From foreign pasts to uncertain futures
My interest in immigrant entrepreneurship can be traced back to 1989 when, aged 11, I became an immigrant myself, a refugee to be precise, as my family fled the ethnic assimilation process carried out against Turkish minorities in our native Bulgaria and crossed the border into Turkey. The entrepreneurship part came later, when we established a business in Istanbul recycling scraps of discarded Italian leather, which we eventually turned into a luxury international fashion label, now over 25 years old.
But my interest as an academic in immigrant entrepreneurship is about much more than my own story. It’s a fascination that has been sustained by my desire to discover why immigrants, despite their obvious disadvantages, tend to be such disproportionately successful entrepreneurs.
Consider these simple facts: although immigrants and their children make up only 28% of the American population, they have founded nearly 50% of the Fortune 500 companies, and 80% of billion-dollar start-ups have a founder or leading executive who is a first or second-generation immigrant. Even away from these big hitters, immigrants’ businesses generally make more money and last longer than those founded by their native-born peers.
Facts like this are sometimes employed in political arguments in favour of immigration, but few academics engage with them to ask an obvious question: what can we all learn from immigrant entrepreneurs about building businesses that last?
That’s the fundamental question I set out to answer in my new book, Pioneers: 8 Principles of Business Longevity from Immigrant Entrepreneurs. On my research journey, I engaged with many of the modern world’s leading immigrant entrepreneurs, exploring the secrets of companies as diverse as Cobra Beer and WhatsApp. And, despite being an immigrant entrepreneur myself, what I learned surprised me. Immigrant-founded companies often enjoy enormous success by doing the opposite of what the business orthodoxy says.
Three dimensions of entrepreneurial longevity
I’d like to give just three examples of ways in which immigrant entrepreneurs adopt unconventional strategies to build businesses that succeed and last:
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Temporal depth: stepping back to spring forward much is made in the literature of immigrants’ identity crises which supposedly stem from them being caught between two cultures. But immigrant entrepreneurs tend to turn the supposed crisis into an opportunity and create businesses that flourish precisely because they draw on their complex identities to build bridges between cultures – adapting or creating products that their new market has never seen before.
For many immigrant founders, the past, therefore, is not something to escape, but to integrate. Their identities often span countries, languages, and histories. These plural identities, rather than being a liability, become wellsprings of creativity and resilience. One founder told me: 'You build differently when you’ve lost everything once.'
Drawing on these layered histories, immigrants design businesses that are rooted in continuity – familial values, craftsmanship traditions, communal trust – while also addressing contemporary market needs. Their pasts become foundations, not constraints.
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Relational capital: community as a competitive advantage; unlike the archetype of the solo visionary founder, immigrant entrepreneurs often approach business as a deeply relational act. Trust networks matter. Interdependence matters. These entrepreneurs are more likely to embed their ventures in extended communities – be they diasporic, familial, or hyper-local.
This results in business models that are less extractive and more regenerative. When resources are limited – as they often are for newcomers – it is not individual brilliance but collective effort that sustains the enterprise. Community is not a nice-to-have, it is the growth engine.
- Strategic flexibility: navigating disruption as norm, not exception; immigrant founders tend to develop a muscle memory for instability. From navigating immigration systems to cultural dislocation, they are accustomed to recalibrating in real time. This makes them exceptionally well-suited to lead through ambiguity. One founder I interviewed, now running a global logistics platform, put it bluntly: 'We don’t panic. We pivot.'
While many firms were upended by the Covid-19 pandemic, immigrant-led businesses were often faster to adapt – experimenting with new delivery systems, reconfiguring supply chains and reshaping business models with pragmatism and speed. They understand that uncertainty is not a phase to be weathered but a context to be designed for.
Strategies like this might be rooted in the immigrant experience, but crucially, they can be employed by anyone. Any entrepreneur can harness the power of their own past to build resilience, create communities to draw on their strength, and integrate flexibility and adaptability into their plans for the future. In an era of ever-increasing disruption, immigrant entrepreneurs’ experiences of turning turmoil to success create a playbook from which we can all learn.
