A New Power Rising: Female Immigrant-Owned Businesses

Quietly growing in its own ecosystem, female immigrants have started a new economic phenomenon in the U.S. Immigrants make up 13.2% of the total U.S. population yet they account for 20.6% of entrepreneurs. These businesses add billions in taxable revenue to the U.S. economy. Women like Mina Lux, Co-Founder/CEO of Meelo, are quietly changing the landscape.

What about the women? They take risks, create jobs, generate revenue and discover new markets. Female-immigrant owned businesses make up 40% of all immigrant-owned businesses.  In fact, female immigrants are 2x more likely to start businesses than their American-born counterpart. They start with more money than American-born owned, often use their personal savings, and have little fear charging into atypical industries such as technology. This social-economic phenomenon is still relatively unnoticed to most.

Meet Mina Lux, one of these women, quietly building her dream -- a tech start-up. Her accomplishments are being recognized with honors such as the Entrepreneur of the Year Award, uOttawa – Faculty of Engineering, Entrepreneur of the Year Stevie Award 2016 finalist and TiE50 Top Tech Start-up 2016 winner. Her company, Meelo combines causal reasoning and human behavior patterns to help companies discover, specialize and refine knowledge automation. An experienced entrepreneur, her first start-up FloNetwork was an award-winning email service provider sold for $80 million.

Mina often jokes that she is a professional immigrant, “I am actually a Taiwanese, a Canadian and an American.”

Ms. Lux often gives talks to young minds on entrepreneurship. When asked about the risks of starting a company, she answered, “I don’t really think about it. I have read that the act of immigration is such a risk, that immigrants can handle a higher level of uncertainty. Maybe that experience has help me however, I think the key is the ability to ‘dream’.” Ms. Lux continues, “Immigrants take the risk because of a dream. It’s the passion of making a better life and having that chance to actually carry it out. Does risk come in to play? From time to time it, but then we flip right back to that dream of having an opportunity unavailable elsewhere. That’s always been the root of my strength.”

Mina Lux

As a digital industry veteran with a track record of success, Mina is building her second technology company - Meelo. Its patent-pending technology blends disparate data, performs streaming analytics, incorporates artificial and cognitive intelligence to empower faster and better informed strategic decision making. Mina Lux has worked with the media, e-commerce, travel and consumer goods industry for the last 20 years. Her first start-up, FloNetwork, was acquired by DoubleClick in 2001 for over $80 million USD.

For more information visit Ms. Lux’s LinkedIn profile.

For more information on Meelo, visit meelo.com or email our Director of Marketing, Sleonargue@meelo.com.