Celebrate Immigrant Founders

Diversity is in our DNA 🇺🇸

Celebrate Immigrants

You cannot tell the story of America without including the tremendous role that immigrants have played in shaping our nation. Now, more than ever, we must recognize their incredible contributions and be grateful for the openness and diversity of our nation.

Openness is at the core of humanity. It’s at the core of our ethics and mores.

Without immigrants, our country would be far worse off. Immigrants are our friends. They are our soccer coaches, teachers, doctors, lawyers, firefighters, soldiers, authors, artists…

To me, they are my family. My dad came here some 20 years ago to start a new life. America took a chance on him. It’s time we show everyone that we are willing to take a chance.

The business world, in particular, should be especially thankful and cognizant.

The numbers from the Renew Your Economy Report demonstrate the importance that immigration has had on our Economy:

More than 40 percent of the 2010 Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. Even though immigrants have made up only 10.5 percent of the American population on average since 1850, there are 90 immigrant-founded Fortune 500 companies, accounting for 18 percent of the list. When you include the additional 114 companies founded by the children of immigrants, the share of the Fortune 500 list grows to over 40 percent.

The newest Fortune 500 companies are more likely to have an immigrant founder. Just shy of 20 percent of the newest Fortune 500 companies — those founded over the 25-year period between 1985 and 2010 — have an immigrant founder.

Seven of the 10 most valuable brands in the world come from American companies founded by immigrants or children of immigrants. Many of America’s greatest brands — Apple, Google, AT&T, Budweiser, Colgate, eBay, General Electric, IBM, and McDonald’s, to name just a few — owe their origin to a founder who was an immigrant or the child of an immigrant.

Diversity is built into our DNA. This is the America we know.

My friend and I put together a list of immigrant founders. Truly amazing what these people have done!

Celebrate Immigrants_Openness is at the core of the American DNA. Immigrants are our friends, coaches, teachers, family members-they are the…_celebrateimmigrants.us

Of course, this is just what we could find overnight scouring google. I’m sure there is more, but here is a start:

• Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post
• John Collison, Stripe
• Patrick Collison, Stripe
• Sergey Brin, Google/Alphabet

Click to Tweet this List

• William Colgate, Colgate
• Gary Vaynerchuk, Vayner Media
• Andrew Carnegie, Carnegie Steel Company
• Elizabeth Arden, Elizabeth Arden Inc
• Pierre Omidyar, Ebay
• Chamath Palihapitiya, Social Capital
• Jan Koum, WhatsApp
• Sanjay Mehrotra, SanDisk
• Tien Tzou, Zuora
• Elon Musk, Tesla/SpaceX
• Alexander Asseily, Jawbone
• Tomer London, Gusto
• Adam Neumann, WeWork
• Dhiraj Rajaram, Dhiraj Rajaram
• Renaud Visage, Eventbrite
• Michelle Zatlyn, CloudFlare
• Arash Ferdowsi, Dropbox
• Sean Rad, Tinder
• Iqram Magdon-Ismail, Venmo
• Renaud Laplanche, Lending Club
• Peter Weijmarsh, Shapeways
• Phil Jaber, Philz Coffee
• Max Levchin, Paypal
• Mike Krieger, Instagram
• Christian Gheorghe, Tidemark
• James L. Kraft, Kraft
• Daniel Aaron, Comcast Television
• Andrew Grove, Intel Corporation
• Jerry Yang, Yahoo
• Marcus Goldman, Goldman Sachs
• Samuel Sachs, Goldman Sachs
• Nigel Morris, Capital One Financial
• Andrew Viterbi, Qualcomm Inc.
• John W. Nordstrom, Nordstrom
• William Russell Grace, WR Grace and Company
• Alexander Graham Bell, AT&T
• Maxwell Kohl, Kohl’s
• Liz Clairborne, Liz Clairborne Inc
• Kevork Hovnanian, Hovanian Enterprises
• Jeong Kim, Yurie Systems
• William Mow, Bugle Boy Industries
• Nathan Cummings, Sara Lee
• E.I Du Pont, DuPont
• Charles Pfizer, Pfizer
• William Procter, Procter and Gamble
• James Gamble, Procter and Gamble
• Vinod Khosla, Sun Microsystems
• Andy Bechtolsheim, Sun Microsystems
• K.R. Sridhar, Bloom Energy
• Ragy Thomas, Sprinklr
• Eric Setton, Tango
• Mario Schlosser, Oscar Health
• Noubar Afeyan, Joule Unlimited
• Igor Sikorsky, Helicopters
• Ben Huh, Cheezburger
• Ayah Bdeir, littleBits
• Phil Libin, Evernote
• Helena Rubinstein, Helena Rubenstein Inc
• Charles Wang, Computer Associates
• Steve Chen, Youtube
• Beto Perez, Founder of Zumba
• Marcelo Claure, Brightstar

This list could be 10x longer. 20 years from now, it should be 100x longer. Let’s make sure American policy does not change that. Speak up and stand for what you believe in.

Stay inspired! As always, feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

You can find me on Jordan Gonen or Twitter