LinkedIn, Zoom, FitBit, Yahoo, YouTube, Rotten Tomatoes, and DoorDash: What do all these companies have in common? All of these companies were started in Silicon Valley by Asian American entrepreneurs.
With the last week of AANHPI Heritage Month upon us, let’s talk about the impact of Asian American entrepreneurs on the business world.
The early days of Silicon Valley
Sociologists in the late 1980s and early 1990s found that Asian immigrants, and those born to immigrant parents, in California were drawn to entrepreneurship, in part, because of the racial discrimination they faced in the workplace, cultural biases, and the difficulty they had breaking the “glass ceiling.” They found that these entrepreneurs were vital to job creation in the region, injected their local communities with much-needed capital investment, and generated sales and tax revenue that benefited the broader public.
A 1999 study by AnnaLee Saxenian for the Public Policy Institute of California argued that the way policymakers had long viewed the economic contributions of immigrants in Silicon Valley was inadequate. The prevailing assumption was – and, in some ways, still is – that immigrants were displacing native workers and primarily contributing to the economy through low-cost labor fields. However, the study found that immigrants accounted for a third of Silicon Valley’s scientific and engineering workers, and those workers often generated more jobs and wealth for the state. Additionally, a quarter of the high-tech firms in the region were run by Indian or Chinese CEOs, and this was all before many of the companies mentioned earlier were founded.
The entrepreneurship spirit of these communities has only continued to grow, and Silicon Valley is the epicenter of that boom.
Silicon Valley today
Foreign-born workers now account for 66% of the tech workforce in Silicon Valley and 41% of the entire Valley population, the highest percentage anywhere in the country – for context, 14% of the United States population is foreign-born. In particular, Asians (foreign- and native-born) have made up the highest share of the population in the region since 2017. In 2023, 37% of residents identified as Asian alone, with an additional 2% of residents identifying as Asian in combination with another racial/ethnic group.
Additionally, Silicon Valley is the region with the highest share of immigrant entrepreneurs in the U.S., and many Asian immigrants helped build Silicon Valley to what it is today. Not only have many worked for or founded U.S. tech companies, they have also helped build global business relationships that those companies rely on to manufacture and produce their products.
Beyond Silicon Valley
Asian entrepreneurship goes far beyond the boundaries of Silicon Valley. There are over 3 million Asian American and Pacific Islander-owned businesses in the United States, which collectively employ 5.2 million people. There are also many organizations that focus on providing networks and services to assist Asian business owners and leaders.
For example, the Asian American Business Development Center was founded in 1994 and has spent the past few decades assisting Asian American businesses expand and compete in the mainstream market while also promoting their contributions to the general economy. For International Women’s Day this year, they published a report on Asian American women in corporate leadership that provided insight into their careers and aspirations.
Another large non-profit organization, the U.S. Pan Asian American Chamber (USPAACC), aims to “connect businesses with government, corporations, and nonprofits – opening doors to contracts, professional development, and educational opportunities for enterprises of all sizes.” The organization has several regional chapters throughout the United States.
