning in 2008, Vlad worked as an independent consultant and advisor to companies seeking to improve their lead generation and ad tech, helping them create comprehensive digital sales and marketing strategies and establish relevant processes for sustained growth.

He co-founded AdxGeeks in 2015, which provided programmatic media-buying solutions through a white-label DSP SaaS program, then co-founded RedTrack in 2019 to make digital marketing analytics & automation more accessible to SMEs and to help media buyers to make smarter decisions and easily scale campaigns for revenue growth.

In this episode, Vlad shares his experiences:

• Fundraising for RedTrack over the course of 3 years
• Advice on Fundraising in a competitive vertical
• Building for product market fit with Chess and Go as a framework
• Life and pace in Lithuania

Find Vlad Zhovtenko on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhovtenko/

Track, attribute, automate, and scale your advertising with RedTrack

Enjoy the episode!

If you love this episode, please share and review the podcast! It will help more immigrant and international founders find these content.

You can find us here: https://linktr.ee/foreignfounders

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Secure your U.S. Green Card with Half the Investment through EB5 Loan

Nikin Tharan is the co-founder of Greencard Inc and EB5 Loan. Greencard Inc. is a startup dedicated to simplifying the process for high-skilled immigrants to obtain talent visas. Through a personalized program, Greencard Inc helps immigrants build and showcase their accomplishments to secure O1, EB1, and NIW visas. The EB5 Loan program offers foreign investors a direct path to U.S. permanent residency. While traditional applicants invest $800,000 in qualifying American job-creating projects, our innovative financing solution requires just $400,000 upfront - making your American dream accessible today.

In this episode, we learn more about the EB5 program and EB5 Loan.

Here’s how it works:

• The EB5 program requires an $800,000 investment.
• You invest $400,000 of your own funds.
• We connect you with a lending partner who provides the remaining $400,000 at a competitive ~5% interest rate.
• You repay the loan over time.

This structure is purpose-built for talented professionals already in the U.S. on valid status (H1B, F1, etc.).

Nikin himself is a recipient of the O1A visa (July 2020) and EB1A Green Card (July 2022), and his journey overcoming setbacks to obtain the Green Card is featured in the Amazon best-seller Unshackled.

Connect with Nikin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ntharan/

Learn more about EB5 Loan: https://eb5loan.com/

Work with Greencard Inc.: https://www.greencard.inc/

Enjoy the episode!

If you love this episode, please share and review the podcast! It will help more immigrant and international founders find these content.

You can find us here: https://linktr.ee/foreignfounders

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

See how Endeavor Elements is architecting the future of flight

$100 Per Line of Code? How This Aerospace Founder is Disrupting Aviation

In this eye-opening episode, we sit down with Yves Remmler, the visionary Co-Founder & CEO of Endeavor Elements, who's bringing Silicon Valley innovation to the traditionally slow and regulation-heavy aerospace industry.

Yves reveals how his aerospace startup is revolutionizing the future of flight through cutting-edge AI-driven avionics systems that are setting new standards for safety and efficiency. You'll discover why the aerospace industry currently spends a staggering $100 per line of code and how Endeavor Elements is dramatically reducing these costs while maintaining rigorous safety standards.

Dive deep into the technological breakthroughs enabling fully automated flight and learn how these innovations will transform air travel in the coming decades. Yves shares his ambitious roadmap for building a trillion-dollar company by reimagining how certification processes work in high-stakes industries like aviation and defense.

For anyone interested in aerospace engineering, aviation technology, AI applications in transportation, or disruptive innovation in heavily regulated industries, this conversation offers unprecedented insights from one of the field's most forward-thinking entrepreneurs.

#AerospaceInnovation #AutomatedFlight #AviationTech #StartupDisruption #AIinAviation #AerospaceSoftware #FutureOfFlight #CertificationSolutions

Reach out to Yves Remmler on X: https://x.com/yvesremmler

Enjoy the episode!

If you love this episode, please share and review the podcast! It will help more immigrant and international founders find these content.

You can find us here: https://linktr.ee/foreignfounders

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Engage your fans with Fanlist

Pat Cheung discovered his passion for audience building in 2011 while serving as Head of Product at EQAL, one of Los Angeles' first celebrity and influencer networks, where he designed a social platform driving fan engagement for over 40 influencers and 20 million monthly fan interactions. Currently the founder and CEO of Fanlist, a platform enabling podcasters to create fan pages for engagement and monetization, he has been a tech founder for over a decade with multiple successful exits. His love for technology, business, and podcasting is reflected in Fanlist, and as an avid podcast enthusiast, he's written three books sharing practical tips for podcasters to engage their fans.

Pat took his experience building startups and his new role is to support founders in the Portland Metro Region. Through the Metro Hub, they provider mentorship, connections and mentorship.

Born in Hong Kong and raised in Orange County, he now resides in Portland, Oregon.

In the episode we talk about:

• Pat’s life growing up as immigrant from Hong Kong
• How he found entrepreneurship and tech through design
• Helping founders in the Portland Metro Region
• Industries that Portland, OR is exceptional at: outdoor apparel, food and bev
• Portland as the hub for bootstrapping founders

Enjoy the episode!

If you love this episode, please share and review the podcast! It will help more immigrant and international founders find these content.

You can find us here: https://linktr.ee/foreignfounders

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Watch The Flamingo Effect using TODAQ Micro’s technology

Hassan Khan is a co-Founder and the CEO of TODAQ Micro, a fintech that enables instant micropayments for producers of movies, shows and documentaries that want a direct-to-consumer, frictionless, pay-as-you-do experience where they can control their customer relationship, control their content, and have better real-time monetization. Consumers and fans benefit from getting just what they want with one tap without requiring logins or subscriptions.

He is also a co-founder of TODAQ Labs, a deeptech R&D lab that works with Cambridge University and ARM Technologies and has released new web application protocols and cryptographic technologies to enable open web microtransactions.

In 2015, Hassan founded his first company, Quantius, a fintech lender which collateralized IP and intangibleassets to secure growth credit for knowledge rich SMEs. In 2019, Quantius placed third in the Canadian Hedge Fund Awards Private Debt category. The Quantius platform is now the Business Development Bank of Canada’s National IP Innovation Fund.

He was a consultant with McKinsey & Company from 2009 to 2014 serving clients on digital transformation. Hassan’s background started as an Army Signals Officer with the Canadian Army. During his time in service he created integrated cryptographic capabilities for security and emergency response agencies to cooperate for security operations in the former Yugoslavia and the G8 Summit, disaster response for the British Columbia forest fires, and other activities.

Hassan is a computer engineering graduate from the Royal Military College of Canada and completed his prior schooling at Upper Canada College in Toronto.

In this episode we talk about:

• Hassan’s upbringing in Canada and joining the Canadian Army
• Seeing the process of rebuilding after war
• Creating opportunities for small businesses in his first startup
• Supporting studios monetize their work and get paid
• How TODAQ Micro created the first digital rental share system

Are you a studio interested in selling and renting your movies and TV show, while getting paid quickly? Work with TODAQ Micro.

Enjoy the episode!

If you love this episode, please share and review the podcast! It will help more immigrant and international founders find these content.

You can find us here: https://linktr.ee/foreignfounders

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Learn more about how PolyGone Systems is removing microplastics

Yidian Liu is the Co-founder and COO of PolyGone Systems and a Forbes 30 under 30 Fellow. PolyGone Systems is a Princeton University spinout cleantech company with a mission to remove microplastic pollutants from our waterways. Yidian was a trained designer with a Master’s degree in Architecture from Princeton University. Since 2021, Yidian and her team have won over $2.4M in grant awards and have successfully raised their pre-seed venture capital funding. On this episode, we’re covering everything microplastics from what it is to the Polygone solutions.

In this episode we cover:

• Yidian’s journey from being an architect to wanting to solve the problems “below the surface”
• The truth about microplastics
• How PolyGone Systems started

PolyGone Systems Website

Yidian Liu LinkedIn

Enjoy the episode!

If you love this episode, please share and review the podcast! It will help more immigrant and international founders find these content.

You can find us here: https://linktr.ee/foreignfounders

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Try Ohai.ai - a personal assistant for your family

Sheila Lirio Marcelo is a Filipino-American entrepreneur with over 20 years of leadership experience in internet consumer marketplace businesses. She founded Care.com in 2006, taking the company public in 2014 and serving as Chairwoman and CEO until its sale to IAC in 2020. Currently, she is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ohai.ai, an AI technology startup aimed at improving family life. Marcelo has received numerous accolades, including being named on Forbes 50 over 50, recognized as one of Fortune’s “Top 10 Women Entrepreneurs,” and honored as a Henry Crown Fellow and Young Global Leader. She holds a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College, a J.D. and M.B.A from Harvard University, and became the youngest recipient of the Harvard Business School Alumni Achievement Award in 2014.

This incredible conversation is worth listening to. We cover more about Sheila’s background as an immigrant founder, compared to her other interviews! Highlight include:

• Sheila mirroring her entrepreneurial mother from an early age
• Being insecure about starting her first company
• Why she decided to move on from Care.com
• Starting Ohai.ai to help more families

Enjoy the episode!

If you love this episode, please share and review the podcast! It will help more immigrant and international founders find these content.

You can find us here: https://linktr.ee/foreignfounders

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’m so delighted to have my friend, Elizabeth Tishchenko. Elizabeth was previously on episode 10 of the show, as the co-founder of her company, Nevemind, a consumer facing application using AI to manage your life. She shut down the company in 2024, so I wanted to reach out to her again and talk about her experience.

Elizabeth is a Ukrainian nomad, serial entrepreneur, and AI consultant, currently serving as CEO of her third startup, FleetMind. A Techstars '23 and Antler '22 alum, she also teaches AI in Business and Product Management at General Assembly.

Welcome back to Foreign Founders!

In this episode, we talk about:

• The journey through with Nevemind and shutting down the company
• Where she spent time after moving on and the challenges she faced
• Teaching AI to product builders and founders - and the tips and tricks!
• What she is doing with her new role at FleetMind

Elizabeth Tishchenko LinkedIn

Listen to Elizabeth on Episode 10

Enjoy the episode!

If you love this episode, please share and review the podcast! It will help more immigrant and international founders find these content.

You can find us here: https://linktr.ee/foreignfounders

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Every couple needs a smart, shared brain space

I’m happy to have my friend, Abdullah “Ax” Ali, on Foreign Founders. Ax’s story starts as a war refugee arriving in Baltimore with just $20, working his way through community college to one of the top PhD programs in Human-Computer interactions and publishing over 20 award-winning peer reviewed papers along the way. With stints at Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Bilt, he’s co-founded 3rd Brain for couples to do life better, together.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Ax’s childhood growing up in a war torn country, moving to Jordan and then to the U.S.
• Watching “The Social Network” and being inspired to build technology products
• Pursuing PhD in Human-Computer interactions, and Ax shares the most interesting paper he co-wrote
• How Ax and his co-founder used so many different products and techniques to plan as a couple

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theaxali/

3rd Brain Website: https://www.3rd-brain.com/

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/3rd-brain-couples-organizer/id6476935088

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thirdbrain

Enjoy the episode!

If you love this episode, please share and review the podcast! It will help more immigrant and international founders find these content.

You can find us here: https://linktr.ee/foreignfounders

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.