Immigrants are our National Advantage.

We believe in being the social signal others will follow. This means sourcing differently, making our own decisions, sponsoring visa holders in ways that gives them full freedom to work on their own ideas, connecting immigrants to new communities, and enabling more immigrants to reach their American Dream.

In year 9, our responsibility is clear: help as many immigrants start companies as possible, in a financially sustainable way. With Unshackled Residency we create another starting point. This time specifically for solo, first-time immigrants in the U.S.

By investing $5M across ~30 immigrant founders, we believe we can explore a new way to support overlooked and unrecognized immigrants in our community and break the patterns of venture funding.

Unshackled Residency is for solo first-time immigrant founders in the U.S. who want to dream and build a venture-style business without constraints.

Given the stage of this program, the more capable you are of building yourself, the more likely you will be able to move fast.

From an immigration perspective, whether you are new to the U.S., a recent graduate on a student visa, a visa holder employed or recently unemployed, an asylum seeker or political refugee, or someone whose immigration journey has stifled your creativity, we want to support you.

From a tech, industry, and sector perspective, everything goes. We are very fortunate to be a generalist fund since 2015, and this means we have had a front row to innovations around all sorts of tech stacks from generative AI, LLMs, materials & energy storage, sensors, autonomous vehicles, space, connectivity, AR/VR/MR, therapeutics, alternative proteins, BCI, etc. We've seen these technologies applied across many industries, from Healthcare, Climate and Sustainability, Food, Fashion and retail, Infrastructure, Consumer Social, eCommerce, TelCo, Web3, Enterprise productivity, and countless others.

This program is intended for immigrants who want to be in the U.S. full-time and have legal work authorization. Within the U.S., we are agnostic, as most of our collaboration will be over Zoom.

$150K for 10%, invested on a post-money YC SAFE with our standard side letter.

Absolutely, not. In fact, more than 60% of our pre-seed companies aren't incorporated at the time of our commitment.

As a fund specifically designed for immigrants, we understand this topic creates questions and confusions. If you are selected into Unshackled Residency, we will work with you closely, based on your corporate, immigration and employment needs.

We are conviction-driven, selective, and diligent investors. This means our process is thoughtful. We value founders’ time, conduct research between meetings, and maintain transparency on where we are. Our goal is to have 2-3 meetings to a positive investment decision. The process will support a fast decision on whether to pass or to invest. If we conclude that we are not a fit for Unshackled Residency, we will communicate it quickly and with honest feedback.

The only way to be too early for Unshackled Residency, is if you aren't ready to go full-time on building something wonderful. As for too late, if you have a co-founder, built a product, or have any customers, we would kindly direct you to reach out for a pre-seed investment through our pitch us form.

Yes. We are the only VC with immigration attorneys as partners. We take care of everything immigration and employment for our portfolio founders, including visas and green cards. The exact solution varies for each individual, and our team works for portfolio founders to make sure immigration doesn’t slow them down, while maintaining complete compliance with U.S. immigration laws.

Immigration is personal to us since we started Unshackled with our experiences building companies while on a visa. We understand the critical role immigration plays in people’s lives, and are here to make it as less painful as it can be.  The objective is to allow you to innovate and build what you want to build - whether that means you do that as our employee or of your own startup.

We have made over 260 immigration filings across 13 different categories of work-authorization to ensure immigrants can start a company while on a visa, with a 100% success rate. Our immigration team also stays constantly engaged with portfolio founders throughout the journey, as your life and work situation changes.

The best way to learn how we support founders is to talk to other Unshackled founders.

Absent of that, it all starts with seeing you as a person first and earning your trust. Trust happens when we understand what is happening throughout our lives, so any guidance, recommendations, or connections are fitting and welcomed.

Tactically, we will provide access to facilitated conversations with fellow cohort members, other Unshackled founders, and countless other customers and investors. And when it comes to things like co-founder search, equity grants, round constructions, immigration, customer development, go-to-market, product roadmaps, and hiring, the team at Unshackled will jump in actively.

Initially, we anticipate selecting 8-10 founders per cohort. This allows us to support each person individually and collectively.

For immigrants, the difference between success and failure is often who you know and when. Thus, community and cohort collaboration is at the top of our priority stack. It's why our last two hires on our team have profound community-building experience. This means we will create many formal opportunities to interact with your cohort (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly) and encourage founders to assemble independently. We plan to augment this with more time with other immigrant founders in our portfolio, including experts (advisors, investors, executives) outside the direct Unshackled community.

Unshackled Residency is specifically designed for solo immigrant founders at this stage. So if you have a co-founder and you both are committed to building something wonderful, we would love to hear from you for a pre-seed investment. You can pitch us here.

Success is helping as many immigrants start companies in the U.S. as possible. Implied in this is Unshackled Residency founders successfully navigating the ideation phase into something worth the next ten years of their lives. This could be building the team, raising additional capital, and/or getting customers to pay for something you are making. If you don't come to an idea worthy of the next ten years or decide another pathway is more important, success supports your path to a green card so that immigration won't hold you back.

Unshackled Residency is designed with the solo-immigrant founder in mind. The residency encourages immigrant entrepreneurs to fully immerse themselves in whether they want to build something wonderful. You won't need to have a specific idea mapped out. We hope to give you the freedom and access to dream as big as possible if that is your full-time job.

To learn more about Unshackled Residency, join an info session in the future.

To learn more about Unshackled (our pre-seed investment strategy), you can read out FAQs here.