despite all of our problems we are still the place where many of the world's smartest most Innovative thinkers and doers want to live and work we're moving faster in technological progress and the immigration system hasn't been kept up none of the Visa Pathways really fit
this new category of person this technology entrepreneur what if there's an amazing person that I want to hire in September do I have to now wait until the spring of next year why is there stay is governing this as opposed to movement let us take this extremely
complex annoying often times frustrating process away from you we come as a partner we want to be your guide we take a what's possible mindset and now you get to continue doing your best work the need for high-skilled immigration is critical and immigration is America's
superpower just spreading that message that America is open for [Music] business well hello everyone it's Jim oasy with yet another infinite Loops today I have two guests who are trying to deal with one of my favorite soapbox issues and that is this country's up immigration policies today I have
joining me Min Kim and Lisa Weeden who are co-founders of Plymouth Street I love the name by the way uh in the illusion uh that it makes uh to Plymouth Rock You your objective here is to assist extraordinary talents in the stem for now with us immigration processes
and you know looking at your bios uh my daughter is a standup comedian and she uh had somebody come up to her after she did a set and they said well aren't you just a little bundle of potential and boy aren't you both just bundles and bundles of potential Lisa you uh were at
Bloomberg beta president of the Oxford Union oh my God you're going to destroy me men Bloomberg beta and a violinist also near and dear to my heart I'm the former chairman of the chamber music Society of Lincoln Center welcome so tell me what what uh was the origin story here why did you both with
investment backgrounds choose to launch Plymouth Street which one would think maybe a legal background might be more helpful and welcome thanks Jim really appreciate you having us um as you can tell from my accent I'm actually British and so I'm an immigrant to the US and um
one of the biggest challenges actually moving to the US was navigating the US immigration system and so uh when I was growing up in the UK I always had uh sit set up on um building in America saw this as a hub of technological innovation and one of the biggest challenges was what is the right visa to
come to the US it always felt like a really really difficult problem to solve um when I finally landed my dream job at Bloomberg beta um my boss at the time said to me we really love you we want you to be here but we're going to put you in the H1B Lottery which um actually
means that your life is a lottery ticket system you don't know if you're actually going to get the visa or not um and I was like wow this sounds really uh like really confusing like what if I don't get the lottery does that mean I have to stay um where I was living at the time
which was Berlin and I came uh to see this problem as one of the biggest blockers for talented immigrants to come and solve uh the problems that they wanted to solve in the US um so went through this personal journey of navigating three different Visa Pathways the J1 the o1
and then the eb-1 when I finally got my green card and at the same time um I'd been working in the Venture industry where I saw this challenge with other immigrants in the community who really struggled with navigating US immigration and Min and I both worked at a venture
fund where we'd seen this problem with other talented immigrants struggling with us immigration so I'll hand over to Min because she also has a a unique story and so one my background is I was born in South Korea I moved to the states when I was nine and so as an
immigrant I'm also a proud immigrant daughter of Serial entrepreneurs where I've spent my entire life um just seeing firsthand what it takes to build a company scale a company and then I ended up in Venture where Lisa and I met at Bloomberg beta where I was investing in
some of the most advanced AI Technologies and a lot of the people that we were working with were brilliant um immigrants who were scientists researchers experts in their field and then I joined a startup where I saw more International Talent come wanting to come and build in the US at scale you
know you think about Africa Israel you know Al across Europe and Asia many of the best people ultimately want to come here and I see myself and Lisa and so many of the people that we serve as those same profiles of people who want to continue innovating and America
happens to continue to be a destination and so Pet's mission is to help grow the pie of amazing people who can come here and build and find the right visa to be able to do so this has been one of my soapbox issues for a long long time I I am absolutely Gob smacked that we have
such horrible immigration policies given the fact that despite all of our problems we are still the place where many of the world's smartest most Innovative thinkers and doers want to live and work and it just baffles me that we oftentimes educate them at some of our universities uh and I you know I used to
say we should just staple a green card to any advanced uh stem uh degree graduate in this country what why do you think we have such irant irant policies regarding really switched on uh talented people you know I think there is uh a lot of challenges with how the system
has been designed uh in so far as like none of the Visa Pathways really fit this new category of person this technology entrepreneur a lot have been designed for previous skills that were very relevant and important I mean if you take the TN as a Cate ree which is
the um Visa that allows Canadians and mexicos Mexicans to come over and work in the US um it's specific treaty Visa um there is a list of professions and entrepreneur is not on one of them and so I think unfortunately immigration is stuck in a a time where there were
skills that the US needed desperately needed and they designed systems around that and now we're living in a very modern age where the diversity of skills that are needed um the profiles of individuals who are multifaceted and extremely talented and not suited for
the specific visas that we currently have um I think uh there has been in recent years real uh recognition of those challenges so there's been efforts to develop an entrepreneurial Visa um there's been efforts to expand the category where we focus at plumouth on the o1 to support brilliant scientists
and Engineers but frankly I think the answer is that it's outdated and um we're moving faster in technological progress and the immigration system have been kept up again another one of my soapbox issues our government seems to be stuck in 1930 and it's almost
2030 uh so just a 100 years or so out of date um do you think that do you have hold out any hope personally uh that uh the American government will suddenly wake up and say oh my gosh all these these brilliant people who are basically inventing the future want to live and work here and and change the
policy so that uh it becomes a lot easier for those people to become us residents and maybe ultimately citizens I think that's the ultimate Mission and goal of Plymouth right we started with this 01 Visa category which historically it's known or it's known as the
extraordinary person's visa and historically it's been used most heavily by the entertainment industry and so we took a lot of inspiration from what Hollywood does quite well which is help really talented people from all over the globe musicians actors um creatives who
want to come to the country and they use the o1 as their gu as their like stepping stone into the US and the technology industry hasn't really mirrored that in being able to offer other exceptional individuals who don't always neatly fit the exist pre-existing
categories of talent and so we started with the1 for that reason and in large part it's really possible now because of some of the policy initiatives that have um shown up over the last two years so there are a number of individuals who've been in the policy realm who've been
working on this for a decade plus and there were a number of clarifications to the V to a couple of the Visas that we support including the o1 that said hey we actually really want more technologists to use this Visa category because we know that the um the other C the other Visa categories don't quite
support the researchers the scientists the entrepreneurs who are innovating faster than policy can keep up sometimes and that's why we are actually able to expand access to the o1 in the way that we do today and in success you know right now there's about 13 15,000 people
every year who apply for the o1 and only about a third of them are technologists or PE individuals with stem backgrounds as we call it and real and in success we really want to 10 times that number because it's a wildly flexible and underused Visa category that is uncapped
it has it's much more accessible than people think and that's ultimately one of the big dreams and Ambitions of Plymouth I don't really know that this is a uh tribal political problem I had experiences when I was still doing a lot of tradition media that in the same week
I appeared on CNBC squawkbox and in The Green Room was the then uh Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and I asked him hey why don't why don't you you know rationalize our immigration policy and he had an immediate answer which was I have a bill in my desk I I want a
co-sponsor but it's it's a challenge later that week I was on Bloomberg uh radio or TB I can't remember which but who should be in the green room but Hillary Clinton and I asked her the same question and she gave me the same answer why is there stasis governing this as opposed to movement one of the
challenges I think with immigration is in part it gets lumped in with all other immigration right and so what we are doing is often extremely specialized high-skilled immigration and we started there in part because it is one of the you know segments of the technology
industry and Beyond where really talented people like you were mentioning right like researchers people who come here for their phds and they don't always have a path to staying uh so that's where we started and that we find is generally bipartisan and generally has pretty broad
support obvious yeah to answer your question there has been movement in the space so the America competes act did uh propose a cap exempt uh green card for stem immigrants and so that that didn't ultimately end up making it in the um the compromise for the chipsa bill that
was ultimately um announced but I think there is Tailwinds behind this issue around high-skilled immigration there is recognition from both sides of the table that in this macroeconomic climate in this political climate the need for high-skilled immigration is critical and
immigration is America's superpower when you take a step back and you look at the statistics 55% of unicorn companies in America have been started by immigrants um the number of Nobel Prize winners who have uh who are have immigrant backgrounds is enormous and so I think
when you're uh looking at the data you can recognize that high-skilled immigration is not um is not is a specific facet of immigration and uh we are see seeing a lot of movement and to what Min alluded to there have been clarifications around existing Visa Pathways to encourage more stem
individuals there have been there has been movement to try and create new Pathways creating new Pathways is extremely challenging but we are seeing movement there one of the things I find really interesting about the way you approach this is you you've developed a
narrative mapping to enhance the applications talk to me a bit about that that's very interesting a lot of what we do at Plymouth is craft a story about these individuals who are exceptional and one of the things that the current way that these individuals are served by
existing traditional attorneys and providers is there is what we've seen is there's a lack of context when you have a brilliant engineer who has worked at an AI company on some really novel technology Lisa and I come from Venture and startup backgrounds and part of what
we do that's really special is that narrative mapping around oh we know what AI is capable of we know what it means to be a technical expert in that particular organization and we have context about what it is that you are building and so we can connect those dots to be able to clearly
articulate to a lay person who might not actually know all of the you know advances that are happening in the industry exactly what that means and the uh what the problem is what the impact is and be able to show that this individual is indeed an expert who's actually really innovating in that field
and that is actually one of the biggest challenges where smart people are not always is great at boasting about themselves to be honest and part of this Visa um the o1 in particular like that category requires you to be quite you know American about uh yeah about
boasting about all of your amazing accomplishments and so what we do is help them translate their professional and academic achievements to really highlight all of what makes them special and in a lot of ways what Lisa nice to do in Venture is find really talented
people and craft a story and help them see what an extraordinary person they are and so a lot of those skills have been um something that we've incorporated into being able to serve our new customers today yeah I love the nod to uh American uh approach to it we're number one we're number one when
in fact we are often not even in the top 10 uh so um yes that's very interesting to me you know in the UK Lisa there's the classic tall syndrome is is that uh also the case in other places like for example South Korea uh is it a uniquely American uh trait to be so boastful and
braggy you know it's it's an interesting one I mean we've served uh dozens and dozens of customers at this point and I think if you are highly technical some of the challenges is articulating your story in a CO comprehensive way um I I think think yeah it is you know having
lived in America for the past four years it is uh a culture shock to come and immediately people are saying like this is what I'm fantastic at and I remember arriving in Silicon Valley going to a Meetup and someone was like instantly like what are you building where are you
going like what have you done like tell me your story and in the UK which just like much more reserved and wouldn't necessarily you know sell uh sell yourself um I think you know Silicon Valley does a very good job of this a lot of entrepreneurial Talent here who
are um sharing their stories sharing their narratives but I do think it is a unique uh unique part of American culture that is um you know Wonderful like your ability to be very optimistic and share the highlights about what you've created and so a lot of what we
do is we you know support our customers who are international to you know tell the US government why they're extraordinary and it's sometimes uncomfortable and sometimes a little bit difficult um but it I think uh you know it's one of our you know core skills at the company is like supporting people
and telling their story and specifically how it maps to the criteria that USIS has said this is what extraordinary looks like um but you know I I love that part of American culture just being very open and willing to share you know your like what's great about you I do a lot
of or did a lot of business in Canada and I had a good friend up there who was the that of rbc's asset manage but division where we were sub advisor and uh we had a night out maybe a few two glasses too many glasses of wine and he started going on and on about how you
know what I love American bravado he he said he said you know what I love about you the Americans it's like no we're gonna build it bigger faster smarter stronger and that does seem to be there's a a book whose thesis is interesting called The hypomanic Edge which posits that the reason America
developed this way was because we are essentially a nation of immigrants and what are some of the things that typified especially earlier immigrants who we are the sons and daughters of was this idea of super high agency willingness to seek risk in other words
everyone here like left their homes left their families left their cultures and said you know what I'm going to get on that ship and I'm going to go over there and and give it a go in today's world uh I I think that that is not necessarily Universal we work a lot with highly technical seed
stage Founders and one of the things that I can definitely agree with you on is the the more technically competent of those I always joke you know what you really need is you need to find a word cell to be your co-founder here because they are uh you know very non braggy
very uh specific very well no I I can't say that because that is not technically the way it works right um and do you find though that the storytelling aspect uh how does that intersect with the highly legal aspect of navigating like an an an 01 Visa I are are are you sometimes
getting rejected simply not because of the story but just by the legal framework in which that narrative and story reside it's great question ultimately well for one um we've been quite lucky and fortunate at Plymouth we believe we're quite good at what we do so we've had very few push Backs from
USCIS with our customers to date one of the things that I think we do quite well is in that translation the interpretation of the specific criteria and language from a legal perspective that USIS wants to hear we've worked with some really exceptional attorneys and immigration experts who've been in
the field for decades to really understand and be able to articulate when someone who's a researcher in you know machine learning has created this particular novel technology how do we then translate that a way that maps to what USCIS considers original right what
is the definition of original and what is the definition of majorly significant and those interpretations do have legal rounding and so what we do is actually work with our legal partners and attorneys and um on our team to be able to really ensure that how we translate
these individuals accomplishments does map to those legal arguments that brings up the question of uh as you're learning as you have more and more uh clients uh for your services and and successes and failures uh it does seem that the a lot of the information and of course this is
the Quant in me and so I apologize ahead of time uh is more anecdotal uh are you working on building a more empirically supported methodology that you can share not only with potential uh applicants but with uh legislators policy makers Etc yeah so um maybe I can explain how
these petitions work there are eight different criteria and you have to meet three of them to prove that you have extraordinary ability each of these criteria can be broken down into specific requirements you have to prove and USIS is actually very open about that around you know how do you break
down what is considered um extraordinary membership in the field of endeavor so say you're in a field like artificial intelligence maybe you're part of a communities and members ship organizations that are related to artificial intelligence and so we have developed a specific methodology at
louth to really break down each of the components that USIS asks us for and show not tell USIS um why this person is extraordinary so historically 01 petitions have been done in this very narrative style without so much substance and Plymouth has come along
and actually uh our methodology is to be super concise and super precise about language as it maps onto um the criteria and then we show usas with hard documentation exactly how someone meets the standard and so we've actually published um an educational booklet
explaining each of the criteria breaking it down one of our mission is to is to grow the number of people utilizing this Visa pathway and so we do a lot around free resources if you look at our website we've got a lot of uh blog posts sharing these different criteria how you
can meet them a very comprehensive uh resource guide and you know we're excited about U supporting other individuals even if they don't come with Plymouth it's like can they actually find the support that they need the other aspect is we're part of a bigger Coalition and so Plymouth when we set
set out to solve this problem of immigration people thought we were crazy like you can't solve US immigration like that is like the hardest challenge you could possibly take on and we we started thinking about this really deeply how could we um how could we solve this
multifaceted problem and what place could we play because men and I come from menture backgrounds we're not policy experts we're not uh legal experts what you know where could we play and where can we play and win because you know we're we're competitive people and so we're like if we want to
solve this problem how can we solve this problem really well and so I think one of the smart things we did is we built up a coalition and so we're part of a bigger uh group of people working on this problem so we partnered with this group called The Institute for Progress
who do enormous work on the policy side to change the face of US immigration and so they release regular reports uh they do a lot of um media Communications um they work with policy experts in DC to feedback the insights the data on the ground that we gather when we're doing
our petitions and so sometimes we get information from uh USIS where they say this doesn't actually meet the standard and so we consolidate that information and share it back to our policy Partners so that they understand how to make much more rigorous rigorous guidelines for
these criteria we also partnered with philanthropists and so we're partnered with an organization called schmit Futures who um does a lot of work on building communities of stem talent and so um being part of this Coalition you can see Plymouth as a practitioner on
the ground supporting people with these visas we've got policy experts on one side who really support us on um communicating the data that we've gathered to um to push the boundaries of policy and then we have philanthropists who are working to expand the community
of stem individuals who know about these Visa categories and so um yeah and the last one I would add is actually you're um you're asking about what is like the broader impact of what we can achieve and as the practitioners on the ground we are serving hundreds and hundred bits of individuals over the
course of our you know our company's career and that means we will have data about what these people like do who they are what roles they occupy what types of organizations they are starting or joining and we actually will have real time guidance on these are the new
categories of fields that are emerging right when we talk about like Quantum Computing that is like in a rapidly evolving field and we actually are serving some of like the foremost preeminent you know researchers and scientists in that field and so we can
feed those back into like some of these partners and the last partnership that we have are with economists and so Tyler Cowen and the emergent Ventures community at geores masan University they really um can we can deliver with for them over time really important guidance on like here are the
individuals and the impact of all of these immigrants on the country and our like economic impact right and so I think that broader Coalition gives us the opportunity to be able to share information with the broader community and ultimately provide a lot of
transparency around US immigration because what we find is a lot of these Visa categories individuals don't get access to them not because they are not capable but because they don't always have agency around the guide on the information there's like a lack of Education within the market and
historically a lot of that information has only resided amongst you know a handful of practitioners and experts and we want to give any individual much more agency being able to advocate for themselves that these are the categories of visas that are accessible and
available to me and I would like to pursue One path or the other that brings up the uh question of obviously there's a lot of commonalities between the people that you are helping obviously they're they're all extraordinarily bright and and capable what what are some of the problems that your
applicants might face and and how do you and by that I mean uh uh you know both personally and or the category isn't quite right for them H how do you work with them uh and uh ameliorate those problems and and make them fit better into the process oh so one of the more
interesting things that we've done recently is that a lot of technologists don't want to just work for one employer and so you can imagine that you're a brilliant AI researcher or Quantum um physicist and you have multiple job offers and you don't actually just want to work for one employer that fits you
very narrowly in a box and so one of the I think big Innovations at Plymouth is that we've we've broadened access to this route called the 01 agent so the 01 agent is very commonly used in the entertainment industry and so if you're a model or actress or actor you have a
talent agent who manages your Suite of engagements in the US and so you might be doing a film in Colorado and then doing another film in New York and you're moving all um all around the country this is also possible for technologist it's just previously not been advocated for um by um you know
traditional practi iers because it's a little bit more complicated than how you prove out you know your Suite of Engagement and so um it's it's it's amazing for people who have multiple engagements in the US over the course of their career um and so we've supported
individuals to go through this agent route so they have an agent who manages their different contracts and you're not tied to one employer so you can do multiple engagements in the US and so you could be um you know working for open Ai and working for anthropic maybe
they wouldn't let you for like conflict of interests but that is possible with this route which I think is really exciting for individuals who don't want to be tied to just one job which is uh true in the H1B and true with the more traditional 01 route which is the o1
employer I think the other component of the 01 which I think is so undervalued and actually incredible is that if you're not eligible today for an 01 you can become eligible and so when I met with attorneys they told me Point Blank you're not eligible for an1 you're not
extraordinary I got very frustrated by this ouch brutal absolutely brutal and I wanted to know you know I was looking at the criteria and I was like I think I could get a membership I could uh you know do I could author an article um you know on some of the work that I've been
doing but they didn't give me um education around how I could improve my criteria and so um a lot of individuals we work with will come and say like look I've played a critical role for a company that I've worked with that has a lot of venture funding um you know has a
distinguished reputation in the field maybe they've been highly paid in their country so in England the salaries are quite low and so maybe if you're a technologist in the UK you've been paid higher than other individuals in your field but that means you've only got two
out of the eight criteria and you need three and so what we do is we say look you could actually work on your profile to become eligible in the next next two three six months to become eligible for this pathway and so a lot of the work we do is we support individuals to connect
with membership organizations to judging opportunities um we can uh you know support them with guidance around like this is what meets the Press criteria this is what meets the authorship criteria and we've had a lot of individuals in our community come back after three months and say look I've
actually done the work and I'm eligible now and so it it gives people an enormous sense of agency where it's not just no go away we're not going to talk to you it's actually hey we can help you we take a what's possible mindset because a lot of Technology individuals
have very unusual backgrounds you know we've worked with open source developers who don't have the classic status symbol of um you know a previous time like maybe they haven't joined um traditional membership organizations in their field they're an open source developer and so
we really work with them to think about what's possible with their pre-existing portfolio and then support them with um additional ways to become eligible for this pathway and we apply that what's possible mindset with employers like the other side of this is actually the
companies and the employers who are hiring these really talented individuals ultimately the 01 is a work visa and so anyone who is applying for it needs to have a job or multiple jobs if you're doing the agent path and what we uh what we do really well is actually help
employers really think about immigration as a strategic advantage for them and their employe employees because if you are building an exceptional company in these like emerging critical Industries then maybe actually all the talent are you know there's like three critical Engineers that you really want to hire
from Canada or from you know Eastern Europe or somewhere and we can actually help educate and guide the employer to help understand hey for these three different profiles these are the immigration strategies and the sequence of potential visas if they are not eligible for an 01 today that you can
take and work with lth over the course of 3 to 12 months to really be able to help move um a number of talent over and I think that's been like a really big diff an eye opener for a lot of employers who previously the default has been oh if I have a foreign National
that I need to hire I guess I'll wait for the H1B Lottery and for many of the most ambitious individuals both employers and individuals alike that's just not good enough right um that's like kind of leaving people in the dark when it comes to well what if there's an
amazing person that I want to hire in September do I have to now wait until the spring of next year and then you know have single digigit percentage likelihood of that person winning the lottery and that I think is a failure in some ways of our current system as it is
to be able to support some of the most Innovative companies in the field that's one of the central uh ideas when we launched Shamy Ventures was that uh you can work for other people you can uh work from anywhere actually I'm going to get to that in a little bit because that
seems like it might be a trend that might uh slow down people's desire to physically move to the United States um but back to the agent idea um is there any worry that uh they become beholden to the agent no so with the agent actually the agent you don't have you you don't have
an employment engagement with the agent and you don't have any requirements to split um your compensation actually the it the agent's role is to oversee the itinerary and so you can add as many engagements as you want in the I mean up to like uh you know I can't imagine you
doing like a 100 engagements but it actually is possible um and so the agent's role is not one of an employer it's not one of taking compensation and so um we've worked with a number of clients at this point who've we work with a great agent uh on the east coast
and they have a great relationship and the requirement from the individual is to update your itinery when you get new engagements and so the agent a is basically an um uh a memory or record of all the engagements that you have in the US and uh is is the incentive for the
agent is that kind of a top of funnel are most agents uh actually looking to collect a portfolio of Talent on their own like are they VCS what's the background of the agent this is a super new pathway for technologists and so we uh we've seen we haven't seen many um you know new agent
um organizations emerge I think it's a super interesting space for someone to um you know explore I mean you your your practice could be an agent like it's actually not uh it's like very very possible um and I think uh it's very common in the entertainment industry
there doesn't hundreds and hundreds of Agents um in the uh technology and business industry there's not that many and so one of the things that we've been working on is basically uh supporting entertainment agents who are interested in expanding their practice to technology professionals because they
have a lot of experience working on agent petitions but you know I'd love to see a whole host of new agents emerge because I think there's a really smart strategy here as you identified for VC firms um Talent aggregators is communities who are really interested in
this group of people the difference there though of course is that entertainment agents uh traditionally take a percentage of their client's earnings what other than the idea that uh it might be very wise for a BC to to collect Talent right what other incentives and or business model if you
will uh could you build around the case for becoming an agent for these brilliant uh potential immigrants yeah so we've seen there's like a one-time fee so people pay for this agency service um and then I think there's tons of different models that you could do you know you could do an Isa model you
could do a percentage of earnings um you know I don't love those models yeah I think one of the most compelling things about that is for individuals it's a recruit it's almost like a recruiting opportunity right and so there are you must meet with thousands of individuals
right like a a traditional venture capitalist meets with a thousand plus individuals every year you only really get to invest in a handful of Founders now that being said there are probably hundreds of other really competent exceptional individuals that you want to
keep you know um um around like in your network and community and maybe one of the biggest value like quote unquote value ads right of like a really great investor is helping you hire or connect you with like the really with really great talent and I think um if someone
were to explore the o1 agent like business model there is I I truly think one of the most valuable things you could do is connect them to like the next critical hire right and is that actually a model that you can explore when it comes to sharing with your Founders like hey we can actually serve
as an agent if there's this really amazing engineer or technical hire that might want to work with a couple of different portfolio companies at a given moment in time uh there's something really interesting there I think worth exploring the idea of the agent
collecting talent I think is interesting um but back to back to uh your company you from my looking at all the research on on you guys guys are doing an amazing job but you're doing a very highly individualized service right it seems to me at least uh how let's say
you're incredibly successful how does this scale yeah so I think that's one of the most exciting things that we're building at Plymouth we both come from technology backgrounds we were Venture investors and so we are um very cognizant of this idea of scaling um our core product and
so we went to Market supporting individuals um and so they have smbs like small small companies that we're working with um behind the scenes we've built a very uh sophisticated technology platform that can currently do 01 and eb1 visas um much faster than uh providers in the market now over time
our you know our vision is to become an all-in-one platform for employers across the country to power their immigration services and so um this year we're expanding to other Visa categories and so we're supporting individuals with TN h-1bs um l1s and there are a suite of
green card categories that we're excited by and I think that the innovation in this space is how do we advance um how can we scale something that has previously been unscalable Min and I both come from backgrounds where we've explored uh workflow tools uh very uh
We've studied them as students and we've been like okay we we can understand the secret Source behind this and so to not give away our secrets a lot of our um company is powered by technology it's a humanin thee Loop product but we have really broken down the different
components of um these Visa categories and we've uh built technology that really solves a lot of these challenges something we do really uniquely is in some ways we need the domain expertise of like our attorneys that we work with but one of the insights we had was you
know a a good portion of the Visa preparation and application process is really comes down to data management document collection and a lot of things that can be addressed with better software right and we don't have priors of How It's been done before because we don't have you know four years of law
school and six years of working inside of a law firm and how you know senior attorneys and pargal like to work and so we were able to approach the problem from like a very first principles like how would you do this today net knew and the answer to that ultimately became oh
well you're stitching together a process that is a 100 steps you know what point a is and you know what the final output's supposed to be so let's work backwards and actually where are are the levers where we can deploy automations and be really smart about how we make
this experience more smooth for the end user right the ultimate customer was applying for this and so um yeah there's about I like to say there's about 20% of the company that customers and other individuals see and then there's about 80% under the iceberg uh that most
people don't see and that is actually where a lot of our Innovations are happening where um it is that stitching together of all the different processes and leveraging software and building our own technology to be able to do so much more efficiently you can think of power like
you might have seen like stripe Atlas as a product or Turbo Tax is an older version of this you know you only see the tip of the iceberg as a user of this product and behind the scenes there's this Cascade of uh action that's happening behind the scenes to really uh
uh Drive the process forward yeah as I was uh preparing for our chat uh um I went right there because I've invested in quite a bit of AI startups and so I've got that up in the brain I just think okay so this could be really really helped significantly by building out a uh a
background structur bottom of the iceberg as you put it um but I'm also a pretty big believer in human in the loop right I think senar models for AI IE manom plus machine are going to ultimately at least for the next few years be the ones that really uh distinguishing themselves uh rather
than just purely automated or or purely human uh one of one of the aspects that I really took away from this is It's a pretty emotional process for people and and can take a pretty big uh emotional toll I would guess how do you how do you deal with that what are your
strategies it's uh such a good question because the problem we're solving is such a human one uh I think it's one of the biggest challenges someone faces is their immigration journey and um we are very mindful of individuals having access to someone that they can
communicate with around their visa status and every step of their Journey one of the things when we were exploring um how to solve this problem was is how can we do it better than what's existing on traditional providers you know we weren't going to come in if the service
was uh already good one of the biggest challenges is transparency so traditional practitioners don't tell you um exactly the status of your petition at any given time the steps moving forward um you know the likelihood of success uh what's possible mindset of what where is that agency around your
petition and what you can do and so I think coming at this problem with with much more empathy of individuals in who are going through this process you know men and I are both immigrants to America and so we're really mindful of uh you know how stressful and how alone this
problem can make you feel and we come as a partner we want to be your guide so you should never be in the dark about what's happening your story how it's being told and ultimately having full agency over the outcome of your of your case um and so that's something that
we're really mindful of like infusing our product with empathy and uh you know uh being much more human about this process than cold uh you know transactional uh information over email the flip side to that I will say on the emotional front is we also have the privilege of supporting people who
are genuinely so brilliant right if anything it's such an honor to be able to say hey let us take this extremely complex annoying often times frustrating process away from you let us abstract that away ensure that you feel held throughout the process in the right ways
and then you know knock on wood you know when we succeed we get to celebrate that with them and it's such a gratifying exciting moment to be able to say hey you you did this right and you were able to actually succeed and now you get to continue doing your best work and so I
think we're really mindful of ensuring that the experience is really um like cared for and then ultimately I think uh you know there are low days and hard days but you know the good days are like really really special and such a privilege and and you both seem incredibly tuned in to to that side of
it um and I've often found that mistakes are a learning Rich environment talk about some of the uh missteps or mistakes uh that might have happened and and what you learned from them and and how you changed your process because of that learning gosh this goes this is like
company building insights right um there's so many I mean one that comes top of mind I think that least and I care a lot about is the type of team that we build and I think you know we've been operating limits for about 15 14 15 months now and we've been really
intentional about the kind like H how we hire who we hire how do we set up those individuals for success and I think a painful lesson that we both had to learn early on was there's a Trope in startup culture around um like fire fast when someone is not working out and I think
that was something that we like learned firsthand just around um yeah it is true like if someone is it's not this isn't like a enjoyable process or anyone involved and we want to be really really thoughtful about how we do that and ensuring that we've set that person Max
up for success but um it is a tried and true lesson I think in you know companyb building lore and that's one that I think we've been really thoughtful about not repeating to the best of our ability yeah that I've started several companies and uh luckily I learned that
fairly early and I the strategy I would use would be to basically sit with the person and say it's not you it's just a question of the fit and uh you know you're probably gonna fit somewhere else much much better um I had I had a friend who was a little more costic than me uh
who used to he joked that when he was uh having those conversations he he would give him one chance and and he said I would say uh we're gonna have this conversation one more time and then you're gonna have it somewhere else with someone else I'm like John whoa um but it it does seem to me that
um boy where you live and work um is is kind of like the heart and soul and so I'm really happy to hear that uh you're doing that as well but what about on the other side what about on your client side um how how do you break the news if they don't get um the visa do you give
them next steps what's the process so we've been really lucky where all our o1 been approved um and so we haven't had to face that challenge um yet um we do anticipate it happening at some point um I think we have spent a lot of time crafting a product that is
as extraordinary as the individuals that we're serving and so we take very deliberate steps to support individuals um and ensure that the quality of work matches the quality of their story we really are refining that um I think on the customer side you know when we do face that outcome um there is always a
plan of action moving forward you don't want to be stuck in a position where you know okay well I didn't get it what can I do now and so really mapping out someone's journey and thinking through steps two three and four you know an immigrant's journey is not just a Visa
one point in time often they're thinking about their long-term strategy and the great thing about the o1 is if you're not eligible today you can reapply like that's totally possible um you know there's also other categories that you can apply for and so um it's taking that
guide um mentality that we have at Plymouth it's like we are your guides and so you know if this outcome is not favorable we will work with you to think about best strategies moving forward so that you're not alone in your immigration Journey you can probably hear it and how we talk about it but in our like
customer OB Obsession something that we drive home across like our entire team and ourselves is our our success is actually helping the customers get to the Finish Line right it isn't just when the application goes out to USCIS and we throw our hands up and say oh it's out
of our hands it's like no actually like the final outcome and ensuring that this individual is knows exactly what the next steps are in their visa journey in their immigration Journey like that is ultimately our success I just can't help doing it when I when I look at then and
have the uh a wonderful uh opportunity to chat with brilliant people like yourselves I also kind of look at the business model aspect of it and and one of the things that I noted as I was getting ready to chat with you was it seems to me that you uh are you face in
what you're doing a number of external shocks over which you have like really no control uh policies uh change and administrations come and go um you know what's your what's your way of facing that uh in terms of like all of these externalities again which you have zero
control over is it just agility yeah I think it comes back to our agency mindset um you know we've built a coalition so to talk about these externalities you know is there another another Administration that's not very favorable to the type of immigration that we're advoca a in for we've
actually seen a lot of policy progress there to make it a bipartisan issue and really advocating for more Nuance about around this immigration conversation because ultimately immigration is America's superpower and that's the core of what we believe at Plymouth and can
we change a broader conversation around you know acknowledging that these individuals are powering progress they're powering technology progress economic progress scientific progress how can we Elevate those individuals and showcase their talents um about around what they're bringing to America and so
I think uh there is movement there and what we do is build this coalition to really support um some of the challenges uh there too there is a recognition that um on the product side you know there could be delays in people's immigration processing and so we're mindful of
ensuring that our um transparency to our customers is around what's in our hands versus what's in the processing hands of the government and there are mechanisms that we can have in place to really speed up um if there are unreasonable delays um so that's something that we're
mindful of the other side of it I think just in terms of like plys e um like macro environment is we currently serve a lot of like startup and like fast growing technology companies but in success we are not we don't only want to serve the technology industry there are
technologists that go into many many other Industries right we're seeing Innovations in manufacturing and semi conductors in biotech in all sorts of these new fields and in success something that we think a lot about is we're not just Coastal Elites supporting a bunch of other Coastal Elites like we
really want this to be we are powering like America's progress right like we're powering like Global progress by ensuring that the very best the best have the flexibility and ability to move to the destination they want to whatever the best Visa is them is for them and I
think that hopefully you know over the long run irrespec of administration changes policy changes that is hopefully a vision that we can all get behind that the best of the best like deserve and have earned the right to be able to build where they want to go and um that
goes beyond just startups and Tech totally and again you're preaching to the choir here so um you know I I could not support what you're doing more fully um how do you think about things like you know I I would think like how could they have any opposition at all
but there it is there seems to be a Doomer mentality that is uh it's thank God it's not the dominant one but it certainly exists and and then there's other factors again over which you have no control like if the US went into recession for example would you think it would be
harder to get these exceptional people or would actually that be a plus for you as it's like okay we're in a recession but look what's one of the best ways out of a recession is to load up the country with all these super smart people but then other things like data privacy and
uh you know potential legal challenges I guess what I'm asking is these to me all seem like risks how do you Dr risk for those we've thought a lot about drisking I mean we're Founders first and foremost and so um without getting too into the weed we prioritize them accordingly
where we have set up the Coalition of experts around us so that they can also help us be educated around upcoming changes in the environment that we operate in right our um attorney partners and legal experts around the table this isn't the first time they've
faced Administration challenges policy changes if anything Lisa and I are constantly learning from them because they've been in the industry for so long and we when we see something new they go oh that happened five years ago this is like what the aftershocks were this is
something to expect and I think we have the benefit of building on the shoulders of giants right and so when we think about drisking the business um we have a responsibility to our customers like first and foremost to ensure that the core product that we promis them gets
delivered and then the macro environment changes that happen I think um we've kind of set the stage for ourselves to be able to play defense when we need to yeah and I think in terms of like we in terms of the the several risks you know legal expertise we've brought on the
best attorneys that uh have supported this group of people who have over a decade of experience in the field the Coalition we've built up on the policy and the economic side so that we can really track the impact at a broader conversation level around the talent that we're bringing in on the recession
side totally hear you around like some of the impact on employers who slow down hiring this group of people on the flip side that does create an opportunity for small businesses to grow and so we see a lot of immigrant tal Talent immig um innovating and building new technology
companies um and you have to be much more uh strategic around the types of capital you bring on maybe you move faster to actually get uh customer revenue and so uh you know 55% of immigrant um unicorns are built by immigrants and some of the best companies are built during recession so
we're seeing some of um some of that opportunity as well and so you know men and I as Founders we think about risks constantly I think it's one of our biggest jobs as uh as company Founders like what are the risks at play and so we've thought about drisking the legal
component we thought about drisking the policy and the economics component I think in the recession side a lot of our customers are innovators at the startup level as I was looking at you I was kind of thinking well what what's next uh it seems to me that uh with uh all the data
that you're collecting you could build out a a business that was like here are the global Trends in employment um and that could be a subscription service um I I love the way you're World building and and bringing in the the right partners and everything what what do you think could
derail uh because I I I think I might be a little captive of my priors here but I kind of feel like we're reaching a tipping point and people are maybe returning to sanity about uh gee I wonder what is controversal about letting these super brilliant people
come and live and work and if even if you're the government most importantly pay taxes here 55% uh as you note of the Unicorn Founders immigrants that is cons historically consistent by the way you can go all the way back to some of the greatest companies in this country and
the that number doesn't change what what do you see or do you see anything on the horizon that derails this I think the question is do immigrants want to come and I think that has been the messaging um at a uh Global level around is America open for business and we saw
previously um quite intense messaging uh saying you know America is not open for business um in lots of ways for these high skilled immigrants uh we have other countries Canada the UK a lot of Eastern European countries Portugal innovating um in Immigration strategies to recruit
and retain the best and the brightest and so can America revamp its messaging as the home of immigrants like that is America's core uh superpower and one of our Missions at Plymouth is to advocate for this and to change the conversation to say yes there are Visa Pathways for
you to come and build these extraordinary companies our mission is to accelerate technological progress by enabling the movement of Highly skilled Talent globally we still believe and we fundamentally believe that America is the best place to build the access to cap capital the access to Talent the
access to these extraordinary resources that you have here and so I think being part of a larger conversation and this conversation is is a great example of just spreading that message and really encouraging um the message that America is open for business because that
ultimately is a cultural shift and that's a big thing that I think you're right I I agree where we're at this Tipping Point where we get to choose what does it mean to redefine what America stands for right and part of why we want to highlight so many of the customers and the individuals that we
support and the companies is because so much of that cultural identity I think has been mixed up over the last you know two decades or so and in being able to showcase this is what America stands for this is what the face of innovation look like and these are the individuals who
are actually bringing upon that change I think will be a huge mitigating effect hopefully and being able to shift the cultural conversation in the direction of we can all agree that progress is great and progress is good for America and ultimately that continues to help
America be the destination because glomeration effects I'm sure you've seen like are really real and if we don't defend it then we run the risk of losing it and I think that's like kind of this pivotal era that we're living through where we have the opportunity to be able
to ensure that this Remains the destination for many of the best amen I mean you're again like I say you're preaching to the choir here I think it's uh it's a an amazingly important thing for people to you know you you wanna you want to be on the right side here and we've got and I
shouldn't put it that way other people's opinions are doesn't necessarily make them on the wrong side but uh your use of the American open for business I mean that's a great tagline because we really do still enjoy this ridiculous advantage over virtually all other countries and
currently at least but you know there I I suspect that many are not going to let the grass grow underneath their feet and they're going to come up with I mean you know like in much the same way the state of Texas used to have a cier service for businesses moving from
California to to Texas they got very very aggressive and I it just seemed weird to me that boy You' think that every state would want the smartest best people in the world to be living and and working there um and and yet that that isn't always the case have you been at
all affected by the current Kur fuffle going on around Dei in this country and or does that not touch your particular type applicant no I think High agency people today and the company and the employers hiring them they want competent people who can build and we're ultimately just
doing that and so we haven't bumped up against any of that particular cultural conversation I have a a a very clever British friend named George Mack um who has this razor where he says if you if you see something on Reddit it might be interesting and actionable because
you're early if you see it on LinkedIn you're way too late um where do you how do you skape to uh I don't I'm not a sports guy but I think there's the famous uh saying skate to where the puck is not not where it has been H how do you align your business with that kind of
attitude the attitude of uh like of sort of of sort of seeing how how do you uh uh gather your knowledge for what's next and then potentially augment the way you present Your Service uh to your clients yeah so I think um you know we started in the market with lots of small
uh businesses startups that need support for their Founders one of the things we're super excited by is enabling companies as they grow just think of um recruiting Talent as a strategy and immigration as a strategy um we've seen immigration being um the the uh in HR
and uh like you know in legal departments and being very confusing and very difficult and for a Founder The most important thing is your talent of your company how can you recruit and retain the very best and we think immigration if you are as a as a company amazing at immigration you've really
figured out your policy your provider you're thinking about it as a talent Recruitment and Retention strategy then that is um a superpower and that's where your competitive Advantage is and so one of the things we're doing is working with a lot of employers to understand um
how to be much more creative around their visa Pathways how they can attract the very best talent into internationally and this is particularly true for Fields where there's Fierce competition for talent and so we work with a lot of AI companies who um you know have specialist roles and if you
can provide a suite of uh services for um this group of people thinking through their immigration as a strategy you know they might come over on a J1 or an 01 but longterm they want to get the green card and you can provide that package it's much more desirable for talent and
so um yeah to date we've been working with a lot of small startups over time we want to work with America's best employers to really support immigration as a strategy um and ensuring that this is a top priority for those individuals would a natural extension uh be to also get into the head Hing
business and and kind of package it up that way you know there are lots of extensible opportunities when you have a captive audience of customers I think at the end of the day we will listen to what our customers need right that's how we've sequenced the different categories
of visas um outside of the o1 and the eb1 where we've heard from our customers to say oh actually I have amazing talent from Canada can we do a TN I have this amazing individuals who won the lottery but they're stuck at their last company and what's the fastest path to helping
them you know navigate to my startup and Beyond I think yes there are recruiting opportunities for us opportunities to work with um other integration providers just around employment right like lots of HR tools often need immigration data around what segment what portion of
their employee base come from different countries if there is some event in those countries like how do you best help navigate those uh those employees to a different different location or different Visa if needed we see a lot of exciting opportunities down the road um
even just around the core technology that we build right if part of our mission is to help lots of other people access these EA categories there's a world where some of like the proprietary you know tools that we're building they don't have to necessarily be propri to
us if that's not actually necessarily the differentiating factor that helps Plymouth win um then um you know analogy of Amazon built AWS for themselves and then eventually repackaged it for lots of other technology companies there are opportunities I think for us in that domain as
well because at the core of it it's m um in like the most high skill talent to opportunity and we're doing that with immigration but there's a ton of different uh opportunities there to ensure that high skll Talent is working on the most um maximumly ambitious uh projects that can really have
technological progress I love it um do you have plans for um you know nonstem Geniuses are its riters other right brained types uh uh do you do you see your process being um extendable to to those different categories 100% yeah we have some amazing um like there are you need great
uh commercial leaders at organizations you need amazing people who are um writers content creators um we haven't dipped our toes directly into the entertainment industry but because we are borrowing some of their best practices there's no reason that I down
the road um you know we're quite excited by the different types of talent that emerge and ultimately at our core uh we want to serve like really great talent and where that takes us might be in all sorts of creative Endeavors what about the growing Trend uh of work from anywhere as I mentioned
earlier uh sh C Ventures we have a work from anywhere policy so our team members are distributed globally we have many in uh India we have people in Africa literally all over the map um do you think that um the idea that you don't that you can change your digital zip
code a lot easier than your physical one do you think that that impacts uh people's desires to physically move and come to this country so there's a lot of companies that can offer that and work very successfully um maybe I can share some insights from our customers we we
worked with a company called Lindy AI which is focusing on building um AI agents um for customer workflows and they actually had a fully remote policy and so during covid their team was spread out all across the world and they realized actually that when they
were doing team on-sites they were just far more productive in person and because they're building quite sophisticated technology it requires a lot of different conversations that they were having in person to move much faster um so Lindy actually brought over three individuals very quickly and we
supported them to come back because they were bucking this trend of remote working we've actually seen that happen with a lot of uh companies recently especially in San Francisco where they're seeing that you know at the startup stage being in person means that
you can move much significantly faster on your product progress and so we actually feel like there is a trend against remote work at least for the customers we serve um as opposed to uh an increasing desire for these individuals to work remotely um we've also seen that with some of our other
customers they have brilliant Engineers um in Europe and in Asia and they're desperate to bring their Engineers over and they've been told that you know the H1B is a lottery ticket system and so we do a lot of Education to provide an alternative pathway for them and so you
know I think remote work has brought huge benefits and I'm not against remote work I think that it is suited for types of certain types of companies for our customer segment we're actually seeing more people want to be in person and so that's a a benefit for Plymouth so what's next you've had uh um incredible
success uh over your the short period that you've been doing this well short nearly two years um H what do you hope to build on that and and is this what you want to do are you doing your life's work here as my son would ask people uh or or do you see this um uh as a
stepping stone to either an expansion of the company itself or potentially uh an exit uh through sale I think we're really lucky but I think Lisa and I are doing our life's work we've spent our entire careers working on finding them exceptional Talent supporting them through their
Journey right I think in some ways unlocking really talented people at various junctures of their career this is very much one of the most critical ones immigration um this 2024 will be an exciting year for scaling lus and so that's like a big part of our focus in terms of we have an
amazing team we have some amazing customers and we want to really just drive home the fact that like we're here like Plymouth is ready our our doors are open and we want to be able to serve thousands of individuals over the course of the next 12 months and that will take
a lot of work for us uh Lis and I will be very busy this year um but I think that um we have this incredible Foundation that we now get to scale our impact and you know over the course of 10 20 years uh we don't plan on going anywhere so I think really it comes back
to the question you just asked earlier around what are the expansionary opportunities that will reveal themselves to us over the course of you know the subsequent many years yeah I think with Plymouth you know we our mission is to accelerate technological progress by enabling
highly skilled talent to move globally that mission is not going to be fulfilled in the next year the year after we're going to get very uh much closer um we can see ourselves you know a decade out still being very excited by this Mission we've taken on a huge very complex problem to solve and we're just
we still feel like every single day is like at the beginning of what's possible um and so you know men and I have spent our careers in Venture and talent investing this is a natural extension and we get to solve such a meaningful problem for our customers and take that
to scale and can't think of a more exciting mission to work on every single day well I I you can certainly count me among your many fans who are rooting for you to succeed Beyond Your Wildest wildest imaginations because your success Beyond Your Wildest imagination
means success for the country and to the people that you're bringing over so it what I love about what you're doing is it's such a win-win uh category and uh gosh I wish I wish more people uh not wishing you competition but I wish more people would be trying to facilitate this because
it's such a to me at least it's it's such an obvious unlock that we have put a bunch of padlocks on that don't belong there and I'm I'm delighted to see that that you are both doing this and and succeeding at it uh how do people find you we are online at Plymouth street.com
you can find us also the two of us on Twitter and Linkedin um we fairly easy to Google uh but if anyone is interested or exploring these different Visa categories that we discussed with you um you can just drop us a line on our website well uh let me encourage all of
our listeners and viewers if you uh are an exceptional Talent uh in in the these fields run don't uh walk to their website because uh I think that this is an extraordinary time I think we're entering the exponential age I am delighted that I'm still around to see
it um and if you've listened to other episodes of uh podcast uh Lisa and Min you know that at the end you you both are going to get a turn on this so we're g to get four really great inceptions uh but we're going to make each of you uh emperor of the world and uh you can't
kill anybody you can't put anyone in a re-education camp but you can take a magical microphone and speak two things into it that will incept all eight billion people in the world everyone that wakes up tomorrow is going to wake up and think I've just had two of the
greatest ideas and I'm gonna act on them the idea of agency being very very important so men let's start start with you uh what two things are you going to incept into the world's population it is always a good time to write an email to someone you respect and admire and tell them how they change
your life that's one and then the second is everyone should think about having healthy happy families and how to build them love the other American Dream totally agree Lisa so I think the one is write every single day write down your thoughts write down might be for you it
might end up being for many but make that a practice um and the second is you may be you may feel replaceable at work but you'll never replaceable with your family wow I love all four of those and I think uh in addition to the wonderful work you are doing uh helping people
come over here and innovate and and build a better future those would be great for things the world would become a a much much better place if we could inculcate that kind of behavior and those kinds of thoughts listen thank you so much for coming on I'm a huge believer in what you're doing and I wish
you the absolute best success that that uh that you can achieve I think I think you are going to uh get much further than you maybe even you think so I'm I'm delighted uh with what you're doing Jim it's been a privilege thank you so much for having us thank you so much