Episode #59
59 What Immigrant-Founded Businesses Teach Us About Resilience: Neri Karra Sillaman on Building Companies That Last
Close to half of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants. Eighty per cent of billion-dollar startups have an immigrant founder or executive. And businesses founded by immigrants statistically outlast the ones founded by everybody else. Nobody had properly asked why ... until Dr Neri Karra Sillaman did. Neri stood at a border at the age of eleven with her nine-year-old brother and her parents, who carried two suitcases and nothing else. She is now a professor at Oxford, the founder of a global luxury brand, and the winner of the Thinkers50 Radar award for the world's most promising emerging management thinker. In this episode, Neri takes me inside the research behind her book Pioneers ... eight principles she found in the founders of Chobani, Moderna and Calendly, none of whom put profit first. We talk about why the usual paths are often closed to outsiders and what they build instead, why raising money too early can kill a company before it starts, and what happened when the war in Ukraine hit her own business ... and Prada picked up the phone. Twenty years ago, in a seminar room in London, Neri was told that altruism is not real in business. This is what she found out. Unlock Your Leadership is hosted by Dr Gary Crotaz, PhD — executive coach, speaker and award-winning author. From the creator of The Unlock Moment and The Box of Keys , this show brings you conversations with the world’s greatest leadership thinkers. Follow, subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts — and connect with Dr Gary on LinkedIn for more leadership insights. Part of The Unlock Moment podcast family.
