Why Are Immigrants More Entrepreneurial?

*A couple of takeaways from this article. There are more than just millionaire immigrant entrepreneurs, the majority run small community businesses and employ a handful of workers. Also, The entrepreneurial spirit is strong in the Latino community. VL

By Peter Vandor and Nikolaus Franke, Harvard Business Review (6.5 minute read)

What do Arianna Huffington (Huffington Post), Dietrich Mateschitz (Red Bull), Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX), and Sergey Brin (Google) have in common? Apart from their success as entrepreneurs, they all share one distinct characteristic: extensive cross-cultural experience. Huffington grew up in Athens and studied in London before starting her career as a politician and media entrepreneur. Mateschitz spent considerable time overseas as a marketing salesman prior to founding Red Bull. Musk migrated from South Africa to the U.S. as young adult. Brin left the Soviet Union with his family after facing growing anti-Semitism and moved to the U.S., where he later cofounded Google.

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Their stories are prominent examples of a widespread pattern. In the U.S., immigrants are almost twice as likely to become entrepreneurs as native-born U.S. citizens. Immigrants represent 27.5% of the countries’ entrepreneurs but only around 13% of the population. Similarly, about one-fourth of all technology and engineering companies started in the U.S. between 2006 and 2012 had at least one immigrant cofounder. And this pattern extends beyond the U.S. — data from the 2012 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor showed that the vast majority of the 69 countries surveyed reported higher entrepreneurial activity among immigrants than among natives, especially in growth-oriented ventures. READ MORE