The Free People Move podcast is back with episode 3, and we’ve got a real treat for you. For this one, Sten sat down and had a talk with James Richards, Co-founder & CEO of Teleborder, a venture-backed startup in San Francisco helping knowledge workers with their US visas. Through this work James recently made the Forbes' 30 under 30 list in Law and Policy category.
Teleborder is a complete solution for immigration in the U.S, helping companies hire, manage and retain international employees. James fills us in on the story of how Teleborder came to be and why it’s important for small and midsize companies to have the same resources for hiring international employees as massive corporations.
James has lived a fascinating global life himself - he was born in Australia, grew up in Indonesia, studied in England and was recruited to work in a successful law company in the U.S. Even though he’d been on a visa since he was 4 years old, he was initially completely oblivious to the difficulties concerning immigration.
We talk about James starting his first companies for "all the wrong reasons", and finally doing it right with Teleborder. James is very open about his learnings through these experiences and how he still managed to fall in love with the startup game, the challenges and not giving up.
Launching as Advisable - then a horizontal online marketplace for lawyers - on the morning of his Y Combinator interview, was the start from which James and his co-founders later narrowed down on immigration and visas.
James discusses the positive response he got from VC companies about his initial ideas concerning simplifying the visa process for small and mid-size companies, their very first client and how that lead to many more, the main end goals for Teleborder and the next steps to take to get there.
There’s also some great advice in the end for startup people who are struggling with US visa and immigration issues, and some free new company ideas for any entrepreneurs who'd like to build adjacent solutions in the broader space of moving people around.
If you prefer using iTunes, you can find our podcast here.
Teleport’s podcast, Free People Move, has gotten an incredible amount of great feedback - thanks to those who have taken the time. If you haven’t had a listen to any of it yet, then go check out the first two episodes too. In the first introductory episode, Sten and Silver chatted about how and why free people move around, and the second episode was all about Good Luck Being Born Tomorrow - Silver’s slightly controversial blog post about the chances you would have of a great life if you were born tomorrow.
Let us know what you think and if you have any ideas, comments of questions about the podcast, drop us an email at feedback@teleport.org!
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