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The High Risk, High Reward Model of Backing Immigrant Founders l Build Mode

Immigrant founders have built some of the world’s most valuable companies, but many still face barriers that make it harder to get a startup off the ground. Visa restrictions, limited access to friends-and-family capital, shallow networks, and a venture industry built around pattern matching can keep promising founders from getting funded before they have a…

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2 months ago

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Immigrant founders have built some of the world’s most valuable companies, but many still face barriers that make it harder to get a startup off the ground. Visa restrictions, limited access to friends-and-family capital, shallow networks, and a venture industry built around pattern matching can keep promising founders from getting funded before they have a chance to prove themselves.

In this episode of Build Mode, host Isabelle Johannesen sits down with Manan Mehta, co-founder and managing partner of Unshackled Ventures, to talk about why he believes immigrant founders represent one of venture capital’s biggest overlooked opportunities. Manan breaks down how Unshackled built an investment model designed to help founders navigate immigration barriers, why traditional VC pattern matching causes investors to miss potential outliers, and how his team evaluates founders at day zero—often before they have a product, customers, or traction. He also explains why the structural gaps that make some founders harder to fund may be exactly where investors should be looking for outsized returns.

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New episodes of Build Mode drop every Thursday.

Chapters:
00:00 – Why VCs Miss Outlier Founders
01:45 – Why Manan Mehta Founded Unshackled Ventures
04:15 – The Problem With VC Pattern Matching
06:15 – The Friends-and-Family Gap for Immigrant Founders
08:18 – How Unshackled Helps Founders Navigate Visas
10:40 – Building a Startup in Today’s Immigration Environment
12:19 – Solving One of Unshackled’s Hardest Immigration Cases
14:39 – What the U.S. Stands to Lose
16:59 – Raising Unshackled’s First Venture Funds
19:40 – Can You Start a Company on an H-1B Visa?
22:13 – How to Evaluate a Founder at Day Zero
28:30 – Measuring IQ, AQ, EQ, and SQ
30:26 – How Fear Drives VC Pattern Matching
33:01 – Why Structural Gaps Create Outlier Opportunities
35:14 – Finding Startup Capital Outside Traditional VC
38:09 – Why Founders Need to Understand Their “Why”

Hosted by Isabelle Johannesen. Produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience development led by Morgan Little. Special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams.

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Science & Technology

Startup Battlefield: Health Tech & Life Sciences Pitches | Disrupt 2026

Founders from around the world pitch expert judges and compete for the Startup Battlefield Cup and $100,000. Each team gets six minutes to pitch and six minutes of Q&A with judges Dr. V. Agrawal (ODDBIRD VC), Andrew Brackin (Gradient), Nell Daly (Revenge Capital), James Joaquin (Obvious Ventures), and Miloni Madan Presler (IVP). This cohort’s competitors…

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October 14, 2026

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Founders from around the world pitch expert judges and compete for the Startup Battlefield Cup and $100,000. Each team gets six minutes to pitch and six minutes of Q&A with judges Dr. V. Agrawal (ODDBIRD VC), Andrew Brackin (Gradient), Nell Daly (Revenge Capital), James Joaquin (Obvious Ventures), and Miloni Madan Presler (IVP).

This cohort’s competitors include…

Mosqitter: Detecting and preventing mosquito-borne disease spread with real-time disease intelligence platforms that turn sensor networks into early warning systems for national health agencies.

Hiyd AI: Delivering proactive health insights by combining sleep, movement, and nutrition data through an ultra-slim, discreet wearable tracker and AI app.

TimeTeller GmbH: Measuring people’s biological clocks to determine optimal treatment timing through molecular diagnostics and AI, improving efficacy and reducing side effects.

NTangible: Helping coaches and front offices make smarter recruiting decisions by quantifying how athletes perform under pressure with a validated cognitive score.

Intero Biosystems: Accelerating drug development by producing miniature human organs that enable pharma companies to identify safer, more effective medications while reducing clinical trial costs.

#TechCrunchDisrupt2026

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Science & Technology

Flock CEO Garrett Langley on Public Backlash, Surveillance Expansion | Disrupt 2026

Flock Safety sits at the intersection of an increasingly intense debate around the spread of surviellance technology, AI, and who’s using all of that information and to what ends. Founder and CEO Garrett Langley spoke at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 to defend his stance that Flock is a net positive in the face of concerns about…

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19 hours ago

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October 14, 2026

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Flock Safety sits at the intersection of an increasingly intense debate around the spread of surviellance technology, AI, and who’s using all of that information and to what ends. Founder and CEO Garrett Langley spoke at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 to defend his stance that Flock is a net positive in the face of concerns about its work monitoring communities, cities, and enabling data sharing across law enforcement agencies.

As a sign of that backlash, as Langley spoke on stage, a protest against Flock was taking place outside of Moscone West in San Francisco.

#TechCrunchDisrupt2026

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Science & Technology

Satya Nadella’s ‘emergency brake’ and the race to secure AI agents | Disrupt 2026

TechCrunch’s Equity podcast team took over the Builders Stage Tuesday morning to tackle a growing challenge for the AI industry: What happens when AI agents go off-script, and who’s responsible for keeping them in check? Recent incidents, from Anthropic pulling internal evaluations off the live internet after agents misbehaved to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella calling…

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20 hours ago

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October 14, 2026

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TechCrunch’s Equity podcast team took over the Builders Stage Tuesday morning to tackle a growing challenge for the AI industry: What happens when AI agents go off-script, and who’s responsible for keeping them in check?

Recent incidents, from Anthropic pulling internal evaluations off the live internet after agents misbehaved to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella calling for an “emergency brake” on AI models, have brought agent security into focus. The Equity team unpacked whether the problem calls for better engineering, new regulation, or both, and why startups are raising millions to secure AI agents.
#TechCrunchDisrupt2026

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