143: Free Money and Funding Your Startup with Sedale Turbovsky

Sophie Alcorn Podcast

In this week’s Immigration Law for Tech Startups podcast, I’m joined by Sedale Turbovsky, the CEO of OpenGrants, a company that makes grants and public funding more equitable, accessible, and transparent, especially for businesses and early-stage startups.

If you’re an international founder, whether in the U.S. or outside, and looking for startup funding in the U.S., there are various options available, even coming from for-profit entities. Now, this can all tie into becoming more qualified for an O-1 visa, an EB-1 visa, a green card for extraordinary ability, or an EB-2 National Interest Waiver green card.

Grant funding, also known as free money, usually doesn’t require a repayment, nor is the ownership of your company going to be reduced. That being said, there are certain conditions you need to be aware of before going down this route. While grant funding is abundant, in terms of utility, it is not easy to use for a lot of different reasons.

For the purpose of this discussion, this episode focuses on the U.S. landscape since the grant funding ecosystem in the United States functions differently than the grant funding ecosystem in other places and around the world.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• Why OpenGrants was created
• What is a grant: scope, timeline, how to be grant-ready
• Venture capital vs. grant funding
• The main buckets of impact for grant funding
• Avenues for grant funding

Don’t miss my upcoming conversations with top Silicon Valley venture capitalists, startup founders, professors, futurists, and thought leaders on Immigration Law for Tech Startups. Subscribe to this podcast here or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or whatever your favorite platform is. As always, we welcome your rating and review of this podcast. We appreciate your feedback!

Supporting Resources:

OpenGrants.io

Alcorn Immigration Law:

• Subscribe to the monthly Alcorn newsletter

• Immigration Law for Tech Startups podcast:

• Episode 15: Extraordinary Ability Bootcamp

• Episode 38: Extraordinary Ability Bootcamp Course

• Episode 113: How startup founders are moving to the US

• Immigration Options for Talent, Investors, and Founders

• Immigration Law for Tech Startups eBook

• Extraordinary Ability Bootcamp course for best practices for securing the O-1A visa, EB-1A green card, or the EB-2 NIW (National Interest Waiver) green card—the top options for startup founders. Use promotion code ILTS for 20% off the enrollment fee.