Why Beyond Border thinks visas are now part of the founder playbook

Beyond Border, the Singapore-founded, tech-enabled US immigration platform for founders and highly skilled professionals, has added former Airbnb China COO Kum Hong Siew to its advisory bench as Business Advisor.

The appointment comes as the company, which says it has stayed net profitable for two years while hitting a multimillion-dollar annual revenue run rate, pushes further into the US and prepares to expand into Latin America.

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Siew’s résumé reads like a masterclass in scaling across regulatory complexity: one of Airbnb’s earliest Asia Pacific hires, he went on to run the company’s regional business before becoming COO of Airbnb China, a market notorious for grinding down foreign operators. Before that, he cut his teeth at law firm Rajah & Tann and at Yahoo!.

e27 sat down with Siew (and on two questions specifically about Beyond Border’s market strategy, with CEO and co-founder Fred Ng) to unpack what “operational scaling” actually means for an immigration platform, why the O-1 visa’s “Einstein” reputation is mostly myth, and what a law-and-tech background taught him about vetting founders before agreeing to advise them.

You went from Airbnb to immigration tech. What drew you to Beyond Border specifically, and what parallels do you see between scaling Airbnb’s regional operations and helping founders navigate US immigration?

Kum Hong Siew: What drew me in was the founders first. Fred Ng and Arnold Ip are strong founders who are building something special. Silicon Valley is the indisputable epicentre of the AI revolution, and ambitious founders and builders around the world increasingly understand that they need to move there to have truly global impact.

I also see the mission in broader terms than a typical visa-processing pitch. When someone moves to the US and succeeds, that success flows back home too, especially true for folks hailing from emerging markets like Latin America.

The Airbnb connection, though, is about something more specific than mission alignment for me. When it involves cross-border movement of people, local nuance and understanding is critical. And it can be challenging to maintain this local mindset as you scale a business. I learnt this from my time at Airbnb, and I look forward to helping Fred and Arnold do this as well.

You went from one of Airbnb’s earliest APAC hires to COO of Airbnb China, a market known for regulatory complexity. What lessons from operating there apply to Beyond Border’s move into Latin America?

Kum Hong Siew: I’m careful not to overclaim a one-size-fits-all playbook here. Every country really is different. But there are some fundamental truths in running and scaling a business. For example, succeeding in China requires a relentless focus on the customer, and that translates everywhere else.

Beyond Border frames immigration as sitting “at the intersection of legal, operational and business strategy.” Can you unpack that with a concrete example? How does a founder’s visa status actually shape decisions like where to hire or raise capital?

Kum Hong Siew: Most of Beyond Border’s customers have already made the harder decision before they ever speak to us. They’ve already decided that they want to be in the US, usually because that’s where funding, talent and customer demand are frequently the deepest and densest in the world. And then Beyond Border helps them get the right visa to be there.

Physical presence isn’t optional if a founder actually wants to build a team or raise capital in the US. It’s very hard to do those things successfully if you are constantly flying in for two weeks before leaving, and coming back only in a few months’ time.

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I’ll offer a data point from my own angel investing. I have a portfolio founder from Hong Kong who now spends more than half their time in San Francisco. Since they started doing this late last year, they’ve more than 4x-ed their annualised revenue.

As Business Advisor, you’ll work on legal operations and operational scaling. What does “operational scaling” mean for an immigration platform — internal processes, attorney networks, client experience, or all three?

Kum Hong Siew: I’ll be blunt about the industry’s starting point. Immigration service providers have historically been heavy on manual processes and operations. With AI, there is now an opportunity to reinvent how such services can be delivered, to enable faster, cheaper, and higher-quality outcomes.

But I push back on treating AI as a bolt-on. It’s not about taking an existing workflow and automating select steps with AI, while essentially doing the same steps in fundamentally the same way. Instead, it’s about designing and building a completely new workflow from first principles using the technology that is now possible, while maintaining or even improving the quality of the deliverables.

My bet is on combining Beyond Border’s talented workforce and attorney networks with technology to serve far more clients without diluting the experience.

You’ve worked across law, tech, and now immigration. How has that cross-disciplinary background shaped how you evaluate a company like Beyond Border before agreeing to advise it?

Kum Hong Siew: My background allowed me to quickly understand the problem they were solving, and the different ways in which they could attack it as they scale. What sealed the decision for me was less the numbers than the founders themselves. They have already built a good business, but want to make it even bigger and better. They had a really good understanding of their business and the levers for further growth, and were also open and hungry to learn. At this stage, everything starts with and flows from the founders. So what I saw made the decision easy.

Beyond Border has grown to a multimillion-dollar revenue run rate while staying net profitable for two years. What told you this was a fundamentally sound business rather than just a fast-growing one?

Kum Hong Siew: Those metrics, together with my understanding of how such businesses operate, show that Beyond Border could grow to be a great business at scale.

Singapore-founded startups often face the question of when and how to internationalise. What do you make of Beyond Border’s decision to headquarter in Singapore while its core product serves the US market?

Fred Ng: I’d correct the framing a little there. Beyond Border was founded in Singapore, but today we are headquartered across the US and Hong Kong. Singapore remains an important part of our story, and Asia continues to be a core market for us.

I see our geographic spread as a philosophy rather than an accident. One of our core beliefs is that where you come from should not define where you can go. Singapore gave us a strong launchpad, with its concentration of talent and its position as a regional business hub, but the company has grown organically into an increasingly international business.

Also Read: Connecting founders across SEA used to be the easy part of the job, and now it’s becoming the whole job

The numbers back that up: more than 60 per cent of enquiries now come from the US, with the rest split across Asia, Europe and Latin America. For us, internationalisation has therefore been less about choosing between Singapore, Asia or the US, and more about building the company in the markets where our customers are today and where they want to go next. I think it also shows that a consumer company founded in Singapore can build from Asia and find meaningful traction with a global audience.

A press release cites that immigrants co-founded 59 per cent of America’s billion-dollar startups. From your vantage point, what’s the biggest misconception people have about who actually needs O-1 or EB-1A pathways?

Fred Ng: I’ll go straight for the myth that keeps eligible applicants from even trying. The biggest misconception is that you have to be “Einstein-smart” to qualify for an O-1 or EB-1A. These pathways have developed a reputation as the “Einstein visas,” which leads many founders and professionals to assume they are out of reach.

I’d point to approval data as the counter-argument. O-1 approval rates, for instance, have remained above 90 per cent even across both Trump administrations. What matters is whether you can demonstrate a strong track record of professional achievement and recognition within your field. As a rule of thumb, if you have achieved meaningful professional milestones that are recognised by your industry, it is worth assessing your eligibility rather than ruling yourself out because of the “extraordinary ability” label.

Beyond Border is expanding into Latin America alongside its US and Asia footprint. What operational or cultural challenges do you anticipate in building trust with founders and professionals in a market quite different from Southeast Asia?

Kum Hong Siew: I’ll return to a theme I raised earlier: there’s no universal playbook, only a universal starting point. I always advise founders to start with the customer. When you do that, you can use first principles to figure out the best way to build trust with and to serve the customer. The way to do that will vary across countries and cultures, hence local nuance and understanding is critical. That is why Beyond Border’s obsession with being customer-centric has served and will continue to serve them well.

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