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5 immigrants who made it in America as entrprenuers by Saleem S. Khatri on Dec 1, 2015, 1:03 PM  “Immigration has always been a key to America’s future. We are more than a country founded by immigrants. We are a country whose competitive strengths are in entrepreneurship and immigration. When you consider how many companies are founded by immigrants, you realize that immigration is fundamental to any long-term economic growth and prosperity. The high-skill immigration question is simple: Would you rather have more great technology companies here in the U.S. or abroad?” - Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of LinkedIn, Partner at Greylock Partners
Located in Silicon Valley and with its roots in YCombinator, Instavest has seen first hand the diversity that flourishes in America. For this week, we’ve put together profiles of five notable immigrants, some of whom were refugees, from the technology and investing worlds: Sergey Brin, Co-Founder of Google, President at Alphabet  Sergey Brin was born in Moscow and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 6, as his family fled persecution at the hands of the Soviet Union. Brin’s father was quoted saying that he was “forced to abandon his dream of becoming an astronomer even before he reached college.” With far more opportunity in the United States than his father had in the Soviet Union, Sergey enrolled at Stanford to pursue his PhD in Computer Science. It was there that he met Larry Page, eventually dropping out to co-found Google. The rest is history. Today, Brin is worth approximately $30 billion, according to Forbes, and is now acting as President of Google’s newly formed parent company,Alphabet, with projects such as Google’s self-driving car under his jurisdiction. He has made it a point to give back to the charity that helped his family come to the U.S. during his childhood.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, CEO and CTO of SpaceX  Known for revolutionizing electric cars and trying to send humanity to space, Elon Musk has been an immigrant twice in his life. He was born in South Africa, moving to Canada for his undergraduate studies (his mother had Canadian citizenship) before immigrating to the United States to enroll at the University of Pennsylvania to complete his bachelor’s degree. Following graduation, he began his PhD in Applied Physics at Stanford, dropping out in exactly 2 days. After 10 years of living in the United States, Musk was granted citizenship. His career began by co-founding a company called X.com, which eventually led him to be CEO of PayPal, making him a part of the notoriously successful PayPal mafia. Beyond Tesla (which has shared its patents publicly) and SpaceX, Musk is also Chairman of SolarCity and wrote a paper on the HyperLoop, laying out a concept for hypersonic travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco. He recently made comments that climate change refugees will dwarf today’s refugee crisis in the future. While Musk is controversial at times, few disagree with the fact that he’s changing the world.
Pierre Omidyar, Founder of eBay  Pierre Omidyar is a French born Iranian entrepreneur, best known for being the founder of eBay. He was born in Paris to Iranian parents who immigrated to complete their educations - his mother as an academic and father as a surgeon. When Pierre was young, his parents elected to move to the U.S., where his interest in computers began, ultimately leading to Tufts University where he earned a degree in Computer Science. 7 years later, in 1995, he founded eBay (originally known as Auction Web). Omidiyar went on to found the Omidyar Network in 2004 with his wife, Pamela, as a philanthropic investment vehicle. In 2010, Omidyar Network announced a grant of $2.6 million to Refugees United to help refugees reunite with their families and has continued to provide support to refugees. He has since founded and funded First Look Media, home to renowned journalist Glenn Greenwald.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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