Xiao Wang is the founder of a company called Boundless. Xiao’s problem is this: How do you make it cheaper and easier for people to navigate the U.S. immigration system?
Xiao moved to the U.S. from China when he was three years-old. For many years, he took for granted that immigration was slow, complicated, and expensive to navigate. With Boundless, he’s built a platform to help people who try to figure out that system every year.
Pushkin. When we first went public with it, I received, presumably from an attorney because they quoted law here, an anonymous threatening letter with magazine cutouts like they think, like eighties horror movie.
Style, like a kidnapping letter exactly.
That said like shut down your business, Like yeah, but.
You're saying this. This magazine cutout letter was like quoting specific statutes or something.
It was talking about unauthorized practice of law in a way that you would only do it if you were an attorney.
Amazing. Is it framed on your wall?
Tragically during an office move, it disappeared somewhere.
I'm Jacob Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem? The show where I talk to people who are trying to technological progress. My guest today is Shao Wang. He's the founder of a company called Boundless. Chao's problem is this, how do you make it cheaper and easier for people to deal with immigration law or to frame it in a bigger way. How do you use technology to bring down costs in a bureaucratic, slow moving field where, by the way, the incumbents don't want you. Joo moved to the US from China when he was three years old. He grew up, and he worked a lot of places at McKinsey and at the New York Department of Education and at Amazon, before he ever had the idea to try to do anything about immigration.
I had always taken it for granted that immigration is really hard. And if you grow up, like all of the friends, all of your circles around, everyone has their own struggle with the immigration system. And it always becomes a running joke around who had the toughest time, how many hours they were stuck in some back ron room and some concert or some airport, like the just constant stories about the fraughtness and the turmoil of being an immigrant. And I had always just taken for granted that that's just the way things were, That's just life. It's like, you know, the sun comes up. Yeah, people struggle with immigration. And it wasn't until twenty sixteen. I'm almost ashamed to talk about it this way, but it's like, is this the first time, late twenty sixteen that I actually asked a question why? Well, someone asked me the question why is immigration so hard?
What was the context? Who asked you? That?
It was someone who is someone in their office just went through an immigration process, foreign national married uses and had to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on their immigration attorney had a terrible experience, and the question was like, why is this whole thing so hard, so expensive? And they asked me because I was the I guess, the most immigrant looking person in the room, and I, uh, I said, that's a really good question. I have never thought that as like why. And the more that I like dug into why, like you know, you get to the point where you just learn too much. Right. I talked to hundreds of families, lawyers, government folks, and you realize that, like this, this has to be solved. It was unbelievable to me that this problem has existed for generations in the same way where every other you know, related field has like modernized or used data or used technology, or become more personalized, or become more efficient, or become more affordable or accessible, and immigration is stuck the same way that I did it with my parents. And the only thing that has changed in the thirty years that I've been in this country is that there are over five times has been the immigration attorneys. Even though the annual number of immigrants has stayed relatively the same and the prices have gone up, and so you put that You're like this, I can't not do something about it.
I mean one like what you're like, how hasn't anybody done anything about this? But like it's the government and it's lawyers, and you know, to some extent people want immigration to be hard, right, to some extent politically bureaucratically, people want immigration to be hard. So it doesn't seem to me to be an obviously solvable or addressable problem that you're sort of setting out to solve or address.
Where were you in my life in twenty six and it was like, by by February of twenty seventeen, I felt like I like I had an idea, right, I felt like, hey, we can make this more accessible that you know, this fundamentally is an information problem, right where you have all of these people who want to know and want to understand immigration, wanted to operate, and then you have only two groups of people that actually know what to do. You have the federal government who is again and uh make things opaque and doesn't release the information. And then you have immigration attorneys that are financially incentivized to be the only arbiters of this information and so this is like you know, from someone who you know my background, Like I tried to like transform the public education system that has been stuck in the same way.
To be clear, you worked for the New York City Department of ED right, that's yes.
And we launched new schools that tried different things like making school eleven months of the year and using technology different ways. Even at Amazon, there's like, how do we change physical retail where we launched Amazon Go and just work out where you can just take something and you leave and there's no checkout Like this, in my mind is another example of something that has been operating in the same way for generations and there has to be an opportunity for us to change that. And how can I help every family you know, have the confidence and the support and the services that you know previously were only available to those who could pay thousands and thousands of dollars for attorneys.
And so you have this as the like big lofty, you know idea behind starting the company. Is there some particular service, some particular immigration related thing that is your sort of your wedge, your first thing you're going to try.
Yeah, So the way that I looked at it was first it had to have a shorter timeline, right, So I needed to be able to show that we if you use us, it'll work. And if it takes years for something to get reviewed and approved, then like I don't have testimonials. Why would you trust your life to a company that doesn't work? And then the second part is is that it should be uncapped so we can like you know, create and have enough market to to create a adventure scalable business.
And so just to be clear but un kept, I mean there are some some things like what the H one B visa for skilled workers where the government limits the number of people, and so you don't want to do something with a small number of people. You want to do something with a large number of people so that there's a big market for your service. That's exactly yeah, okay, and then so quick turn uncapped.
Yeah, and then folks that I can acquire affordably through digital marketing means.
Just classic online business. You want a relatively low customer acquisition cars.
I want to be able to find something that people are actually searching for and are willing to like willing to to to you know, come learn about a new way of doing something that that that doesn't involve going into a mahogany clad office and like handing someone in the suit and tie all of your information. And so the first first wedge as that we picked was was around marriage green cards. So this is a US citizen who has fallen in love with and gotten married to a foreign national and now either wants to be able to help them stay in the country or bring them to the.
Country, okay, and get them a green card, get basically a permanent resident status exactly.
Yeah, and it has a top priority of on what the government reviews and.
Quickly. It means it gets done quickly.
Yeah.
There's a lot of people, lots of US citizens are married to people who are not US citizens.
Three to four hundred thousand the year, okay.
And they're out there doing Google searches how do I get a green card for my spouse?
Exactly to the point where you know, we were getting paying customers, like it was such a high need that we were getting paying customers before like our product is even done, right, yeah.
Yeah, So what you have, like the website is up and people are like trying to get you to get them help them get a spouse a green card, but you don't sort of have your act together yet or what's going on there?
I mean embarrassingly is that like we we have the first parts we want to learn, right, and it's like that demantra at the time is MVP and like get things out there, just do a thing. Yeah, And we didn't expect people to get as far through the process as they ended up doing, to a point where and we've actually we actually had to like add things, you know, in real time, as like somebody's.
Going refreshed and you're like trying to make the webs.
Like something isn't working, and so we're like making a quick fix and they're like, hey, maybe you should refresh your browser and see if it, you know, if it works.
And are you literally sort of building an online pathway so they can like fill out the forms to get a spousal green card? Is it like that real? Is that what's happening?
I mean? The idea here is that if we can translate complex government forms and requirements into steps that everyone can follow and feel confident in, then you could go end to end and be able to like get through a process that previously took again months on your own and do it in a couple of hours.
Uh, is there like a moment when you realize, oh, it's actually gonna work. We're doing this.
You're you're always like holding your breath until your first approval, right, Like when the first time the government like approves one of your customers, you're like, yes, I have changed that person's life. And then they you know that.
Do you remember that moment?
Yeah?
What was what was the first approval?
I mean it was this person that we have been helping and they I distinctly remember because they, you know, also used us for relationship therapy through this journey, right, and like, yeah, they call us and gives us updates about their life. And then we're all waiting because the government you don't know how long the government process takes, and you're just going along this journey with them. And then finally when they when they are approved, that it's just this huge moment of relief. We had this gong in the office where it was it was a gift from from an investor that we designated that we'll only hit this, you know, when when someone finally gets approved, and so it was it was a huge moment when we were able to hit that gone and when was that that was it would be late. We released our product late twenty seventeen, and so this would be middle of twenty eighteen because when we got the first one.
So it was it was five years ago that you basically helped your first customer, right, Like how many people now have you helped get Green cards, visas?
Whatever? Yeah, so we're coming up to our one hundred thousand customer.
Okay, so it worked, it's working. So that's what we're used just so we can get a sense, like, how is what you offer different than what an immigration attorney offers.
I think it's there are three three areas, and I think we are just better. It'll be blunt. Yeah. The first is the accessibility part. Right, we are one third one fifth the price of traditional immigration attorneys and.
So to a fifth the price. So by accessibility, I mean it's just cheaper.
It's far more affordable.
I love cheaper, yeah.
For families, and you know, we offer a you know, no credit check payment plan solution, so like people can also pay it over time, which they can't get access to for a lot of our families with you know, no credit history in the US and everything like anywhere else. The second part is that you know we have this. We have a ninety nine point nine to seven percent approval rate over close to one hundred thousand applications, so we have a lot more insights into what works and how it works and what the government is looking for, uh, and and are able to to to to translate that back and give those benefits back to our customers. And then the third is that you know we adapt to you. Unlike with the traditional attorney, we will operate at the speed that you operate at.
So presumably it's cheaper in large part because your costs are a lot lower, because it's more efficient because what I mean, I imagine you don't always have to have an attorney, is that right?
You know? When we first started, I was a persona non grata at like the Association of Immigration Lawyer's Association.
I mean, you're you're you're undercutting them, like you're you're coming for their business, like your business is to come for their their margin is your opportunity to quote your old boss.
Yeah. So, uh, when we first went public with it, I received, presumably from an attorney because they quoted law here, an anonymous threatening letter with magazine cutouts like they think like a horror movies. Exactly, that's it, like shut down your business.
Like yeah, but you're saying this this magazine cutout letter was like quoting specific statutes or something.
It was talking about unauthorized practice of law in a way that you would only do it if you're amazing.
Is it framed on your wall?
Tragically during an office move, it disappeared somewhere, and I'm hoping I can find it in the box. So but but now I actually I'm not only on their advisory board, but I give presentations every year to their membership about the future of immigration law. Because ultimately, the goal here is not to eliminate the attorney. The attorneys like do some really great work to help help families and help the system. The goal is to like take out all of the work that you don't need an attorney for and not have an attorney do it.
This is a classic automation story, right, I mean, this is, you know, the automated spreadsheet, not putting accountants out of business, but meaning they don't have to like add columns of numbers anymore.
Right Exactly.
After the break the next problem Shao is trying to solve that Bountless. Now back to the show. So Shao got that threatening letter back when Boundless launched, and I asked him, what about now? Are lawyers still mad at Boundless? Now?
I mean, at its core, the message has always been that, like, if you use services like ours, they're not the traditional law firm, you are putting yourself at risk because you are potentially, you know, increasing your risk of getting bad advice or getting bad outcomes. Yeah, and my counter point to that is that we have done more cases in any single law firm in our category, and we have fantastic outcomes. Yeah, compelling carry some weight, I guess. Yeah.
You've cited this figure of like over ninety nine percent success, which is a very striking figure, and I mean it makes me wonder like, is part of the key to that telling people when not to apply. I feel like the way you get to ninety nine percent success is tell people not to apply if you don't think they're going.
To get it. But I think that that's very valuable.
So the interest thing is not valuable.
We have we do have very clear eligibility criteria, and we base it off of what government publishes, and we base it off of the data that we've collected about how the government treats cases. So I'll give you an example. Like, you know, before a government asks for you know, one year your your previous year tax returns to show your your income eligibility for sponsor somewhere for a green card. And what we started discovering as we're looking at our cases is that like, if you're close to the to the threshold, they actually want three years. And so for some people, like if you look at the last three years, it's not quite enough. And so you could you could do You could either send it in and hope for the best right and and you know, collect their money, send it in cover the best, or you say, look, you know, we actually really think you need a joint sponsor or like a co sponsor, think of someone else who can backstop you in order for this to be successful. And you may be upset at us at boundless for asking for this, but we believe in setting you up for a positive outcome.
Is part of your business data science, like as part of what you do, like mine your own data essentially to try and understand the patterns of how the government acts.
Yes, and like look at the data that the government is reporting that like they don't make it easy to understand. Like there we published once a report that showed that by by your zip code, your processing times for a green carve can matter dramatically. So there's like three cities within close proximity to each other in Florida and then also in Texas that if you're just thirty minutes away, you're six months faster on the processing. Wow.
And you just saw that in the data, because.
We saw this in the data, and then we like publish it, and then the representatives of there's districts that went to you know you sah and be like, what's going on? And then USCS redistributed their workforce to like even some of these things out of a.
Lot, that's a good one. That's a good one. What's the frontier, Like, what is the thing that you're trying to do next that you haven't figured out how to do yet?
Yeah, Like an area a real unlock that I want to figure out over this next year is how can we lower the barrier to employing immigrants because fundamentally, like all of these great talent are stuck at the you know, Microsoft's metas, Amazons, Googles of the world and because it's safe and because they sponsor immigrant And there's so many small companies where you ask them in small business owners, you're like, hey, would you would you hire an immigrant? They're like absolutely not, not because they're anti immigrant, but because they don't have an HR team, they don't have resources, they don't like support.
Just to be clear, you're talking about people who are here on work visas. It's just really hard for a company to employ an immigrant who's here on a work visa. It's costly.
It's perceived to be hard, and it is and costly. And so what I want to be able to do is take all of these loyens we figured out on the family side around how to navigate the government process, how to translate these forms, how to execute it effectively and efficiently, and basically lower that barrier.
And so in that universe, the client is not the immigrant. The client is the employer or the would be employer who wants to hire someone here on a work visa but just can't deal with the paperwork.
And the cost exactly. And I want to make it so easy that it's as if you're hiring a recruiter, right, and everyone's okay, now paying a recruiter some money to bring you a candidate. And I imagine if it's like that's just as much effort as it takes to actually hire an immigrant, it would open up so much talent and support all of these small and medium sized businesses around the country.
What do you feel like you understand now about either immigration or the law that you didn't when you started a company.
I thought that immigration is a pretty clear win, and I thought that that would be an easy sell, Like even the concept of hey, we like, who wants bureaucracy? No one right, who wants additional folks like held in limbo, Like, no one who doesn't want economic prosperity. And it's amazed me or you know that have learned in this is that numbers don't really matter and and and it's it's you know, kind of tragic and and disappointing obviously as someone who you know, who studied economics. And then before it's like, you know, like this is something that I have been in rooms with very hard right wingers and very hard left wingers and everyone agrees on the solution. And and like there is a core piece of you know, of immigration reform that the majority of people actually agree to behind closed doors. If you have to combine you know, DACA and codify that into the program, the H one B and skilled immigration reform that we're talking about, you know, uh, lifting some of the green car caps and countries and getting people to start working sooner instead of just sitting around waiting to be able to work. You know, uh, you verify some sort of like way of like you know, holding companies accountable for hiring legal documented democrats. And this is the part that you know, I again, like I thought that I was coming at it from a world where like everyone should be in favor of what we're doing. And yeah, America has this one monopoly on the world, right, which is that people from all around the world who wanted to create the best lives for themselves, like my parents did, like you know, come here because of that opportunity. And we continually, year after year actively try to you know, diminish that that advantage that we have. And it's just it was just so surprising to me the level of animosity towards something that should be universally like appreciated, you know, with the appropriate nuances around it, but like it directionally should be we should all be on the same edge.
We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round, including what Shall learned when he sold vacuum cleaners on commission in high school. Back to the show. Let's finish with the lightning round, and in your case, I want to do I want to do a lightning round about your resume, about your employment history, because it's a really interesting employment history, and maybe there's different ways to do it, but let's try this. Let's try. I'm going to name a bunch of the jobs you've held, and I want you to tell me one thing you learned at each job. When you were in high school, you sold vacuum cleaners and microwaves on commission at sears.
I learn how to understand what people want. I'm a Chinese male, sixteen year old. My customers were fifty year old women and when I approach them, they are not thinking this man is a savant of house cleaning. And so how can I quickly get them to to to tell me what they're really looking for, what problem they're really is trying to solve, so that I can like get them to right, you know, piece of equipment to solve. It was something that was invaluable for me.
To be honest, I was much more interested in hearing about your job selling vacuums at Sears than I am in hearing about your job at mackenzie. But I'm curious, what is one thing you learned at McKenzie.
I I learned how to maximize time. Like, you never have enough time and there's always more to do, and so in the world where you can never feel like you're done with work, what is the way that you can create time?
Can you give me one little tip of how I can create time.
It's about letting go. And so the more that I tapped into other resources and other folks that can work in parallel doing something, then the less sequential waiting for each step of the process to get done.
What's one thing you learned when you were Director of Innovation and Design at the New York City Department of Education.
True progress doesn't care about how smart or right you think you are.
In my mind, there this is the hot shot mckensey. Analysts showing up at the Department of Ed ready to solve all their problems exactly.
And I'm embarrassed right because I made a clown out of myself in many kinds of situations because I thought I knew the answer, and I thought, like everything that's been doing right now is failing our kids. And while like no one disagree with the outcomes that that, you know, we were struggling with the way to actually get principles, parents, teachers, students, bus drivers, you know, lunch ladies, you know, cable companies to all actually want to help you requires more than you thinking that you're you're you know, you have the answer and everyone else has been screwing it up for the whole time.
Okay, so that's the end of the sort of resume lightning round. Now let's do a little classic style lightning round. What is one tip for that scary moment when you're you know, entering a country and you have to show your passport to the customs officials or the border guard or whatever. Do you have any professional advice for how to deal with that interaction.
Don't lie. I don't know what gets into people where they will just start saying things that are not totally true. It's a you know, if you don't need to answer more than they ask for.
Uh huh.
But don't make anything off because that gets far. It turns into a far worse situation.
If everything goes well, what problem will you be trying to solve in five years?
How can we make every person in the world be able to live where they want, be with the person they want, and achieve the life that they want.
By every person in the world in five years is audacious. I mean, you do now offer people payment plans, right, so you are already in the business of extending credit to people. Do you think you might get into the financial services business?
I want people to thrive, all right, and there's so many barriers, like and I'm not saying this to be like facetious anything.
It's a coy answer.
It's a coy It's like, I don't want people to be like I want to remove every barrier possible between you and the life that you want to achieve. I want to help people go and live anywhere in the world that they want. So if you can think of that as a global like peace, I want to help people like be able to establish themselves well in that world.
So that's that's basically financial services. If I want to make a specific version of establish themselves, I think financial.
Services, Yeah, I think you know, healthcare, education, family based things like yeah, I mean I pick, I pick boundless for a reason. Right, we are not like IMMIGRATIONUS dot com.
But everything for everybody dot everything.
I feel like that's a pretty good TAM. Right.
PAM, by the way, stands for total addressable market, so measure of how big a business could theoretically be someday, and show here is saying unless might someday.
Be very very big.
Today's show was produced by Edith Russelo, edited by Sarah Nix, and engineered by Amanda K.
Wall.
You can email us at problem at Pushkin dot fm, or you can find me on Twitter at Jacob Goldstein. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and we'll be back next week with another episode of What's Your Problem