The gap How it works Who we serve Leadership Our story Get involved

The courage to dream.
The grit to begin.
The foundation to rise.

We bring together immigrant business owners and the allies who believe in them — with financial literacy, digital tools, and real paths to paying customers.

2x
more likely to start a business
$1T+
annual revenue from immigrant businesses
46%
of Fortune 500 founded by immigrants
$600B
in annual taxes paid by immigrants

Support ends when the session ends.

The small business ecosystem operates in two lanes. Lane one teaches. Lane two lends. Nobody gives the business owner the system to run their business — and nobody generates their first customer.

We fill the missing middle between education and capital — the operations layer and the revenue layer that make everything else work.

What exists today vs. what's missing
Financial literacyWIDELY AVAILABLE
SBDCs, CBOs, nonprofits
Access to capitalAVAILABLE
CDFIs, micro-lenders
Digital business toolsGAP — LINKUN FILLS THIS
No one provides this today
Path to paying customersGAP — LINKUN FILLS THIS
No one provides this today

Everyone learns. Everyone lends.
Nobody operates.

The ecosystem has Learn organizations and Lend organizations. Nobody provides the operating infrastructure that determines whether a business actually functions day to day.

Available today
📚

Learn

Financial literacy nonprofits, SBDCs, SCORE, community organizations. They teach. Support ends at graduation.

Available today
🏦

Lend

CDFIs, micro-lenders, community banks. They provide capital. But require documentation most micro businesses can't produce.

✦ Only Linkun

Operate + Earn

Digital tools to run the business daily. Vendor-readiness to land the first customer. Real data that makes everything else possible.

From knowledge to prosperity.

Three pillars, one path. No one else puts all of them under one roof.

📚
Step 1

Educate

Practitioner-built financial literacy — cash flow, credit, pricing, capital readiness. In-language and in-community.

Step 2

Equip

Every participant gets a digital back-office — invoicing, payments, inventory, CRM. The education and the tool arrive together.

📈
Step 3

Elevate

We match you to your first paying customer through vendor procurement — not advice on how to find one.

🌳
Outcome

Grow

Wealth creation that starts with one business and ripples outward — to families, neighborhoods, and the broader economy.

A business owner walks in with a side hustle and walks out with an operating business, a financial track record, and a customer.

Impact you can actually measure.

When participants run their business on our platform, every invoice, payment, and transaction generates verified outcome data — not surveys, not self-reports. The measurement is embedded in the infrastructure.

For the first time, a funder investing in economic empowerment can know — with real data — whether their investment actually created lasting change.

$

Revenue tracked

Real invoices, real payments

Credit readiness

Unbanked to loan-eligible

Customers matched

Vendor-ready connections

%

Cash flow health

12, 24, 36-month tracking

First-generation immigrant entrepreneurs.

The restaurant owners, home caregivers, flower shop owners, food truck founders, and neighborhood storefronts building the American dream from the ground up.

🌱

Aspiring entrepreneurs

People with a skill and a side hustle who need the infrastructure to make it a real business.

🏪

Micro business owners

Running on paper and cash, ready for the digital tools that create a financial trail and open doors to capital.

🗽

New Americans

Navigating U.S. financial systems for the first time, with limited English and no banking relationship.

📈

Growth-ready businesses

Have the product but need help navigating vendor onboarding to reach institutional buyers.

Three daughters of immigrants.
Three founders. One mission.

Every member of our board came to this country as a child and watched their parents sacrifice everything to build a life here. We built this foundation so the next generation doesn't have to do it alone.

Lori Shao

Lori Shao

Board Chair

Fintech founder and payments veteran. Former JPMorgan, SVB, Wells Fargo, and Union Bank. Built a digital platform serving small and micro businesses across the U.S. First-generation immigrant from China. Founded Linkun in honor of her father.

Saujin Yi

Saujin Yi

Board Director

Founder & CEO of LiquidTrust, a global payments platform. Lecturer at UCLA Anderson School of Management. MIT engineering graduate. Investor in female-led startups. First-generation immigrant from South Korea.

Jean Smart

Jean (Kim) Smart

Board Director

Founder & CEO of Penelope, a retirement infrastructure platform for generational wealth creation. Small business advocate. Former executive at Schwab, Citi, and UBS. UC Berkeley graduate. Multi-board director. First-generation immigrant.

For everyone still clawing their way up.

The Linkun Foundation is named for Linkun Huang — a teacher, small business owner, and immigrant who came to the United States with nothing but grit and a belief that this country would give his family a fair chance. He worked two day jobs, sold goods at the flea market on weekends, and unloaded truck containers at night.

He didn't struggle because he lacked effort or intelligence. He lacked infrastructure — the tools to run his business professionally, the financial knowledge to access capital, and the connections to find customers beyond the weekend flea market.

His story is not unique. It belongs to millions of first-generation entrepreneurs who arrive in this country and build from zero — the restaurant owner, the in-home caregiver, the childcare provider, the flower shop owner, the seamstress, the cleaning service operator, the food truck founder, the flea market vendor. Every early morning, every late night, every moment of powering through when it would be easier to stop — that's one step closer to the life they came here to build.

The Linkun Foundation exists because the gap Linkun faced still exists. And because at the core, we are all inspired by the people we love and motivated by the dream of something better. Entrepreneurs, allies, mentors, funders — this is a community for anyone who believes that a fair shot and the right infrastructure can turn ambition into a life worth the sacrifice.

Why this matters
"Everyone in this space teaches people how to fish. Linkun teaches them too — then hands them the rod, takes them to the river, and introduces them to someone who wants to buy the fish."
— Lori Shao
Immigrants are twice as likely to start a business as native-born Americans. They generate over $1 trillion in annual revenue. They pay over $600 billion in taxes every year. This is not a community that needs saving. It's a community that needs infrastructure.
Sources: Small Business Majority, American Immigration Council, Camoin Associates

Entrepreneurs and allies, let's build together.

Whether you're a first-gen founder finding your footing or someone who sees yourself in this story — there's a place for you here. We all have someone who inspired us to dream bigger. This is how we pay it forward.

🏢

Corporations

Open your supply chain to qualified, vendor-ready micro businesses

💰

Funders

Back a model with real-time, verified impact data — not surveys

🤝

Allies

Mentor, volunteer, or extend your programs with our tools and network

No spam, ever. We'll reach out within a few days.