The VC Backing the American Dream with Manan Mehta, Unshackled Ventures

0:00We love it. We love celebrating the guys or gal, the team that was bet against, against all odds. That's what we talk about. That's where all the wealth is created. Right? So any structural gap that you can find and solve for gives you an structural advantage. But at the end of the day, these people, whoever they are, all entrepreneurs, they're doing it because they want to build something. So don't give them concessionary dollars. Give them dollars that can actually accelerate them, that you care about a lot. Right. Because when money's on the line, we all care more.

0:32Isabelle Johannesen: That was Manan Mehta, co-founder and managing partner of Unshackled Ventures. More than a decade ago, Manan set out to solve a problem he'd experienced firsthand. That talented immigrant founders were being overlooked, not because of their ideas, but because of structural barriers like visa restrictions, limited networks and a lack of access to early capital. Since then, Unshackled Ventures has built a first-of-its-kind model that helps immigrant entrepreneurs overcome those obstacles, backing founders before most investors are willing to take a chance. Manon's hot take is that venture capital's reliance on pattern matching is making them miss out on potential rocket ship founders.

1:12Isabelle Johannesen: He shares his rubric for evaluating founders before they've even built a product, and why resilience, purpose, and lived experience often matter more than a perfect pitch. I'm Isabel Johannesson, and you're listening to Build Mode, and this season, we're taking a look inside the fundraise. Hi, Manon. How's it going? Doing well. How are you? Good. Long time no see. I think we figured it's been about three years. It's not bad, but I mean, it's good to see you again. I'm happy to be here, so thank you. I'm glad you're here. To kick things off, I'd love to get a refresher on your story and how and why you founded Unshackled Ventures.

1:45Yeah, it's a great question, and thank you for having me again and asking that question. I mean, so much of what I went through, born and raised in Silicon Valley in the 80s and 90s, made me feel like an outsider, right? And so in some ways, I was your prototypical Indian kid, immigrant kid, where I was good at math and science. But I was blessed with a little bit of talent in sports. And the 80s and 90s, there were not a lot of Indian kids playing sports, specifically in the Bay Area. And, you know, I was playing baseball in high school, where my high school nickname was Bombay from my head coach.

2:19I got recruited by Yale for a hot minute and then didn't want to play there. Instead, I wanted to walk onto the baseball program over at UCLA. And in trying out for the baseball program at UCLA, I overheard a head coach when he saw me ask, where is this kid's flat stick? Where's my cricket bat? This is early 2000s, right? And so these experiences at the moment, they really inform just a little bit of your adversity muscle, your tolerance. It put a chip on my shoulder. And so my career kind of went on. I got two degrees at UCLA, joined a dance team, won a national title doing that. That was a lot of fun.

2:53I'm very competitive. But then I, you know, fast forward into my professional career. And, you know, I was an investment banker for a few years, then joined a company to do marketing, got acquired by Intel. And then I tried to start a company with an immigrant co-founder, somebody that was on at the time an H-1B visa. We went out, you know, I was able to go full-time. I quit my job. I didn't have to think about work authorization or visas or any of those things. And I went out and started talking to a bunch of angels and early-stage VCs, and I explained to them that my co-founder couldn't quit his job until we funded him, right?

3:30We had to sponsor his visa. What I heard back from a number of folks was some version of, don't the best immigrants find a way? It reminded me a lot of what I heard on the baseball diamond. right? There was some form of pattern bias or recognition, however you want to cut it. And that really trumped all curiosity and went to judgment. And so it was in that moment that I remembered all these past experiences. And at the time, I thought, what better way to solve the problem than be the signal that other people follow? So when Shackle was born 11 years ago, with the idea that if you can help illegible people become legible, you can back them before anyone else, you can make a difference.

4:09And here we are, right? I get to unshackle people in industries by being the first.

4:15Isabelle Johannesen: Wow. What a journey. I've seen all different angles of the founder journey and I'm sure many of the challenges on the way. I love that you mentioned sort of this pattern matching aspect. And I think that's how a lot, if not most, of VCs make decisions, right? How can they back founders who look like the last founder that made them a lot of money? and what does that cost the industry and what does it cost the founders who are on the other side of that who may not fit that mold? So, I mean, I'll start with the personal philosophy. I think the highest form of intellect is curiosity, right? And whether you subscribe to things like Daniel Kahneman talking about system one, system two behaviors or you believe in just discovering new things, if you take a shortcut on discovery, what you're actually seeking is familiarity.

5:01And in Silicon Valley, familiarity on a previous pattern is just a tax. It just means a higher entry point, a higher valuation. A higher valuation means a bigger check to get the same ownership. A bigger check means a bigger percent of your fund. A bigger percent of your fund, the more fearful you get, right? You can't be wrong as much. So before you know it, the consequence of familiarity is that you get really safe, you increase the price, you make less bets, you discover less talent. And by the time you're done, it's really hard to make money, right? And so it's something that I think the psychology of money would tell you is when you want to buy fancy, expensive shoes, right?

5:38The more expensive they get, the smaller your market gets. But if you can get something that you love wearing, that is the right price, you might spend more time with them. And I think that's the same thing with startup investing, right? And I think if we don't take a hard look at the consequence of familiarity tax, we end up where we are today, which is a venture system that feels broken to a lot of people. It's very concentrated. And the very few funds that do discover talent really aren't doing it at a price to make sense. And so as a consequence, you don't see a lot of new people breaking in and people look for safety stuff.

6:13And that's familiarity. Yeah.

6:15Isabelle Johannesen: And I think I would definitely want to come back to this idea of some of the broken VC ecosystem. But I also want to go back to this idea of some of the initial challenges that immigrant founders face in the US. And I think a big one here is the friends and family round. problem, right? That a lot of founders, especially here in Silicon Valley, when they start a company, they can scrounge up 50 to 100K from friends and family, people they know, to start their company. So what happens when a founder doesn't have that network and why does it matter at that initial stage? When I started the firm 11 years ago, I was imagining there'll be hundreds of problems for immigrants.

6:51And over the course of the last 11 years, I think there's four, right? The first one is the legal work authorization to work here. Number two, as you described, no friends and family money. Number three, shallow networks, right? Because you're brand new here. And number four, what I just referenced, it's an industry that loves pattern recognition. Those four are the main problem for anyone trying to break into Silicon Valley if you don't have resources. And so when I think about what an immigrant founder has to overcome, there are unnatural challenges in comparison to those who were born and raised here.

7:29And so as a consequence, you're forced to do a lot more with less. And then somehow we celebrate that, right? We love celebrating these stories. But what really just happens is that the visas are paying a premium, right? And they're paying a bigger premium when they don't have that added early stage kind of work ethic. And so, you know, I think there's not a lot of places immigrant founders can turn to for friends and family money. And I think the more we do that, I think we'll recognize that this 15.4 % of our population, which outproduces, can produce even more, right? And I just, I think about this, again, always from the perspective of what are the first principle problems?

8:08And if someone can solve all four, which I think we do at Unshackled really well, you get access that no one else does, right? And you unlock talent before anyone else could see them.

8:17Isabelle Johannesen: So yeah, as you clearly mentioned, most VCs, you know, see the visa status and immediately think liability. but you saw it as a solvable and an infrastructure problem. Walk me through how and what you actually built to solve that. So, I mean, legally, operationally, financially, what is sort of the infrastructure of Unshackled Ventures? Well, I appreciate you asking, right? I think when we started the firm 11 years ago, Nithin and I, my co-founder, we had no business being in venture capital, right? That wasn't the motivation. The motivation was to unlock talent. It just so happened the business model was venture capital.

8:52So alongside raising a venture fund, we actually stood up an R &D technology lab. So why an R &D technology lab? People must be asking, right? It's a model that allows the legal structure to invest in burgeoning technologies, burgeoning projects, and also be an employer should it need to be. So ergo, if you are getting an investment from Unshackled, you need your visa sponsored, we could theoretically deploy that capital through payroll through our R &D technology lab, sponsor your visa, and off you go and run. Our investment was done on a typical YC post money save. So between us and the founder, no question, we would also pre-assign all IP created by that entrepreneur to their Delaware C Corp.

9:37So there'd be no taxable event, no liability, and if you wanted to raise money from a downstream VC, pick anyone, it would be no problem. They would be invisible to what we had done. And so that took almost 300 hours with attorneys, right, to understand how the interplay between immigration law, labor law, security law, tax law, and employment law all played out. And we were not attorneys, right? We were simply trying to learn there's got to be a way. And I think, again, underneath all that is something that I think we lose a lot in these conversations is that this structure and this possibility could only be done here in America, right?

10:17It is something that there's ways to do things if your intention is to keep people building here. And I think that sometimes, especially in 2026, we lose sight of these things, but there's no way unshackled as it exists anywhere else in the world. And I'm very, very grateful that it's just us showing up for those that are already legally here in the country and helping them stay.

10:40Isabelle Johannesen: Well, I mean, on that note, I mean, some of these problems don't exist anywhere else besides in the United States as well. So, I mean, how does, do you think this current immigration environment, the policy uncertainty, the visa backlogs affects the founders that you back and the pipeline of immigrant founders in America? Yeah, look, I think whether the inflow of high school immigrants or legal immigrants changes or not, I think we saw such a beautifully quick rise the last 20 years through our U.S. education system doubling over 10 years is that there is, there's still a lot of people that are here and want to be here.

11:13right and there are absolutely problems in our immigration system right we wrote a white paper nine years ago asking for reform on the h1b visa program it was this administration that finally did it right the current it wasn't working for the everyday entrepreneur for the first time as an h1b visa holder you can be an entrepreneur that's a good thing right not everything is bad and i think this is where you know certainly the rhetoric may be challenging for some people But if I'm on the ground doing the work and seeing what's happening, I really think if you have a partner that wants to bet on you, the best do find a way.

11:48It's what I started with. Even those who want to start a way can find a way. And so I'm probably glass half full always on these topics. I think the political climate has its role to play in making us question what we thought was true. And I think that curiosity is what lets you find more solutions. And so I'm probably very reticent about having this judgment on it because I think there's probably a way around it. And that's just who I am. What am I curious about and how do I use that versus thinking I know it all?

12:19Isabelle Johannesen: I mean, hey, curiosity and optimism are great traits to have. So no one can knock you for that. But I'm sure there are some cases that you've seen that are particularly challenging. I mean, the H-1B is one thing, an F-1 student visa, an O-1, whatever it may be. what's sort of the hardest immigration case that you've encountered within Unshackled, and how did your team handle that? Honestly, it was somebody on DACA. We challenged ourselves a number of years ago to say, look, we've done, through our team and support, 300 immigration filings, 13 different visa types, and we've had 100 % success across four different White House administrations.

12:54And one of the things that we wanted to see was how wide can we open the aperture around immigration. And so we made an attempt on DACA with a founder. And it was about a four-month journey where so many people said, no, no, no, you can't do it. His whole life he was told he couldn't do it. And what we found out was there was a pathway to an O-1 visa for this person. And we got it done. I mean, I won't forget just how many people were like, you guys are crazy. And I go, look, I think if you make a case, the U.S. government would want these people here. and you got to care enough to want to make the case and don't factory mill all these petitions and lo and behold we did it and that was really special right because again it opens in the

13:43Isabelle Johannesen: wide is the aperture of who you can support i love that that's awesome but so say that didn't work out right what what is sort of the u.s what does it stand to lose if some of these founders go elsewhere and where else might they go to build these companies you can't stop a founder who has a vision. Oftentimes it's built into who they are, right? Yeah. And I'm probably a little bit myopic about this. I think they'll come back. I think when you think about the talent density, the market of customers, the tolerance for risk, I think there's something really powerful about this 250 year experiment of America.

14:21And I don't think that vanishes overnight. I think starting a company should be done where you want to do it. I'm a big believer in that. And that's why we exist to ensure that starting point is not affected. But at the same time, should you have that drive and you can't do it? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're going to go somewhere else.

14:39Isabelle Johannesen: And I think that's incredibly important because a lot of these, you know, American dream stories we see and some of the biggest companies in existence right now are co-founded by immigrants. I mean, the likes of Google, Yahoo, eBay, Stripe, Tesla, NVIDIA, the list goes on and on. And if the output is that obvious, it's in our face every day. Why do you think it took so long? I mean, not only for Unshackled to come into existence, but also why aren't there other players trying to support more immigrant founders? Look, I don't want to comment on people and what they do, but I think a lot of people in the venture capital industry, especially today, are pretty lazy.

15:12Right? To do the hard work to discover new talent is very expensive. Right? Every year, like last year, we were at 80 college campuses talking about how you start a company on a visa. Right? And that knowledge set could be found on an LLM, but it's altogether very different when someone says it to you personally. that you can then go talk to after, right? There's a believability that happens. You got to be in the community. You got to be in the flow. And then you got to be willing to underwrite it. You got to be willing to underwrite the unknowns and price it. It goes back to the very first question you asked about friends and family.

15:44Without that, who's going to act like your friends and family if they don't have the risk tolerance? I think more and more funds that can learn to realize our job is not to minimize risk. It's to maximize the value of taking risk. right and so we should keep on doing this and price it better than anybody else but i think you are you're more hinting at think of vc industry that has evolved into a lot of concentration right into a lot of spin out you know gps from top funds well they're very impressive so are their friends and they back their friends right and then you think about entrepreneurs becoming vcs who are their friends also very impressive people before you know it if you're not an impressive person by everyone else's standard, you don't get funded.

16:28But the irony of all this is all the examples you gave, they didn't fit any pattern before they started. Exactly. Right? And so it's funny to think about the consequence of pattern recognition, because it hasn't produced wild results for anybody, right? Because we love celebrating that random garage startup story. Look at Jensen Wong. Look at the Collison brothers. Look at Elon Musk. All these very unique stories that you can't replace and replicate. I'm always curious, why do we keep on looking for the same signals?

16:58Isabelle Johannesen: But you're not, right? So I think part of this is, you know, a lot of VCs are looking in all different pools to source new deal flow. But I think, you know, having the thesis that you have, a lot of that deal flow that is hard to find would naturally come to Unshackled because they need your help and your guidance outside of just the check. I'm curious, you know, first of all, how was it to raise your fund at Unshackled? How was that thesis resonating with LPs? I mean, this was in 2015. We raised a debut fund of$4.5 million. And the target was$3.5. We only invested$2 million of that. We had to stand up all of this structure around the R &D technology lab so we can sponsor visa holders, so we can answer the question, can you start a company on a visa?

17:43Unshackled, you can't. but that's what we wanted to prove and answer. And it really took the first two funds, right? The$4.5 million fund was zero and a$20 million fund one. That's what it took to build. It had never been done before to your earlier question. Like we've never seen someone build this structure and hybrid. And it took 79 LPs in the first fund to$4.5 million. 99 in the second fund. You can only imagine how many conversations that must've took. But what it did was it allows to canvas what people were feeling and seeing, right? And this is 2015, 2017. I don't think we had the same clarity as a society, as an industry that we do today around, are we maximizing the economic potential of legal immigrants?

18:28I've been saying that for 10 years. I don't think we are. But most people will cite the examples that, look at all these founders, look at Google, look at Stripe. And they say that'd be enough. And I'm like, oh, no, no, no. We can do so much more, right? Every VC firm probably has 50 % of their fund or immigrant back, so they all think they have enough. And so we had to go against that. We had to make an argument that if you widen the surface area, more will get through. And by the way, all we are is a lead gen firm for every other VC firm. We source leads, we price them, and then sell them to somebody else.

19:00That's our job. And it's really hard to get people to be convinced that we will find great talent doing that way. So the first two funds were proving that we could find talent that they would want. because again, I'm going against their pattern recognition. If they need it on Shackle's money, they might be adverse selection. Man, the time I heard that, it's great to now see that companies are being backed by Blackstone, Fortress, going public all in the last quarter. Founders that we backed first. That took a decade, and I had to get through all the first two funds to even have this to happen.

19:33Isabelle Johannesen: Wow. I mean, that's fantastic. Congratulations. It's the immigrant founders.

19:40Isabelle Johannesen: So, I mean, you've said that the mission of Unshackled is to really, the hypothesis at least, just to see can you build a company on a visa in the U.S., right? So, say there's a founder listening who is currently on an H-1B that is tied to their cushy tech job, but they want to leave to start a company, right? What are their actual options and like where does that path typically break down? Yeah, so first of all, I think the answer is yes, you can, right? And just like anyone who wants to start a company, the yes does have conditions around. But you got to first believe you can. And so if you are on an H-1B visa, just know that there's been some modernization in this administration that allows you to self-petition and be your employer on a visa.

20:21However, you do need funding. You have to raise capital. And ergo, that goes to that problem earlier we talked about, which is no friends and family money. And so that's where I think the chicken or the egg problem shows up. you know, there's a pathway of O-1 visas. There's a pathway to come to unshackle, get funded by us, but there's, we don't fund everything we see, right? And so my greatest advice to tell anybody is, you know what immigrants are really good at? Building things. Just build. Build your network, build your company, build your product, figure out a way. Keep on building and don't get distracted or demoralized by, you know, what you're doing.

20:59Because chances are, if you're at your tech, your cushy tech job in the first place, and you don't want to be there, your mind is already somewhere else. So honor where your mind is at, right? Follow your purpose, follow your drive. And I think this is something that is easier said than done when immigration is a consequence because, of course, if your employer finds out, they could theoretically get rid of your job, right? Like that can happen because you're doing something that's outside of the works requirement. And so, again, think about all the things that you want to do. Think about who could fund you.

21:32think about your petition, think about your O1 pathway, think about your personal runway. Those are things that any founder has to think about, but I think it's more challenging for an immigrant. And so apply to YC, see if you can get in, right? Like there's, they do a lot more investing than we do. I think there's ways. And then there's other things you can do around immigration. It could be a cap exempt H-1B at universities. There could be go abroad and come back in. You can go, if you have any STEM OPT remaining, go back on that. There are things you can do. But again, it's case by case. And so I just tell founders when I meet them, you're good at building something.

22:09Keep on building. We'll find you.

22:10Isabelle Johannesen: Yeah, we're in build mode. That's right. But you mentioned a great point, right, that you don't fund everything. And of course, YC is also competitive. So there are many founders at the end of the day who may still be, you know, not finding the capital they need to actually leave their cushy tech job. But I want to double down on this because, you know, some ideas are not great ideas. there are other ideas that just aren't mature enough yet, right? And need a little bit more bake time in the oven. You back founders at day zero, often before there is any product, any traction. And you've said that, you know, the most important thing you're selling is their relationship to the problem.

22:44Isabelle Johannesen: And so what does that actually mean in practice? And what does a founder do or say that convinces you that they are, you know, deeply tied with their relationship to the problem? So one of the things I believe is unassailably true is how you feel. So right now you're feeling something about. That is your truth. On a topic we're having a discussion about, we might disagree. So there's no truth in that story. So I asked myself, how do we bring that truth into every decision you make as a venture capital firm? And so nothing is worse than a founding GP telling their team, I just feel it. We should invest in them.

23:20That is effective in me telling them, don't say anything. I'm making the choice. Get out of my way. That kills all conversation and curiosity. So about a couple of years ago, we actually created this framework, and I'm happy to share it, right, called the quotients framework. The most common quotient you would typically hear is IQ, intelligence, right? That is someone's ability to understand first principles, their capacity to see problems and solve them, right? But there's a few more that we think we all pick up on instantaneously. Another one is called AQ, adversity quotient. Another one is called EQ, emotional quotient.

23:56And SQ, social quotient. So what do they all mean? Adversity quotient is really your resilience and your tolerance. Your social quotient is how well can you play the game? Right, do you want to play it? How well, I mean, do you think you have fun doing it? And then EQ is really about your self-awareness and growth mindset. So what we did at Unshackle was after every founder pitch, the team that's on that call, we sit back and we score. Because what is true, how we felt. This is not a judgment on the founder, it's how we experienced them. That's all it was. And we'll score it. and we'll huddle up and say, all right, so how did you score?

24:29Well, I saw this founder. I gave him a six on SQ. Oh, Isabel, you gave him a nine? Okay. Go around circles. Go back to that SQ. We're different. So what did you pick up on that I missed? Or you asked me, hey, what did you pick up on that made you go to a six? And what if I told you, man, I had a really rough morning with my kids, so I wasn't feeling it today. That informs a lot of my bias. And before you know it, what we're actually doing is learning more from each other about what we experienced. And so what we have as a litmus test after that conversation is, do we want to learn more or not?

25:05If we want to learn more, we have a bank of questions to go through all those quotients so we can learn more about a founder. Because so many founders, what they don't do in a pitch to a VC is really clearly explain why they believe in themselves. Right? Because they're so rehearsed and saying, here's the problem. Here's why I want to solve it. Here's how the world can be better. Here's my TAM. They're so restricted to the typical VC advice. I don't want that. I want to underwrite you before anyone else can see that. And so what I actually want to know is I use the quotient moment, the quotient framework to be present in the moment.

25:39We have archetypes that predict the future. And then I use the question to learn your past. Before you know it, I piece together past, present, and future to make a decision. And that allows me to find 19-year-old kids that go to Penn State that would never have told me what they told me. Unless I ask the right questions along the lines of, so tell me, you came here at 18. You grew up in Kashmir. How did you do that? What did it take to get out of your hometown? Who helped you? Who was hurting you? Who supported you? Would your parents give up? Oh, I did my first, you know, got my first patent at eight years old.

26:14Wait, what? Okay, how did that belief then translate to when you're 14? And you start to learn very quickly that these stories, they inform how you show up in that moment. and that's what I'm investing in. So the idea becomes simply a representation of a life lived and what they think they can solve and then we underwrite it and everything else that we don't know around, you know, have they incorporated the business? Probably not. Have they built any product? Maybe not. Do they have any customers? No. I just price in that risk. I don't have the answers so I'll price it and I'll bet on you and say let's go.

26:45And I think that is what a discovery engine requires. It requires a real sensibility around what can you learn that no one else knows, but only the founder knows. And you use your team around you on every investment decision to get them to speak truth. When they speak truth, you learn more. I don't want to debate you on market size. What the hell do I know? I'm a pre-seeds day zero investor. I'm going to be wrong anyways.

27:10Isabelle Johannesen: That is an incredibly refreshing take on my question of what are you looking for in the founders you invest in? Because you're right. It's usually a pretty standard answer. And that one I have not heard before. Very, very interesting. Almost sounds like a fortune teller in some ways. You can predict the past, present, and future. And it's simply co-signing the future with a fountain. Knowing that the future that they're going to create is unlikely the one they're thinking about today. But their tolerance and adversity and their grit to do it all is what I want to bet on. Yeah. Right. Like it's, again, it, it allows us to codify intuition.

27:48And I think maybe I've effectively given a psychological exam kind of answer here, but end of the day, what is intuition? It's the alignment of heart, mind, and gut. And if we can refine our intuition, right? Daniel Kahneman talks about this in system one and system two structures and thinking fast and slow. If I can keep my system too activated to learn more, I'm going to learn more than anybody else. System one will walk from me. It'll do pattern recognition. It'll do things really quick. I don't think investing should be quick. I think it should be thoughtful, should be discerning, and it should help you understand what your intuition is telling you.

28:25And then helping you communicate that to the people around you to see what you're missing and how to refine.

28:30Isabelle Johannesen: I think this is such an interesting point because intuition and bias, I think, can often be, you know, mixed together or confused. And I'm especially curious about, you know, the EQ and the SQ, for example, right? A lot of founders, often technical founders, aren't the most socially adept. They're not the most, you know, clear in expressing their emotions. Does that strike against them in your ranking system? No, and this is why it's a living. The numbers don't make any sense compared across companies. Because what they're representing is how I'm experiencing them in that moment. It's an absolute tally of meat there in that time, right?

29:07And so, you know, we have these two archetypes that we typically invest in. We call them technical visionaries and systems disruptors. What we have seen is technical visionaries tend to index a lot more into PhD, postdocs, you know, people who've done a lot more educational work and have a rigor around building things, right? They tend to score higher on IQ and AQ. Systems disruptors love working in regulatory environments. They love complex systems. They're a Rubik's Cube champion when they're 15, two-time world record holder. They tend to score a little bit higher on EQ and SQ. But what's really interesting about these frameworks is we will ultimately tell founders how we scored them.

29:48Because all I tell them is, here's how I experienced you. Not those we passed on, those we invested in. And then when they come on to raise their next round, we'll simply ask ourselves, what are we seeing differently? And is it important for them to grow or not? I don't know. Not all people need to be good at everything. Sometimes the better answer is you're so good at your intelligence quotient, go ahead and hire a great COO or chief of staff that can augment you in other ways. There is no playbook, right? I'm very, very hesitant about prescribing what you should be. All I'm asking for is be who you are, and I will be who I am.

30:21And how I experience you is how I experience you. I'm an N of one. And I will tell you if it's a match or not. Yeah.

30:27Isabelle Johannesen: And I mean, having a sounding board of other people also taking their experience of them and having that conversation afterwards, I think is a really interesting way of taking that intuition and putting numbers and data behind it. I think there is a lot of this bias maybe covered up by an intuition statement by VCs and by just people in the ecosystem in general who have that against immigrant founders, right? There's some kind of bias or intuition. It just doesn't feel right. It's not the right time. Where do you think that story comes from? Is it a matter of, you know, ignorance or risk aversion or is it something more structural?

31:03Isabelle Johannesen: Fear. I think we're humans. I think fear has degrees and temperatures to them. Right. Fear can be something existential fear where you're like scared of your life. That's one extreme of it. A more like a more casual and lower intensity of fear is being wrong. Right. And I think humans need that fear to refine who they are. It is a barrier. It is the boundaries of making sure that you go from your comfort zone to your learning zone and avoid your danger zone. That line between learning and danger zone get blurry, fear is going to keep you hopefully where you need to be. right? And I think having a lot of self-awareness of what gives you fear at even the most minute levels, the lowest decibels like possible, I think is a real art.

31:56And I think you see this, you know, why historically we've seen certain type of VCs be really good. Journalists, for example, have had a great track record because they're not afraid to ask more, right? Sometimes when you believe you want to do something so badly, you stop asking certain questions to get you off your conviction. And I think if we better understood our own fear and our own psychology of our fears, including LPs telling us we were really wrong, right? We just messed up a lot of money and put good after bad. And hey, we're not going to re-up with you. That can happen. But that fear, if you bring that into every decision, is going to force you to familiarity, authority, force you to be a party-round investor, force you to put your name on the right companies, and before you know it, you've not made money, and the industry's worse for it.

32:47And I think this is where we don't invest in a psychology at all levels. Everyone says they bet on people. The only question is, do you understand the conditions you're requiring them to hit and know where you play in that ecosystem to go ahead and do that?

33:01Isabelle Johannesen: Manon, you've built an infrastructure that solves a problem that the market wasn't addressing for immigrant founders, but the same could be said for a black founder from Atlanta or a first-gen college graduate from rural Ohio or a woman founder without a tech pedigree. They're all facing a version of the same structural gap. And the lesson here, I think, is maybe bigger than immigration, but what do you think is the through line from your experience that applies to all founders that don't fit the VC mold? Yeah. I mean, for an industry that loves outliers, if there's ever a structural gap, that's where your outlines are probably playing.

33:36We love it. We love celebrating the guys or gal, the team that was bet against, against all odds. That's what we talk about. That's where all the wealth is created. So any structural gap that you can find and solve for gives you a structural advantage. So my call to arms for everybody is ask yourself whatever structural gap. I agree. Like there's a lot of people in flyover states that do not get the same attention, right? And what's really fun is so many of our founders go to school in those places, team up with a local who knows that market, whether you're in energy storage or you're in logistics and supply chain.

34:16The combination between immigrant and American in our portfolio is so high. And I think those lived experiences, if you just understand it and you create the right financial structure to take on risk, but you do it from a capitalistic mindset. I think you're uniquely American. I think the problem is is that we've looked at these populations without capitalism in mind. It's not handouts. No one wants a handout by and large, right? If you're building a company, you're doing it because you want to change something in your personal life, in the world around you, you want to accumulate more, most likely, right?

34:49And I just think that's, we kind of lost sight of that for so many years with some of these policies and strategies around diversity, equity, we've seen it. But at the end of the day, these people, whoever they are, all entrepreneurs, they're doing it because they want to build something. So don't give them concessionary dollars. Give them dollars that can actually accelerate them, that you care about a lot. Because when money's on the line, we all care more.

35:14Isabelle Johannesen: No, and I agree. But let's talk about how founders can get a little bit more creative about where to find this capital. Because as we've talked a lot about, the venture capital ecosystem today is not necessarily the answer for a lot of underrepresented founders. So outside of venture capital, outside of Unshackled, what are some resources that you think founders are currently overlooking? And it could be, you know, grants or equity crowdfunding, accelerators or different models that could really get some of these ideas off the ground. Yeah, I mean, you see there's some local regional work that happens through CDFIs, right, community development funds.

35:46You see there are more and more organizations that are doing grants and philanthropic strategies. there are a lot more competitions nowadays, right? Universities, local municipalities will have competitions locally for entrepreneurship. I think we're entering, and not to change topics, but I think in the age of AI, I do think we're going to see a natural recurrence and a retreat back to something that's very fundamental in all of us and that we're creators, right? I watch my two kids, five and two, all they know how to do is create. we're culturing creativity out of them. I make them do certain things so they don't create on my wall.

36:28I do this as a parent. I think AI is forcing us back to think about what am I uniquely good at doing? And I think as a society, this is where the country is going to benefit a lot. If we start to build things again, we start to manufacture, we start to scale, I think we're going to win. And so I say all that as really a changing tide, I think is going to happen in five, seven years. that if you are somebody who wants to build, more and more resources are going to come online. And it may not look like building the next billion-dollar company, but if your local community is better off because of what you did, you've made a real impact.

37:04And I think there's another way to look at for-profit, and I'll steal Eric Ries' work here, his new book called Incorruptible, but it's for-profit he describes as the maximization of human flourishing. How do we measure that? And I think you've seen companies like Novodortis do that. You've seen companies like Costco do it. Really successful organizations. And I think an entrepreneur that works in the local community can do a lot of work to maximize human flourishing. And I think people will notice.

37:31Isabelle Johannesen: Well, I hope you're right about that because I think there's a lot of exciting ideas that can and should be backed. And it may not be by our typical venture ecosystem here, but that more people get creative like you did with Unshackled on ways that we can systematically support these entrepreneurs. So to round out, I would love to get sort of your closing advice. If you could go back to the days that you and your co-founder started a company to when you started Unshackled, what would you say to the emerging VCs and founders out there about what they can do to actually be part of giving more opportunities to founders, whether they're immigrants or just underrepresented or not, whatever their situation may be?

38:09I think most people, when they start a company, will feel pretty isolated. And so the feeling of outsider, where I started this conversation, I think even I was born and raised in Silicon Valley in a time where the Indian immigrant was very successful. And even then, when I started Unshackled, there was no Indian immigrant that would back me. And so I wouldn't have qualified as somebody who was underrepresented, especially in Silicon Valley. And I think when I look back on that, one of the things that probably helped the most was ultimately understanding my why. Where that through line showed up for me, the work went from lowercase w work to capital W work.

38:48And it was less so about the email follow up. It was less so about, you know, getting the task done. But it was more so about inspiring people to join me on it. And knowing that whether they join me or not, I was going to still do it. And so getting to that clarity is something oftentimes people that have more challenging childhoods get there faster. Because you're forced to deal with consequences of everything and relying on yourself. And so going back to all those communities we talked about beyond the immigrant community, those life experiences are your superpower for purpose. So lean into it and tell that story.

39:25And don't make it a story of like, look at me, woe is me, pity me. say no this is why I do it and this is why I will tolerate all the crap that's about to come and if you can find a few folks that want to hear that story and get more curious I think that alignment and if they invest in you is worth a lot more than somebody that invested in you with more money and was misaligned right those people are are cancers I've had them in my journey they're not great they might give you more money but the moment things get hard they walk away, you wish you didn't have their money because they actually distract you even more.

39:58Right. And I think this is where the faster you get to your personal why, the more likely you are going to find the right people for you.

40:06Isabelle Johannesen: That's, that's great advice. I think we see a lot of founders who are trying to fit into this VC box these days, but rather than that, I mean, make your own box, paint the walls, find who wants to come and hang out in your box and do, you know, forge your own path, basically. Tell your own, own your own category. Yeah. Right. You're an end of one. You're always going to be an end of one. You're not somebody else. So don't try it. Well, thank you, Manon, for coming on and for sharing a lot of great wisdom. I mean, again, I think we could probably have a philosophical debate for hours about some of these things.

40:34Isabelle Johannesen: It's been really interesting and exciting to talk with you. Very good to see you again. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you. It's wonderful. Build Mode is a TechCrunch podcast. Each episode is produced and edited by Maggie Nye and hosted by me, Isabel Johanesson. Our art and design is also by Maggie Nye. A big thanks to Morgan Little, who leads our audience development, the Foundry and Cheddar video teams, and most of all, to you, the builders, and everyone else in the wider startup community. We'll see you back here next time.