When Aizada Marat moved from New York to California in 2018 along with her husband, KODIF co-founder and CEO Chyngyz Dzmanazarov, she wanted to resolve her immigration standing. From that time on, every thing began to go unsuitable.
The Kyrgyzstan-born, Harvard-educated lawyer got here to the US when he was 17 to spend a 12 months with FLEX (Future Leaders Trade), a program funded by the U.S. State Division.
After attending Harvard, Marat moved to London after commencement resulting from immigration points. Now she is heading to California with Zhumanazarov, who has been accepted to Stanford College’s enterprise college, to just accept a job supply from main legislation agency Cooley.
However she did not understand that immigration attorneys may make consumers beware. She Googled and located a lawyer in Palo Alto to assist her with the visa. This turned out to be a foul transfer. Marlatt stated attorneys gave her unsuitable recommendation about when she may apply for authorization to work in California. The error left her unable to work for greater than a 12 months. She additionally can’t depart the nation.
“I am a lawyer, so I take heed to attorneys,” Marat advised TechCrunch. “Sadly, listening to what they stated was devastating as a result of months later, I used to be nonetheless unable to work. I acquired a job supply from Cooley.
Marra did find yourself working at Cooley for 3 years. She went again to that immigration legislation agency and confirmed them her mistake. This additionally ignited the entrepreneurial hearth inside her.
After leaving Cooley to work as a administration guide at McKinsey, Marra stored enthusiastic about the horrific immigration expertise. A lot in order that she started to marvel why the standard of immigration authorized providers was poor when the immigration course of was lengthy and sophisticated.
Immigration legislation, she discovered, is “hyper-fragmented,” that means that 10 p.c of the market is owned by one legislation agency, whereas the opposite 90 p.c is shared by greater than 20,000 legislation companies.
“There are only a few giant legislation companies that supply immigration providers at this time as a result of it primarily serves people, and these are small checks,” Marlatt stated. “That’s why, as a way to get a expertise visa, more often than not, individuals can apply on their very own. They don’t even want an employer. In my case, Cooley wouldn’t truly sponsor the visa, so I needed to determine that out myself.
As Marat considered what to do, she began her personal firm, creating software program and promoting it to immigration attorneys. Our aim is to assist them present higher providers in order that what occurred to Marla by no means occurs once more.
4 or 5 months after promoting the software program to 5 immigration legislation companies, Marlatt and her crew determined to conduct immigration analysis. In October 2023, they launched Alma, an AI-powered authorized tech startup she based with different immigrants, together with former Uber engineering supervisor Shuo Chen and former Step mission supervisor Assel Tuleubayeva.
The startup goals to streamline the visa course of for technologists, founders and researchers by offering private authorized counsel, serving to to hurry up doc processing and organizing the whole course of digitally. Marat stated Alma, like Migrun, Boundless, Lawly and different corporations working on this house, hopes to rapidly information worldwide expertise into the U.S. tech ecosystem.
Marlatt stated Alma differs from some opponents by providing extra providers, together with hiring its personal immigration attorneys.
“Immigration deserves high-quality service as a result of so much will depend on the immigration lawyer you discover,” Marra stated. “All of the repetitive and mundane issues that attorneys hate, we will automate in order that attorneys actually give attention to all their shoppers and supply actually good methods to get larger approval charges.”
Alma not too long ago raised $5.1 million in seed and pre-seed funding to assist propel the corporate ahead. The corporate is backed by Bling Capital, Forerunner, Village International, NFX, Conviction, MVP, NEA and Silkroad Innovation Hub. A lot of the funding will go in the direction of new hires for product and know-how growth.
