214: Building from the Ground Up: From Overcoming Immigration Hurdles to Glean to Global Tech Leadership with Deedy Das

Welcome to the Sophie Alcorn Podcast. Sophie's mission is to overcome borders, expand opportunity, and connect the world by practicing compassionate, visionary, and rigorous immigration law in service of the betterment of humanity. The Sophie Alcorn Podcast features inspiring interviews that empower global leaders to influence change regardless of their geographic location, place of birth or citizenship. Now, here's your host, Sophie Alcord.

My guest today is Deedee Didi Das, who invests at Menlo Ventures in seed and Series a companies in AI, SaaS and Infra, and helps run the $100 million Anthology Fund with Anthropic. He was on the founding team of the $4.6 billion Enterprise Search and AI company Glean, where he built and led Glean assistant to 15 million and beyond. ARR Dee also writes frequently about tech, AI startups and immigration on X, which have received over 400 million views and has been frequently featured in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, and more. Didi, welcome so much to my podcast. Thank you for being here today.

It's so great to be here, Sophie. It's my pleasure.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. We're going to talk a lot about a lot of things about your immigration journey. A lot of people want to know how you became qualified for EB1A as an engineer, but I'm also excited to talk more about life as a VC and everything that you're doing. So we'll go back in time, but why don't you tell us a little bit more about what you're focusing on right now, just to set the stage?

Yeah, well, right now I focus on, like you said, seed and Series A investing. I cover a broad range of areas, so AI, SaaS and infra, which, you know, today is pretty much everything. It's a lot. And I also, like you said, cover the anthology fund. I help lead that effort with Anthropic, and that is $100 million collaboration. And we have a little bit more flexibility on the kinds of checks that we can do and areas we can cover with that. And so been doing that for about a year now.

Okay, wait, does that mean they can be smaller, they can be bigger or just anything?

Yeah, they can be smaller or bigger. And so there's a lot more flexibility. Typically when you go through a standard VC, they want to get their 10 to 15% ownership targets. And so we're a multi stage firm, so traditionally we do like A, C, A, B, C, but we want to take the 10 to 15% because that makes the model work out. But the Anthology Fund gives us a little bit more flexibility on doing some stuff that it's a bit smaller that may not necessarily fit that bill. But we used to want to be in some of the most impactful companies of the future. Right.

Amazing. So did you always know that you wanted to be a vc?

Not at all. In fact, I joke that this is hard to falsify, but if I wanted to be a vc, I felt like I would have gone to business school at some point. I've kind of always wanted to be a builder. This is what I sort of grew up doing. This is why I wanted to, wanted to do engineering or computer science. And whether it was at Facebook first or Google or at Glean, that's kind of what I loved to do. I think the interest in seeing what happens in Venture started with my journey at Glean, where I was very close. I became very close to how startups function and I, you know.

You were part of the founding team there.

Exactly, yeah.

Me. Off the ground. Yeah, yeah.

And, and, and to me it was, it was crazy because before Glean, startups were always sort of this enigma that almost, you kind of almost feared in the sense that, you know, everyone just tells you these statistics like 99% of startups fail and they're going to go to the ground. So what is this like special magic that you need to succeed? But once you go through it, sure, you only see one data point, but I still think you learn a lot about, you know, this is not as hard as people make it out to be. A lot of it is just covering your bases and knowing what you're doing. And I felt like I learned enough that I wanted to keep working with startups and sort of help them off the ground and do the things that, that, that they do best.

Because by training you're an engineer and you started off as a software engineer, right, in big tech, primarily, right? Yeah, yeah. So as an immigrant, because. Well, would you mind giving our listeners a brief recap of their. Of your immigration journey? And everybody will link to Dede's immigration blogs in the show notes so you can read the whole story there. But high level, tell us about your immigration journey.

For sure. I mean, you obviously know this, Sophie, we've been working so long. But for everybody else, the, there's the prequel and then there's the actual journey. The prequel is a lot of people ask about my accent and so I have to.

Oh, so American.

Yes, I, I, When I was 3, my family moved to the U.S. so we were in the Bay Area for seven years. So I kind of learned to speak English in this accent. And then we moved back to India where then I had to have a different accent. And when I was here, I had a green card, which we couldn't sustain or we couldn't keep alive when we moved back. And when, when I finished high school in India, I sort of knew that I wanted to come back here for college. And my parents didn't, but I knew. And so we ended up making that happen. And when I came back, I came back on an F1. I got on a stem opt, did that for. For three years. And I was very fortunate that my first H1B attempt worked out. So I got on an H1B when I was at Facebook, but then I wasn't very happy at Facebook, so I moved to Google, transferred my H1B was on that for a while. And then I eventually, when I was leaving Google, I was traveling a little bit for Google at the time, so I was in New York. Then I went to Israel, then I went to India. And I realized that I wanted to then join Glean. That's when I started thinking about what can I do for my actual visa situation. I had an EB2 applied for at the time, which is, you know, your standard, you have a master's, you can apply for an EB2.

Yeah. Process waiting. I1 4.

Exactly.

All of that.

Yeah, exactly. But at the time, I thought hopefully at Glean, because it's a startup, I could be in a position where I would have enough evidence to do the EB1. There was obviously like, not the primary decision for joining a startup because most startups.

No.

Will probably die in two years. So you can't really make that decision purely for immigration needs. But I did join Glean, and that was a nice side benefit that I could build up that profile because it's easier to prove a bunch of things on when you're at a startup. And so I was just having this.

Conversation with a Stanford Business School graduate this morning and I was like, look, you're in this big tech job. It's going to be really hard for you to become qualified where you're at as an engineer for these criteria. It's either going to take a really long time or you're going to have to go out of way your way to do a ton of stuff. I'm like, well, if I had a magic wand and I could just give you a green card right now, what would you do? He's like, I would start a startup we already have paying users like, okay, well, I don't know if you're allowed to do that right now, but if you could somehow manage to do your startup, it would be so much easier to check all of those EB1A boxes. And so you were able to leverage your time at Glean to build out your portfolio of accomplishments.

Absolutely. I mean, even if you think about some of the EB1 requirements. Right. So starting from a leading and critical role, which is a thing that one of the, you know, for Everybody else, there's 10 criteria that the EB1A wants you to fulfill. You have to fulfill three of them to get an A1A. And there's some final merits and you know, you're the expert on that, Sophie. But one of those criteria is leading in critical role. And it's almost obvious that it's easier to justify a leading and critical role in a smaller organization than it is at, say, Google. But there's so many more when you think about published conference conferences and publications and things like that. Much more likely to get patents done at a startup than you are at a big company. You're much more likely at a startup to be sent to conferences that help the business because you need to put your name and brand out there as a startup and so they'll send you. And now you can have all of these things that end up counting towards your EB1 when it comes to doing press, if you're ever going to do press, that's very beneficial for the startup. But at a big company you'd have to, you know, jock through many hoops to even get, oh, you have to.

Go through layers and ask the manager, the vp, and then they gotta connect with marketing and it's a whole thing. Whereas at a startup you're like, hey CEO, can I do some stuff to help you make more money?

And they're like, yeah, exactly, exactly. So it obviously becomes way easier to build a whole case for yourself when you are at a startup than a bigger company. So anyway, to finish my, my journey then I spent longer than I should have, but I spent three years sort of preparing my EB1 application. I finally got that done and but now, very fortunately, I do have a green card.

Congratulations, you're back to where you started from.

Took a good nearly 20 plus years to get there.

But I guess the lesson to all those parents out there thinking about whether you want to leave the US and this administration, if you give up your green card, your kids will be affected.

I have given my parents a Lot of grief about this.

Aw.

It's. It makes it even worse because my brother is a US citizen because he was born when we were here, so I get to see it firsthand where he doesn't have to worry about any of this stuff and.

Wow. Wow. So. So you're like the story of how somebody became qualified for an EB1A as an engineer because you were founding engineer at a startup. And I think I've told you this, but because of you and your articles and your tweets, so many people have been able to qualify for EB1A over the last year and a half, two years, especially in the last year leading up to the election where a lot of people really wanted to get ahead and self petition and get to the front of the visa bulletin. Wait time really had a tremendous impact. So you have, you have lit the way for people who didn't otherwise know that this was possible so.

Well, not without the fair share of controversy, I mean, which I feel like, you know, like it's worth talking about for a little bit.

It wasn't, it wasn't all roses, I can tell you that. It was a, it was quite a process.

And even, even just the fact that, you know, you're probably referring to like the, the blog post I wrote about, you know, some of the ways that a person can go and get to qualify for an EB1. And it's, it's tough because, like, I understand that there's backlash about something like that because, you know, this is a zero sum game. There's only, you know, especially if you're Indian, for example, for a country, there's only several slots of people that qualify. But, and my argument is, you know, some people.

What type of backlash have you gotten? Like, don't help people live their best lives.

Well, it's really, the backlash is if you're an academic, you're like, I feel more entitled to the EB1 category than you do. So why are random engineers who are not professors able to do this?

This is.

Okay.

Sorry, professors.

It's that kind of backlash. Even though, you know, predominantly the EB1 category is actually EB1C. So it's, that's. Those are people where your company moves you outside the country in somewhat of a managerial role and then brings you back in a year later to get an EB1C. So I still think the critique against the A is unfounded, but I do understand that people are annoyed that more people can qualify to a limited program. So I get it, but I still Think it.

Well, I think the fundamental frustration should be with the laws and the framework, not with people who are finding ways to qualify. Like, at the end of the day, we just need more green card pathways in this country. We need to actually welcome the founders you're investing in. Right.

Like crazy for me to see founders of companies that are sometimes, you know, unicorns, like absolutely stellar companies where their founder still doesn't have a green card yet.

Right. And it might still be years or, you know, potentially decades, who knows?

Correct. Yeah. I mean, my most famous example is Arvind Srinivas from Perplexity. That's a nine.

Are you on the Perplexity board?

I'm not, but.

Advisor. Or you've, you've.

I am an angel. I'm an angel and I help them out.

Okay. Okay, great. Okay, well. Yes. You have a connection. Yeah. That's insane. I saw his tweets about it a couple months ago and like, why is somebody who has created something of such tremendous value that's, you know, revolutionizing how we interact with search? Like, how can that person not have a green card yet? It's so silly.

It is, it's, it's, it's. That's. And that's just one example. I mean, there's so many examples of people who are absolutely phenomenal, who just are. Are stuck in the process because of just how bizarre the rules are sometimes.

So because you are an engineer and, you know, we all think from first principles. Now, in Silicon Valley, if you had to. I didn't tell you this question was coming, but if you had to redesign the immigration system with just a, like a carte blanche to do whatever, what are some of the categories you think we should be prioritizing as a country?

I think there needs to be special pathways for extremely talented people. And this can come up in maybe two different ways. So, you know, there's, there's one version of this which is, hey, let's make everything sort of merit based and then have like a cap, but then start stack ranking people on a set of principles we all agree with. There are examples of countries that do this. Of course, you have to be very careful about what does count and what doesn't count because you don't want it to be gamed and you don't want it to not select for actual merit. So that's one. So you have one unified system where every, everything, everyone qualifies by merit. You have a cap, you stack rank. And that could mean anything, like the salary you get paid to whether you're starting a company could count for some points to, you know, whether you have a PhD from somewhere or how good your research is. You know, did you go to like a top university? You know, are all of this kind of stuff will qualify, qualify you by.

Did your startup get funding, how many users you have? You could do it for anything.

Yeah, right, right. And if you have some comprehensive reform there, I think that, that you know, ubiquitous system could work really well, especially in the light of as we know, like so much Critique on the H1B program. I think this is a system that most people would be amenable to. The other way is sort of just have parallel pathways that are easier for ultra talented people. I mean just the other day I was having a conversation with a friend where the UK for you know, is not without its downsides but the fact that it just says hey, you know what if you're a graduate from these universities, just show up two years, just spend time here. And I'm like, that's the kind of clarity you want in a program. And I think most of our laws do not count account for the fact that just being simple and easy is half the battle. Even though you might, you know, maybe you make some mistakes, maybe all those people aren't great, maybe there is some, some error there. But you know what, inside, instead of trying to get people to apply for like 500 pages of docs, just make it simple and get, get people in. And I think this is, that would be a great way to sort of attract talent just as an example.

Yeah, that would be amazing if we could simply. Yeah, you just show your diploma like welcome. Oh Stanford. Oh Harvard. Oh, whatever like I.I.T. you know, Oxford, Cambridge, whatever. That would be really nice. And, and then well, I don't know the UK example but are they allowed to do whatever they want when they're in there for two years? Yes.

I think the visa is called a high performance visa.

Something they might have had like a global. I don't remember. There's a.

He literally said take the three rankings of universities. If you're in two of the three you count in the top 50 and if you have a degree from there, two years just stay.

Wow, that's amazing.

And I'm like that's so simple. You don't have to ask any questions.

You just know that would help so many founders. How do you see the early stage founder landscape now? It's sort of oscillated over the last 10 years of like oh, you know, first all the founders would just like Visit on their ESTA and B1 B2 and Start companies and raise money. And then in Covid, all the founders were defecting on H1BS from fangs and now a lot of people are trying to get an O1 because they're trying to get more traction on their companies first before they can raise money. What do you, what's kind of the playbook for an international founder in the US these days and how does it depend on if you're overseas or maybe if you're like an international graduate in the US right now?

There's so many and I'll do a great job covering them all in conversation. But what I can say is number one, and I hate to use this as a rule, but it's almost a rule that if you are starting a tech company, whether it's the beginning or later on, at some point you probably want to be in the Bay Area. There are significant advantages to being in the Bay Area, from hiring to being in the right networks, to being able to sell to the right people, to being able to fundraise from the right people. So it's very clear that people have an innate desire to be if they're, if they're trying to run a tech company. Now, given that I've seen people, you know, do it at various stages. So there's some people who just quit on day one in the sense that they say I'm not eligible for a visa, I'm just not going to start a company. So that's the worst kind of loss. But there are people who just don't do it. Then there's people who say, hey, you know, I just, I was at this other company, say a faang company, Google, Facebook, what have you. I just want to get my green card sorted out there and then be comfortable to make the jump and be able to start a company without any hold barred, so to speak. And so fine, you can do that. Then the third sort of way people do it is hey, fine, I'm going to start a company. I don't have my immigration situation figured out. What are the options I have? And then people do a bunch of different things. So, oh, one very common route. I hear that all the time people sometimes directly do and still do an H1B. You can actually now, I believe.

Oh, we're, we're able to do it now for people who own 100% of the equity in their companies. So if you're a solo boot bootstrapping founder and you haven't raised yet, or you've just raised on safe notes, we can. You don't. No longer should anybody ever think that they have to randomly give up equity to some American in order to qualify for a visa. That is not true in 2025.

Yep, yep. So now a few, very few people know that. So that's that, that's another one. There's the international entrepreneur rule.

Yeah, I'll be, I'm, I'm, I'm hopeful about that one. We'll see how it plays out. The prior Trump administration tried to put the kaposh on that, but we'll see, we'll see what happens. It's a new era.

Yep, yep. Yeah, I think a lot of those things. Yeah, we, we will see how, how it all plays out. And then I think maybe the, the last one I, I, I want to point out is there's people who started companies from across the world who then have traction and then want to move.

Yeah.

And for a lot of them, they often hopefully have sort of built up some criteria to already do an EB1 or 01, so maybe they have some funding already, which counts as a criteria now and so on and so forth.

Yeah, I just got, I just got an O1 approved the other day for a founder in India who built up the company. There was in some US accelerators, but now they're finally moving here. But they've already raised several million dollars and it was a lot easier for them actually. Well, the U.S. immigration part, I don't know about starting the company. What advice would you give to startups looking to fundraise?

Well, you know, there's a lot of advice that, that you can give that's probably beyond this. It'll take more beyond the scope of this podcast. But you know, to put simply there, if, if I were to say just one or two things, I would say number one is probably listen, listen to VCs less and trust the gut more with how customers are behaving. Customer is king. And I find that one common mistake too many founders make is they're almost pitching what they think investors want to hear rather than what they think should be built. And so that's one common thing that's very easy to, to, to fix. The second thing I think would be really like, I mean, honestly, just brag more about yourself when you have actual material. A lot of people, I think, tone it down because they think they'll come across too arrogant. And you know, there's a line, I mean, you don't want to come across as too arrogant, but like, if you put yourself into an investor's shoes. And I'm just talking about fundraising. There's many other things you can do for a startup to actually get the company to work. But just as fundraising goes right, you know, VCs are meeting so many companies that are practically saying very similar things, and all they're looking to know is what makes you special. So if you don't come and say, hey, here's what makes me special, then we like. It's hard to mind read and figure out what makes you great. So if you've done something cool, if you've done, like, broken a benchmark, if you. If your thing just works with users, if their users are saying awesome things about you, you know, just lead with the evidence and it'll speak for itself. And I think the art of sort of selling yourself is something that I think a lot of really talented people struggle with. So those two, I would. I would give.

Yeah, well, you should. Y' all should practice with your EB1A's bragging about yourself, and then you can carry that skill into your fundraising. Okay. And then as you evaluate entrepreneurs, what do you think are the most important skills for them to have?

I think there are different people will tell you, different answers. For me, the kinds of things I really like to see is, especially given the area I invest in is extremely technical talent. Number two is the ability to hire. So I think that's not talked about enough. But you could be extremely technical but not be able to hire other great people, and that makes you effectively not that useful. And then the third thing I think that I really like, it just kind of like it's some sort of X factor. It's really hard to put a finger on, which is we call it, like, the ability to run through walls. And it's really, really hard to say what that means. It's kind of intuition you get when you talk to somebody, but really, like, it's things that go far beyond the meeting. One almost secret that I can say is, you know, you're not really being. You're not only being assessed on your slides or how you like or your pitch. You're being assessed on your, you know, your demeanor. Demeanor and the vibe you bring. Like, are you, like, are you. Do you seem like someone who's passionate? Do you think, like, someone who knows what they're talking about? Are you, like, always somebody the investors.

Want to spend the next seven years talking to?

Exactly.

And I.

So those are the kinds of things that I like to like to see. I have to mention one last Thing that's more of a personal for me is I don't like extremely salesy founders in the sense I like people who are very honest with what they have and what they don't have because it's just tough. So I don't like people to say, oh, well, obviously OpenAI can't do, like, you know what, OpenAI can probably do what you're doing. Um, so like, let's be honest about that. But what can you do and what do you see that they won't do? So the. I like the honesty because I think it just makes for better entrepreneurs. But, you know, mileage may vary.

And then I see your posts and sometimes I'm like, how does he have the time to know about that? So, like, how do you stay up to date with so many tech trends and advancements?

I mean, the easy answer is I like really love my stuff. So I just spend a lot of time reading. I don't have any other real hobbies. Like, you know, you know, like I'll, you know, I'll go on a run and a hike or like, you know, some things like that. But most of my free time is spent. You're doing what you love, learning about this stuff. Exactly. And I think we live in a, in such a. It's such a great privilege to live in this technical technological era that I try to absorb as much as I can. The reason I end up writing so much is because, you know, four years ago I sort of, I can go through that story, but tldrs I learned that it was very easy for me to go into rabbit holes where I didn't really learn anything unless I told myself I would write about it. So writing became a forcing function for me to somewhat focus even when I'm like, exploring. So if I'm trying to learn about something, you know, before I was like posting often, I would just learn 10 things and remember nothing the next day. Now I'm like, look, let me just focus on the one paper I'm trying to read right now and get some insight out of it that is useful to me. So that's why I end up like, writing about it. So that's the story.

Where, where do you think we're going with AI and machine learning and these breakthrough technologies? Like, where are we going to be as a civilization in the coming years? And I'm like, what's even the time horizon? I'm like, is it 50 years? Is it five years? Is it five months? I don't know. There's so much rapid Change, speculate.

It would be. I would be stupid to even try to speculate on this.

Are there trends you're excited about?

All of it. I mean, the entire, like, if you look at what's happened in the space, in the space of AI last year, it's absolutely magical. You're talking about, you know, if you go back to the early days of the Internet, there were these conversations around Google and what it would do for people's memory. Like, hey, do you even really need to remember anything if you can just Google it? Like, do you need to remember what the capital of Wyoming is? Or just Google it? But. And everyone had this like, panic attack of like, okay, what does education mean if you can just Google things? And we got over it, we're like, look, you still need to know some things because it does take some time to Google, but most things you can just look up and let's shift the focus on understanding and processing that information. But now the shift is even further where it's like, you can ask pretty complex questions and think to an AI model and it can probably do better than you would even after days of research. So the implications of that for mathematics, for coding, for writing, for biology, chemistry, like, you name it, is phenomenal. So I don't know what it means. I can give you a couple of results that I love. My favorite one is the medicine one where some people disagree with some parts of this, but the recent research shows that you're actually better off asking an AI model about your diagnosis than a doctor. There the stats showed that the doctors on average are worse at doing a diagnosis given a bunch of data that they have. That's scary like that. That's just factually.

I mean, I remember a few years ago it was like AI passed the bar exam and that was a little bit terrifying. But I mean, maybe that's. These are incredible advancements for humanity. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

It's almost like if you can effectively leverage the intelligence of all of mankind in one system, then it's probably likely to be stronger than any one specific person. We just don't have the ability to process that much. But you know, look, looking forward to the future. This can mean a lot of things. This can mean that in general, the value of intellectual labor is lower because, you know, it's, it's commodity and it's cheap. And so the, the, the, those professions, those professions are, are, are somewhat less valued. But it can, it can also mean what it. The implications for robotics are tremendous as well. The implications for, you know, everything from Self driving cars to humanoid robots in your house, going and doing things for you. You know, the possibilities are endless. I can't speculate on how I play out because I think 99 out of a hundred, I'll be wrong.

Okay, so a couple of fun questions. Tell us about your approach to losing £66 in eight months.

Um, this was in 2017. The basic approach was I, I'd put on a lot of weight. I was never very health conscious. I never grew up in a very health conscious household. We were told to eat a lot, but then I was in New York, and in New York, it's very bad to be fat. It's very hard to be an early 20s person in New York and, and, and not looking great, because everyone does. And the approach I had is really one of discipline. So at a glance, most of losing weight is diet. But you ought to exercise with it so you don't lose muscle mass. Muscle mass is what heightens your basal metabolic, metabolic rate. That's what burns the actual calories. So go to the gym. So you keep burning calories, but then consume less than the calories your body automatically burned by finding a diet that works for you. For me, the diet that worked was intermittent fasting with keto. So I ate maybe two meals a day at that time. And I made sure none of those meals had carbs, which means sugar as well. I think the other key thing for me is just find something that tastes good. So you can always find something that tastes good if you look hard enough, even on a diet. So find that and then repeat, repeat, repeat.

Great. And you still run for fun.

I still run for fun, but I, I'm nowhere close to that level of paranoid.

Well, you're in Silicon Valley now, not New York, so different culture. It's okay. We have our, our fleeces and our Patagonia jackets and things to hide behind. Another fun question. Tell us about some of your most favorite interactions with Elon on X. Oh, man.

I.

Or you could talk about the one about immigration.

Well, yeah, at least the point. He's pro that view. I think we share that on immigration. Look, I'm a big fan of Elon. I don't know. I don't know if there's one favorite one.

We've had several. It's probably fun when those happen.

It's always fun when those happen. But I'm a big fan of Elon. I mean, I feel like everyone has to give a disclaimer these days because I'm like, no, I don't agree with Everything he says, a bunch of things. There's no way anyone can agree with everything he says.

Right.

But at the same time, I think he's a very impressive person. So I'm a big fan and it's fun interacting with him on X.

Okay. Yeah. I'm hopeful that his voice and some of the other voices from tech and venture that are becoming part of this administration that's emerging. I'm hopeful that we might actually have some good news for high skilled immigration at the end of the day. So we'll see. That'll be fun.

I mean, you've just spent like 30 seconds just talking about Starlink. Star is a national defense treasurer and if somebody like Elon runs something like Starlink and says, hey, you know What, I needed H1BS to build this, then you could probably listen. And that's. I think he probably knows better than people who haven't actually built stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, hopefully with this new H1B modernization rule that got published a few weeks ago, hopefully that will stick in place with the incoming administration. It has a lot of good, like enforcement things that hopefully Trump will be a fan of. So we'll see. But that should pave the way for some of these things ideally. So we'll see. Okay. And then Didi, last question. You've gone through some challenges in your life, right? Not everybody's road is easy. So what are what inspired you to get through those tough times? Maybe you could share that for any founders trying to fundraise or any people trying to get their EB1As, but like, what kept your eye on the prize throughout many of the things you've done?

Very good question, Sophie. I actually have an answer for that and the first time I'm hearing this question, so it's not a prepared answer. You know, growing up in India for high school was a very eye opening phase for me because I saw so many of my closest friends go through a struggle that I don't think I would ever be able to go through because I'm just, I guess I'm more privileged than that. But I saw people struggle with, you know, not having enough money to be able to go to school. I had some friends who were just not very well to do. There were people who barely spoke English, couldn't even get by. Like they had to struggle to be like, I don't know if I can go to 11th grade. That's the level of struggle that they had. So nothing that I had ever gone through really compared to that. So I think when I look Back at some of my friends who went through a struggle like that, I always tell myself that any opportunity you have, it's your duty to make the most of it and to do with it what you feel. Correct. Whether it be giving back in terms of writing, whether it be helping other people. I don't do it for, you know, I do it because I feel obligated to, because there are people who don't have the opportunity to do any of that. So if I spend that time, you know, going and watching Netflix, that's such a waste of time. I could go be doing something more impactful instead. And not to say I don't watch Netflix, but that's sort of what motivates me to do less of that and more of more. More of the fun. Good work.

Thank you. Thank you, Dee Dee. That's very, very moving. Well, that brings us to the conclusion of our.

Can I ask you a question?

Oh, okay, sure. Yes.

No, it's kind of basic one I was going to ask you. You see so many immigrants over the many years that you've been a lawyer, and for you, do you have any, without being able to name, without naming anybody, do you have any standout stories that sort of highlight the quintessential immigrant journey for you?

Let's see. I mean, so many ones. Founder who's kind of like that 11th grade friend you had is somebody I know who was in that era where people thought they had to give up half of their equity to an American. So that company that person created processed probably 10 billion of transactions at this point. And the person had to leave with nothing, even though it should have been their company, because they should have been the CEO, but because of all the fallout. So that's one that makes me so angry that I, you know, stay up late at night trying to work on understanding laws and make videos about new updates that drop. And, and my clients are amazing. I mean, you're a wonderful person. I get to meet incredible people from all around the world who each have their own amazing journey, who care so passionately about their areas of interest, who are just striving for the chance to be free and the chance to actually do something that feels meaningful to them. And earning that privilege is such a life changing event and they can finally be in their flow state. And I just believe that if we could help everybody, if just every smart person who wanted to do something for humanity could just be in the place where they could actually be allowed to do that, we would have clean air, oceans without plastic, we'd have all of the forests we wanted people would live a really long time. We could be a multi planetary species like I think this could be, you know humanity's path towards peace and abundance. So I'm inspired by amazing stories of immigrants every day and I love the work that I do so thank you for carrying on that torch and sharing your light with the world.

Well you're a super inspirational lawyer and I love working with you just beyond all the stuff that you know too.

So thank you so much Didi. That's so kind of you. I really appreciate it. Okay well thank you so much for listening everybody. Check out the show notes. We'll have all of Deedee's links to X and his personal blog and some of the articles that we mentioned. And for immigration updates check out the Alcorn Immigration Law newsletter. You can subscribe in the Show Notes and share this episode with a friend. Thank you so much for listening.

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