A neuroscientist left academia to join a startup.

Then he left that startup to found his own.

Now, he’s raised $150 million to unlock the global talent market: Job van der Voort worked as a neuroscientist for the first years of his career.

But he became increasingly interested in software and startups.

In 2012, he made the leap - here's the story of a dear friend: @Jobvo

Immigrants are 2x as likely as Americans to become entrepreneurs.

In 2016, half of all $1 billion startups were founded by immigrants.

THREAD: 8 immigrant founders who have built monster businesses. 1. Jerry Yang

Born in Taiwan, Jerry moved to San Jose at the age of 10.

“We got made fun of a lot at first,” Yang told Fortune magazine.

Jerry dropped out of Stanford to start Yahoo in 1995, which he turned into an internet behemoth before stepping down as CEO in 2008.

One entrepreneur bootstrapped $5k into a $1 billion company.

🧵 The remarkable story of Sara Blakely: 1/ After graduating from Florida State, Sara Blakely bounced around. She:

Didn’t do well on the LSAT
Worked at Disney World
Tried stand-up comedy

Finally, she started working for Danka, selling fax machines door-to-door.

1/ Skills eat degrees for lunch.

Tech is moving faster than ever - degrees are loosing meaning - work is now measurable & remote!

A thread on “Why we need to reinvent tech education?” 2/ Cost of education & College tuition has increased in US at a high pace in last few decades.

I’ve been living with my friends in the bay area & I realize they start their careers on the backfoot - $300k in education debt!

They’re on defence on day 1 instead of taking risks!

When I moved to Delhi, @drriteshmalik took me in. I spent years with a family practicing these values, I'm so grateful. Unfiltered:

1. Trust: In business as in life, trust is the most cherished & underrated commodity. Doing the right thing, again & again when no one is watching. Being ethical in your dealings. Business is never B2B/B2C it's always H2H (Human to Human).

Ensuring that you deliver value to people & build win-win outcomes is the only path to long-term, sustainable & holistic success.

1/n Duolingo's S1 has lots of amazing things, it shows how learning can be fun & can be gamified.

But behind those numbers is an incredible founder Luis von Ahn. I've seen many of his lectures & I've always felt very inspired.

A thread on his life that people usually miss. 🧵 2/n He grew up in Guatemala, a country in South America. His parents are doctors & he grew up having good access to education.

He learned English early on, which he thinks is a great privilege. He earned his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University & became a faculty member in 2006.

1/ By far the most underrated tool that makes remote work happen is Google Calendar. Uncovering overlooked features today.

Pro tips on setting up your Gcal.

A Thread 🧵👇 2/ Plot your entire schedule on calendar including your fun & personal time. Use different color codes & make multiple calendars to make it easy for yourself.

"We’d need a miracle treatment that was at least 95 percent effective to stop the outbreak." - Bill Gates, April 2020.

Well, we pulled off a Miracle I guess.

A thread 🧵👇 2 of the "most trusted" vaccines are Fizer & Moderna. Both of them announced that their vaccine had an efficacy rate of 95% last month and their vaccines have been approved for early/limited/emergency usage in the US.

Coincidently, these are the only two developers to use mRNA.

Great companies were built by:

- Being the first
- Being the best
- Being different

I was reading up more on the last mover advantage which @reliancejio io often has & it's fascinating. Read on.. Some of the best startups were built by focusing on small markets that often went unnoticed by the giants.

As the market grows at a high rate, the company grows with it until it explodes.

At an early stage, the company's focus is always on growth...

Is it right to criticize Indian companies who took money from Chinese funds?

Fact: Some of the largest Chinese companies took money from outside China to begin with.

Tencent from Indonesia and Netherlands, Alibaba from Japan, Tiktok from US etc.

Please read on.. That’s how markets work. Investments are necessary to drive growth, it ends up creating a win-win situation for everyone.

Long term, there are ways in which you can give exit to investors as well.

We def need to make sure that no one is using this as a hack to control markets.

Remote work is hard. But once companies learn it, it's going to add a ton of value. It gives you access to talent globally, reduces your expenses by 40-60%, makes work efficient and helps you move faster.
Every smart investor should push companies to adopt remote work. Pro tips: Pro tip 1. Over communicate: Assume 0 knowledge of your coworker while discussions and add as much context as you can. Conveying facts is important but explaining the thought process behind it makes it crystal clear. Always try to use public channels vs private chats for work.