President Trump recently signing a proclamation that suspended the entry of foreign nationals seeking to study or participate in exchange programs at Harvard University. While the proclamation has temporarily been blocked, the risk lingers not only for the university, but also potentially for American innovation and business creation. According to our next guest, Harvard among the top universities with the highest number of bachelor degree recipients who are also founders of unicorn startups. Here with more on what's at stake for America's startup boom, we're joined by Ilia Strebelev, professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Ilia, thank you for being here. So, as we Thank you for the invitation. you know, we've sort of been trying to get our hands around what could be a potential economic impact, not just for Harvard, but more broadly, the impact on innovation and business creation in the US. So, what has your research found in terms of the numbers?

Well, if you look at all the unicorns, which are typically very successful venture capital backed startups with a post money valuation of at least $1 billion. So those are the most successful companies you will hear from the venture capital world. What I found out after my team and I at Stanford studied all the founders of those unicorns, then four out of 10, really more than four out of 10 of all these unicorns are foreign born. They are first generation immigrants. And if we include second generation immigrants, then that number will go to seven out of 10 founders.

Ilia, it's interesting in terms of where these successful founders are coming from. Uh it seems like per your data, India for the gold, number one, Israel in second place. Why those two countries, Ilia? What do you think explains that?

Great question. There are different explanations. So India is a very large country with a relatively good IIT education system, and indeed we have 90 Indian founders who came to the United States from India and then founded US-based unicorns. Israel is a high-tech nation. Um in fact, a very interesting statistics about Israel is that if Israel were just one of the US states, then it would be the fifth most important state in the US in terms of the number of unicorn founders.

And and and Ilia, what I think is interesting about what what your research found is that they're not just creating startups. They are creating them here in the US. And then presumably, they're staying in the US. In other words, they're not creating it and then going back to their home countries. So they're hiring here, they're innovating here, they're, you know, again, creating businesses here.

That is correct. That is correct, which is most of the unicorns that we study were founded in the US. Some of the unicorns were founded outside the United States, but then the founders brought them here. And those founders, for the most part, staying here.

Oh, and in your research, have you found, and again, as we talked about the Harvard University order from the White House, has been temporarily blocked. But and I I don't know if you've had a chance to do new research yet, but I do wonder what you've seen in terms of any kind of chill on this kind of activity or if foreign students are still clamoring to come to the US.

So far I haven't seen any chill. Um foreign students still would love to come to the United States to study and also to found companies. I'm seeing a lot of students at Stanford from outside the United States who would like to come and cofounding companies. Many of my students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business are from outside the United States and they found startups. Some of these startups also becoming very, very successful venture capital-backed companies. But I think something also, something is very important to mention is that people are coming to the United States because the US has really unique venture capital innovation ecosystem. It is in Silicon Valley, but really also beyond, just in the United States. As the result of this, if all these founders from India, from Israel, by the way, Canada is in the bronze place, um and other countries would not be able to come, then it's not that they will go and found those unicorns in other countries. I think that will be much more difficult to do so. So I think what's going to happen likely is that we will just see less innovation. Um of course, the US will suffer, but also we'll see less innovation globally.