Blog 8: Boundless
Easing the immigration journey
Company: Boundless operates an online platform that empowers families to navigate the immigration system confidently, rapidly, and affordably. The company's platform provides United States immigrants with the tools, information, and personalized support to navigate their immigration journey, enabling clients to access immigration lawyers and file online.
HQ Location & Year Founded: Seattle, 2017
Founder: Xiao Wang, Co-founder and CEO, started Boundless in 2017 having been an immigrant to the US from China as a youth. His prior work experience includes senior product management experience at Amazon, portfolio operations at Providence Equity Partners, innovation and design at the NYC Department of Education and consulting at McKinsey. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees in management science, engineering, and economics from Stanford, as well as an MBA from Harvard.
Funds Raised and VC Investors: $44 million from Alumni Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, Emerson Collective, Escalate Capital Partners, Forefront Venture Partners, Founders’ Co-op, Foundry Group, Industry Ventures, Pioneer Square Labs, Ride Ventures, The Graduate Syndicate, The Gramercy Fund, Trilogy Equity Partners, Two Sigma Ventures, et al.
1. Where did the idea for Boundless originate?
As an immigrant, I personally and through my community have felt the struggles of immigration for decades. Like most other immigrants, I took these stuggles for granted or as a right of passage that every immigrant has to go through. We assume the pains along this journey. It wasn’t until 2016 when I had met someone who spent $12,000 on an immigration attorney for a green card application and had a very bad experience. It was then that I asked the question of “why” for the first time. Once I started asking this question, it became clear that the process is an immense problem that is solvable. This shouldn’t have to be this way. The immigration process hasn’t changed in generations. It takes advantage of folks without resources. The process itself keeps people from being with their loved ones and living life that they want to lead. I grew convinced that there was no way that I couldn’t not try to solve this.
2. What is the key problem that Boundless intends to solve?
At the core, immigration is hard because of the huge information gap and the high stakes involved in petitioning the US government. Getting this wrong can result in a person being deported and sent away from loved ones. It can mean not being able to work, travel, study, or live life as one would want.
At the same time, there is a dearth of information for one to know if they are completing their applications correctly. People are caught between the tradeoff of spending thousands of dollars on lawyer fees (even though many immigrants are not able to work yet) or trying to figure this out on one’s own and struggling, not knowing for weeks or months if they have done it correctly.
Because of this information gap and insecurity around properly completing applications, there are now roughly 10 times as many immigration attorneys as when I came to this country 30 years ago, even though the actual number of immigrants has not increased to such a degree.
This is the kind of problem that technology and data are meant to solve. We take everything that’s in the minds of government officials who review immigration documents, and we make the application process accessible and affordable to everyone.
3. How are you most differentiated as a service?
We have become the largest processor of US immigration documents. We process more than any lawyer and we start by building trust. We are the most visited website for immigration outside of the US government. We offer the highest quality resources and guides for immigration process available on the Internet. In the past, people had to go around the Internet searching for information. We have been quoted by news services and members of Congress in immigration reform proposals.
By shining light at a black box, we prioritize the user experience. An experience took weeks and months previously now can be done in a couple of hours. Most people don’t ask to understand all of the forms and questions, so we translate this into something that normal people can understand. We help guide people through this journey. There is also a flywheel as the more families we help, it becomes increasingly clearer that we are the best option. We have a 99.97% approval rate. We do more than everyone else and have insights on timing, written and unwritten rules that adjudicators look for in applications. We offer the best experience available.
4. What are the company’s key accomplishments to date?
Boundless has helped over 73,000 folks successfully get their immigration paperwork done. We have achieved a 99.97% rate of success in the applications that we’ve helped to submit. Although we are the most visited US immigration website outside of the US government, we are just scratching the surface of the opportunity. Our goal is to become the default choice across all immigrant communities.
5. What lies ahead in the product plans for Boundless?
We got started by offering marriage green cards, then naturalization, then children, fiancée, parents, etc. We acquired RapidVisa last year and expanded into parent green cards, travel visas, and we are actively looking at additional areas of expansion around the entire immigration stack. We chose the name Boundless for a reason – to help people not only get into US, but to thrive in thier first ten years in the country. We aim to eventually be able to help with every case in immigration. When my family came over and moved to Tempe, Arizona, we just asked a Chinese family that has already been settled for a few years how to do things like get a car, a bank account, and buy a house. There was no other good way. I believe we can do so much better than that.
6. What are the long-term strategic growth objectives?
We want to make it irresponsible for immigrants to not be a member of Boundless. Our goal is to help improve life so much that every immigrant has an affiliation to Boundless.
Most immigration cases are family-base. It’s not just H-1Bs. A third of customers are within 25% of the poverty line. For them, they’ve historically gotten no help or have been taken advantage of with unscrupulous or unqualified help. Through the Boundless network, we can do things for families that have not been readily available. For green card families, people often need to apply before even getting a work permit. It costs $1760 to apply, which is a lot for most people, let alone people who can’t work. We offer no credit check financing and can create payment plans for US government fees. Without this, some immigrants would need to resort to payday lender rates or have no access to financing at all. We help with all steps in this process. We open up different avenues. Our mission is to empower our members to rise up, achieve things their parents or grandparents could never do.
Ron’s Take
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free… as long as they can afford thousands of dollars in legal fees, of course.
Legal immigration has made the United States what it is today. Immigrants are well documented to be highly entrepreneurial, fill critical skill gaps in the economy, and overall added $2 trillion to US GDP in 2016. Never mind the contributions that immigrants make to education, science, medicine, the arts, culture, cuisine, and everything else that makes this a wonderful country. These contributions are recognized across the geographic and socio-economic spectrum of immigrants. Boundless is in the business of empowering these immigrants to achieve their legal status in this country without facing the often-prohibitive costs for many families of obtaining this. Combining technology, human involvement and collective experience and expertise, Xiao and his team will clear the pathway for families who desire to settle and contribute to this country in a way that is easier on the nerves and friendlier to the wallet.
Disclaimer: Alumni Ventures invested in the Series B round of Boundless in spring 2021.