Business founders from abroad need to worry about more than the bottom line

Immigrant founders building startups in the US don’t just navigate pitch decks, seed rounds, and product roadmaps—they’re also building within the limits of the country’s visa system. That system can shape when they leave jobs, ownership structures, and how much capital it takes to stay compliant as they scale.

What some see as constraints, Nitin Pachisia sees as infrastructure—and in some cases, even an advantage, forcing immigrant founders to see problems differently and build with a different level of resourcefulness.

As the founder of Unshackled Ventures, Pachisia treats visa issues less as external friction and more as part of the operating reality of building a company in the US for immigrant entrepreneurs. In a discussion with Founder Brew and in follow-up emails, Pachisia explained how his firm works with founders to navigate visa requirements alongside fundraising, hiring, and growth decisions—structuring companies so they remain compliant while still scaling.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How is building a company as an immigrant founder different from building one as a US-born founder?

One thing that immigrant founders have to think about is visa status, legal status. Until you become a permanent resident or citizen, you are limited by whatever visa you’re on. If you were born in the US, you don’t have to think about that.

There will be adversity. There will be times when you need support from friends and family. If you immigrated as an adult, most people, for example, would come for college as a young adult, and then stay in the US and start businesses. Their family and many of the friends they grew up with are in their home country, and so you have this natural shortage of that support system of friends and family—not just from a capital standpoint, but also moral support and emotional support. I don’t think this gets discussed enough, but I think the company-building journey for immigrant entrepreneurs becomes lonelier than it is for others.

We have our parents in our home countries, and we’re worried about, like, “How do we take care of them?” So this is not just a founder journey. This is just being an immigrant journey.

Where do immigration constraints actually create pressure or force time-sensitive decisions for founders?

First and foremost, when founders are about to leave their current role and commit to their startup, if they’re on a visa, they have to figure out whether the startup is in a position to sponsor them, what governance structures may be required to comply with visa requirements, ownership and reporting considerations come up.

Subsequently, as the company starts growing—or when exit decisions come up—immigration considerations become top of mind again.

What are some of the biggest challenges immigrant founders face that traditional investors might underestimate or overlook?

Lack of a network…That network, immigrant founders have to build on their own. Typically, you will see immigrant founders hustle to get into those networks by going to events, joining communities, and doing the work.

I think there is a little bit of a gap in terms of most immigrant founders not selling themselves as actively as someone who grew up in America would. It’s also a cultural thing. America is a marketing-led economy and society. So from very early ages, you start seeing that storytelling, marketing, and being able to talk about your accomplishments is part of the culture, but it’s not so much in most other countries. A lot of immigrant founders may be very talented and qualified…but they don’t like talking about themselves in those terms, and so we have to help them overcome that.

How do visa hang-ups show up in the funding process for immigrant founders?

In my experience, it wasn’t so much in the funding process as it is in the post-funding/company-building process…Every visa has its own set of rules, restrictions, and conditions. The visa allows you to do certain things and disallows others.

You just have to learn the nuances of your specific visa, understand the requirements, and then create a structure around you that allows you to operate within the limits of that visa and be legally compliant with the requirements. That’s the fundamental principle that we took into Unshackled Ventures. As I designed that solution, it was about: Can we understand what are the requirements for each of the visa categories and make sure that the people we’re backing are compliant with those, and at the same time, they can build the company that they want to build? So we changed some of the variables to make the visa work, and then we helped founders get to a different visa, which maybe gave them a different solution.

What is one thing that you wish more immigrant founders understood about fundraising or building in the US?

I don’t think there’s one thing, to be honest. Fundraising is a very engaged, involved process. If founders understand that it’s a sales process that requires them to be at the top of their game and understand who are they pitching and how that business model works.

Raising from VCs is slightly different from raising from angels. You have to understand your audience and tell the story—align the business to who you are pitching, or even better, find investors who align with your business.

I don’t think the fundraising aspect is that different for immigrant founders versus native-born founders. It’s a skill founders have to learn, and there are a lot of nuances around it. Storytelling is a big, big part of fundraising.