5 visas, 7 years, 2 startups, and $200,000 later….. arjita_sethi, Founder of davinciclub_ & newfoundersco, talks about her experience as an immigrant to the US.
5 visas, 7 years, 2 startups, and $200,000 later….. Entrepreneurship is hard! You have to hustle, work hard, live under budget, be working round the clock, face rejection, etc, etc, etc…. you know the drill!
Anshul and I had fallen in love over a similar startup idea and thought once we did get married, we will start a startup in silicon valley. So in January of 2014, I moved to San Francisco on H4 Visa after we got married.Well, for anyone who has been given this advice on an immigrant visa, I am sad to say that NONE of this is a possibility for you. So here I was, a dream in my eyes and no possibilities. On a dependent visa in the US, one cannot volunteer, be an intern or start a company.
2014- 2015: Now comes the phase of unlearning and relearning: I moved to an F1 visa, also known as the student visa. I realized how much there was to learn about startups and entrepreneurship. I met the most brilliant people, professors, advisors, and lifelong mentors. By 2015, I had given a talk at TEDx San Francisco, raised $20K in a crowdfunding campaign, enrolled in the Global Learning Xprize, sponsored by Elon Musk and got 2 part-time jobs to bootstrap our startup as I was now eligible for a 1-year work permit.
But Obama saved us! He launched something called the H4 OPT and I was eligible. I applied for it. And remember, every visa change costs about $2000. Anshul and I thought of continuing the path of a side hustle till we could raise a million dollars for our startup and get him full time too. Getting Alien of extraordinary visa is like winning a noble prize. First of all, it has this crazy checklist that says: Have you won a noble prize of similar awards? But getting this visa in US meant that our green card would be expedited and we could freely work on our company.
Anshul left his day job in December and we were ready to reign in 2018 as full-time founders. YAS!!!!! We would get our green in 3-6 months and get funding and build something phenomenal. 100+ NOs. Not to worry. We had to get to our NOs to find that YES!!! right? The benefits that the tech job of Anshul was giving us were no more there so we had to get our own insurance. We couldn’t take a cheap one because there were instances when green card application was rejected because it was seen that the immigrants don’t have enough finances and will become a liability. So we got the expensive one. Not kidding. For the next 2 years we paid approximately $1500/month for our insurance.
I turned 30 in November 2018 and had to be in Finland. My parents were planning to spend my 30th in Scandinavia with me while we worked on our startup and our travel permission was denied. My parents reached Scandinavia and we were stuck in San Francisco. Only a few moments can beat the loss of not being with your family on special occasions when you are an immigrant. I was missing so much and there was nothing in my control.
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