Work with Volt to easily scale your SMS solution and compliance

Martin Lien, co-founder and CEO of Volt joins me on the show today. Volt began in 2022 out of the founders dealing with the inefficiencies of compliance for SMS operations that stemmed from a legislation change in 2021. Today, Volt is the leading marketing ops infrastructure platform that enable companies to integrate and manage multiple SMS platforms while staying compliant.

At the end of May 2024, the company announced that they had successfully raised $3 million in seed funding from Mercury Fund, Atento Capital, Uncorrelated Ventures, Stout Street Capital and Yellow Rocks!

Martin shares:

• His first day in the U.S. and the culture shock around the question “how are you?”
• How he built his value-add as a non-technical person using simple automation
• The time when their lead investor pulled out before the weekend, to raising $3 million in Seed
• Decision to build Volt in Tulsa and the benefits

Work with Volt today

Enjoy the episode!

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/text-volt

Martin Lien LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-langelo-lien/

If you love this episode, please share and review the podcast! It will help more immigrant and international founders find these content. Please do not hesitate to reach out to foreignfounderspod@gmail.com for any inquiries and questions.

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Need family immigration assistance? Work with Consulta Immigration

Consulta Immigration, spearheaded by visionary first-generation immigrant entrepreneurs, revolutionizes the immigration landscape with cutting-edge technology.

Their mission is fueled by firsthand knowledge of the arduous journey families face, burdened by steep legal costs in their pursuit of dreams. With a commitment to accessibility and affordability, Consulta's platform sets a new standard, providing a secure and transparent space for all immigration needs.

In this episode, Yasaman Soroori, Co-Founder and CEO of Consulta Immigration cover how they met each other, the troubles they encountered with the immigration system through their personal and professional life, and their challenges as founders.

You don’t want to miss the end as Yasaman spent some time in the French bakery scene in NYC so I naturally had to ask her the best place to get incredible pastries.

Work with Consulta Immigration today!

Enjoy the episode!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/consultaimm/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@consultaimm

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

If you love this episode, please share and review the podcast! It will help more immigrant and international founders find these content. Please do not hesitate to reach out to foreignfounderspod@gmail.com for any inquiries and questions.

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

Do you want to become a franchisee or franchisor? Start with WeFranch.

Not all businesses are started from scratch. More business owners are operating a proven business concept attached to a brand name, in other words they are participating in the franchise model.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 10.5% of all businesses are franchises supporting nearly 8.2 million direct jobs. You might think it’s just quick service restaurants, but today there are franchises opportunities in categories such as retail, automotive, business services, real estate and more.

And who better to have on the show than a self-described “franchise enthusiast”, Gregory Ugwi.

Greg studied Math at Princeton, went on to build models for valuing franchises and fixed income securities at Goldman Sachs, and founded and raised $15 million for an alternative data company, Thinknum, and took that to an exit. Today, he’s the founder and CEO of WeFranch, and their mission is to expand the franchising market. WeFranch helps both franchisees find and launch their location and franchisors grow their franchise business. I look forward to learning more about the Franchise industry.

In this episode, Greg shares:

• Growing up in two separate and distinct neighborhoods in Lagos, Nigeria
• Fascination from an early age on why some were able to make money through their businesses, and others were not
• Bringing the franchise matching process online with WeFranch
• How franchises give economic opportunities to a distinct group of operators
• What kind of entrepreneurs make a great franchisee and franchisor

WeFranch can help you with your next franchise business decision

X: https://x.com/wefranch

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wefranch/

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. Please do not hesitate to reach out to foreignfounderspod@gmail.com for any inquiries and questions.

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Find Financial Help For Problem Gambling

1 - 800 - GAMBLER is a helpful resource if you or someone you know has a gambling problem.

According to AddictionCenter, it’s estimated that around 2 million people in the U.S. are addicted to gambling, and for as many as 20 million, the habit seriously interferes with work and social life.

Alex De Marco, founder and CEO of MoneyStack, is tackling this problem. Money Stack is a platform that connects mental health professionals to financial counselors so that they can work together to help clients experiencing psychological distress made worse by financial problems.

Prior to starting MoneyStack, Alex had founded several startups and worked at companies such as Ericsson, J.P. Morgan and the N.Y. Times.

We cover:

• Alex’s family background from Montreal
• Alex’s time at NY Times and the innovative projects that they were building
• How to spot financial problems due to gambling problems
• 
  

Enjoy the episode!

Moneystack: https://www.moneystack.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/moneystack/

If you love this episode, please share and review the podcast! It will help more immigrant and international founders find these content. Please do not hesitate to reach out to foreignfounderspod@gmail.com for any inquiries and questions.

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Need a B2B Billing & Revenue management solution? Try Received.

Roi Ben Daniel is a Fintech Founder, who worked in Fintech his whole career. At Received, Roi is the Cofounder and CEO, where they solve B2B complexities; and before that Roi was at Visa, where he set up the Visa Partnerships team in Tel Aviv, and was part of Visa Ventures. Roi is a big believer in communities and his secret power is open fire cooking.

In this episode, we cover Roi’s background in fintech and in building communities throughout his life. As a community builder, this was so enjoyable to record!

Highlights from this episode:

• How it is like being a late bloomer in entrepreneurship
• How his religious background contributed to his view of community
• How to not be shy about building a community in a new place
• Key components to building a great community
• FinTech in an identity crisis
• 
  

Enjoy the episode!

Received AI website: https://www.received.ai/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/getreceived/about/

If you love this episode, please share and review the podcast! It will help more immigrant and international founders find these content. Please do not hesitate to reach out to foreignfounderspod@gmail.com for any inquiries and questions.

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

Come join us at our New York Tech Week 2024 event! Ways to sign up below

New York Tech Week Wellness Event at June 5th at 6PM: https://lu.ma/nytw-wellness-experience-2

New York Tech Week Wellness Event at June 5th at 7:30PM: https://lu.ma/nytw-wellness-experience-3

Follow me as I write more! https://foreignfounders.substack.com/

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

Looking to renovate your next commercial space? Work with Aikito

In this episode:

• Andrew’s family history in hospitality
• Pivoting from law to real estate, and again to a tech entrepreneur
• Founding his first company, Ethos
• Aikito and the problems that they solve

Andrew McCarthy is a tech, real estate, and hospitality entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience. He holds a Law Degree and Master's in Real Estate Finance from NYU.

He began his career in Mexico City working on major property transactions and public REITs and private equity hospitality funds before moving to NYC. There, he led acquisitions and development at Minotaur Management and pioneered innovative hospitality concepts Ethos and Ethos Remote using modular construction.

After moving to NYC, Andrew transitioned to the tech world. His entrepreneurial spirit led him to co-found Ethos and Ethos Remote, pioneering new hospitality concepts using modular construction and transforming existing commercial spaces to hotels and community campuses.

More recently, he co-founded Aikito, an end-to-end solution for commercial buildouts.

As Head of Growth, he has quickly driven over $1.5M in revenue and built a $80M pipeline and partnerships with 50+ vendors.

An innovative community-builder passionate about revolutionizing real estate models through technology and sustainability, Andrew brings broad experience spearheading new ventures from the ground up.

Aikito aims to change the experience of building commercial spaces and is the simplest way to build locations and expand, through a vetted best-in-class construction marketplace, sustainable buildouts, and, all the tools to scale expansion including client and project management, standard contracts and budgets, insurance, and financing.

The goal is to remove the pain of the construction and save CEOs and founders +90 hours per month and hundreds of thousands of dollars in pitfalls and mistakes.

Enjoy the episode!

Aikito website: https://www.aikito.co/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-mccarthy-impact-entrepreneur/

If you love this episode, please share and review the podcast! It will help more immigrant and international founders find these content. Please do not hesitate to reach out to foreignfounderspod@gmail.com for any inquiries and questions.

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Learn more about Dileepan Siva and his executive coaching service

Dileepan Siva is a two times founder who has bootstrapped his company to profitability and north of $1B of GMV, prior to that experience he’s scaled several early to mid stage companies, and helped raise over $100M in venture capital.

Dileepan shares a lot in this episode:

• His first experience of feeling underrated in school
• Being accused of being a foreign spy
• Moving from politics to business, and the advantages that it’s given Dileepan
• Two narratives that immigrants tell themselves that may be detrimental long term
• Why people should be more comfortable asking for help

As a serial entrepreneur turned executive coach, Dileepan believes in the power of business as a tool for both personal and social transformation. Over the course of a 20 year professional career, he learned that your own strengths and weaknesses are mirrored in the organization you build. And how you relate to your business is often how you relate to other parts of your life. This experience led Dileepan down the same path advising and coaching top tier founders and leaders in their own business–and personal–transformation journeys. Dileepan has built, scaled and sold three high-growth venture-backed startups and also served as a senior commerce executive at Twitter and eBay. Before working in the technology sector, he advised leaders at global Fortune 50 companies including PepsiCo and Unilever as well as public and non-profit institutions including the United Nations, US Department of State and the Gates Foundation. He brings this breadth of experience across sectors and in career transition to his coaching practice. Blending executive coaching with depth psychology and spiritual traditions, Dileepan leverages a range of modalities in his work. He is trained as a coach through the Co-Active Training Institute (CTI), Conscious Leadership Group and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Marin. Dileepan draws on his Buddhist meditation and mindfulness experience. He received his MBA from Harvard Business School and BA from the University of California at Berkeley.

Work with Dileepan Siva today!

Enjoy the episode!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/dileepansiva

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

If you love this episode, please share and review the podcast! It will help more immigrant and international founders find these content. Please do not hesitate to reach out to foreignfounderspod@gmail.com for any inquiries and questions.

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