Naveen Jain: One of Immigrants Who Have Made Successful Startups
Naveen Jain, founder and CEO of Bellevue, Washington-based information commerce firm Intelius, is one of the many immigrants who have tested their mettle in the United States and were able to make it to the top. Based on a study released in 2006, many of the people who have founded publicly traded American companies are foreign-born. The study was commissioned by the National Venture Capital Association, and prepared by the National Foundation for American Policy in collaboration with Content First, a full service research company based in Washington, D.C. The study demonstrated that foreign-born people have founded one out of four public, venture-capital-backed firms. Immigrant entrepreneurs have attested to the fact that penetrating venture capitalists was not easy, thus more determination and hard work were required of them for these venture capitalists to back them up. The study further showed that top states for immigrant firms included California with 62%; followed by Massachusetts (14%), New Jersey (6%), Texas (3%), and Washington (3%). Additionally, majority of these immigrants came from India (32%); and then followed by Israel and Taiwan. These people who have immigrated to the United States as adults and created their companies were shown to possess high education in the fields of math, engineering, and science, as evidenced by around 87% of immigrant firms falling into the industry sectors of high-tech manufacturing, information technology, and life sciences. Naveen Jain articulated that immigrants, especially Indians, are inclined to be hard workers considering the steep competition. Naveen Jain recounted coming to America with only $10 inside his pocket. After working for Microsoft for seven years, Jain founded InfoSpace in 1996. He then founded Intelius in 2003 and the company has now become one of the top 100 commerce sites on the net. Intelius offers information to customers for their everyday decisions.