From: Silicon Valley

Valley’s new leaders coming from overseas

STUDY SHOWS IMMIGRANTS HELP CREATE MORE THAN HALF OF AREA’S START-UPS

By John Boudreau

Mercury News

Sudhakar Muddu left everything familiar in his homeland of India in 1990 to attend Yale University on a post-graduate scholarship. He later worked for IBM and Silicon Graphics.

But he didn’t leave family and home just to have his name in a company directory. He staked everything on the Silicon Valley Dream — starting a tech company.

“Leaving family is such a hardship,” said Muddu, now on his second start-up, Kazeon, a 3-year-old Mountain View maker of search technology for businesses. “So the dream is to make a mark, to prove something to your family and to the world.”

Muddu’s story is replayed over and over in the valley, where, according to a study being published today, more than half of local start-ups established in the past decade were founded by people born overseas.

The report, “America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs,” written by researchers from Duke University and the University of California-Berkeley, confirms what many in the valley already know: Skilled immigrants from India, Taiwan, China and other countries play key roles in the creation of wealth and jobs. Nationwide, 25 percent of tech and engineering start-ups have founders who are immigrants.