ODDBIRD

Nearly Half of US Unicorn Founders Were Born Outside the US. Immigrants are crucial for US innovation: our research revealed that 65 countries (apart from the US) have produced at least one founder of a US unicorn. Here is the list of countries with 10 or more US unicorn founders by continent: • Europe: The United Kingdom leads with 31 founders, followed by Germany (18), France (17), Russia (14), Ukraine (12), and Ireland (10). • Asia: India leads with 90 founders, followed by Israel (52), China (27), and Taiwan (12). • Africa: No countries with 10+ founders. South Africa leads with 5. • (South and North) America: Canada leads with 42 founders. There are no countries in South America with 10+ founders; Brazil has 9 founders. (For clarity, the US is excluded from this table.) • Australasia: No countries with 10+ founders. Australia and New Zealand produced 8 and 6 founders, respectively. What drives immigrants to be such successful founders? What policies could help increase their contribution even more? Share your opinion in the comments! Note: This research focused exclusively on founders of US-based unicorns born outside the United States of America. A special thank you to the Stanford University Graduate School of Business Venture Capital Initiative.

I’m thrilled to announce the launch of apna Canvas, a centralized platform connecting over 2 crore freshers from 22,000+ colleges across 2,500 cities with 700,000+ organizations to transform campus hiring in India. With 4.1 million students graduating each year, apna Canvas fills the crucial gap by enabling companies to efficiently assess, filter, and hire candidates through skills-based assessments and competitive challenges, saving time and resources. Reaching diverse talent is a challenge in fresher hiring, and our partnerships with AICTE, TPO/Placement Cells, and a robust social media network provide unparalleled access to candidates from tier-2 and tier-3 cities. Brands like PwC, Swiggy, and PhonePe are already leveraging apna Canvas to engage top talent through competitions and interactive events, enhancing their on-campus brand presence. This is just the beginning, and we’re excited to create more opportunities for both freshers and companies through this platform. Here’s to transforming the hiring landscape in India, one hire at a time! Kudos to the entire team that made this possible!  Karna Chokshi Abhijeet Anand Priyank Mehta Ronak Shah Ranjith J N Yogeshwari Chandrawat Ravi Bhatia Tanmay Desai #AcceleratingIndia #NationBuilders #apnaCanvas

Excited to announce our fundraise at Mstack! Growing up in a family that relied on a small manufacturing setup, I have always been passionate about building in this space. At Mstack, we are building a truly global platform for specialty chemicals enabling cross border manufacturing and innovation. This fundraise allows us to scale our operations in the USA and beyond, invest in breakthrough R&D initiatives, and build a world-class team to commercialize cutting-edge chemistries that set new standards. Grateful to Prateek for taking a bet on this mission with me and super proud of our India team, led by him. Also grateful to our rockstar team in the USA led by Don, Friedrich, Michael, and Neha. Having seen Bejul operate at Lightspeed closely, I couldn’t have asked for a better day-zero investor, constantly pushing us to do what's right. Gaurav and Vivek have been incredible thought partners throughout this journey. Also, excited to welcome Navroz, Arjun, Pankaj, and Kanishk from Alphawave, who truly understand our vision to Mstack. Special thanks to our angels: Dr. Deepak, Cem, Fethi , Amit, Suyog, Maninder, Vaibhav, and Annelies Vansh Krishna Dipak Siddharth Ajay Mohit Sarathy Iyengar

I am happy to announce today that my new Kids' AI company, Heeyo(heeyo.ai) is launching today and got 3.5M seed from OpenAI startup fund, Amazon Alexa Fund, Pear VC, Charge Ventures, StoryHouse Ventures and other top VCs and angels. TechCrunch did a review today and hopefully we did ok! (https://lnkd.in/gxQEAkUW) Growing up in China, I was fascinated with building paper airplanes, especially ones that could perform flips in the air. However, my parents weren't experts in aerodynamics, and my teachers were too busy to provide me with the guidance I needed to explore this passion. That’s why I wanted to build an AI that can help provide every single kid with their own dedicated coach and playmate that can chat with them and help the kids learn. While 81% of U.S. households with children own tablets, popular AI apps like ChatGPT, Character AI, and Claude do not serve children under 13. Heeyo aims to fill that gap by providing COPPA-compliant, age-appropriate AI friends for children, helping them learn and grow! Kids can choose or design their own AI friend to interact with. We offer over 2,000 interactive games and activities, including books, trivia, and role-playing adventures. Parents and children can also create their own learning games, whether it's Bible trivia or a truck treasure hunt. Our goal is to empower 1 billion kids to accomplish their wildest dreams leveraging AI, and we couldn't be more excited for what's ahead! If you have kids, would love to have you try our app at https://www.heeyo.ai/ Thank you our investors Ian, Brett, Mar, Pejman, Benny, Howard, Miles T., David, Chris, Andrew, Andrew, "Dr.V", Ada, Weston, Alexander, Jaggie and others.