Meet Xiao Wang, CEO of Boundless Immigration

Xiao Wang, CEO of Boundless

Michelle Moon from Asian Tech Collective sat down with Xiao Wang, CEO of Boundless, to discuss his personal journey, the exciting challenges of building a mission-driven company in immigration, and what it takes to scale excellence in a high-trust industry. Boundless is a technology-first immigration platform, with a 99.7% approval rate and millions of monthly users.

Michelle: How has your own personal story shaped the mission of Boundless?

Xiao: Everyone who tries to do something in immigration does it because they’ve experienced the pain themselves. I was born in China, came to the U.S. relatively young, and watched my parents go through this gauntlet of a system just to keep our family here.

We paid thousands on immigration lawyers for every application, and I saw their employers take advantage while my parents were tied to visas. Only once we got our green cards were we finally free to pursue the “American dream.”

Honestly, we were some of the lucky ones. I meet people who have been stuck for decades, unable to live or work where they want because of backlogs and paperwork. For immigrants, these stories become almost a “shared trauma” that we bond over: being stuck at JFK for two days, getting deported because a company filed late, waiting endlessly to be able to work.

Boundless gives us a chance to do good and do well at the same time: to prove that investing in immigrants and underserved communities is smart business, not charity. We have an opportunity to transform a broken system and help millions of people achieve their dreams. That’s what drives us.

Michelle: Thinking back to 2017, what aspects of building Boundless turned out to be easier than you expected? Which proved more challenging?

Xiao: On the easier side, I’ve been fortunate to never feel alone. Many founders complain their teams don’t care as much as they do. At Boundless, we’ve consistently been able to attract people who could easily be at big tech companies making large salaries, but instead choose to be here because they want their talents to matter. That’s been a gift.

However, the harder part was earning trust. Coming from a product background, I believed in “if you build something better, people will come.” But in immigration, people default to traditional law firms, even though they’re slower and less reliable. It’s the “nobody gets fired for hiring IBM” problem.

Immigration is extremely high-stakes. There’s no room to move fast and break things. It took us time to build trust with the public. We had to prove our quality and deliver outcomes from day one.

We began with marriage green cards, which move quickly and have no cap, so we could show outcomes. We also invested deeply in content during the turbulent 2017 period. While government sites were outdated and inconsistent, we became the most popular website in the industry. Millions of people came to us for clarity. Even immigration lawyers started looking up answers on Boundless. That credibility was how we earned trust and became the source of truth in our industry.

Michelle: What’s one unconventional belief you hold that others in your field might overlook?

Xiao: Most people think immigration is a qualitative legal art. I believe it’s actually a solvable quantitative problem.

There’s an optimal pathway for every applicant, and the company that wins will be the one that uses data and AI to continuously learn and improve those pathways. That’s how you achieve objectively better outcomes. Our vision is to take what many attorneys see as an “art” and show that there’s science that can make it better, while freeing great attorneys to spend their time on legal strategy, corporate policies, and delivering peace of mind.

Michelle: Boundless is often described as a technology-first solution in a traditionally human labor–intensive field. How do you balance data-driven automation with the empathy immigration requires?

Xiao: Technology enables empathy. We use technology to streamline and automate applications so our team can spend more time actually talking to immigrants, HR teams, hiring managers, and family members. Unlike traditional firms that try to minimize call time, we encourage it. Sometimes people just need to vent about the system or feel heard. Our technology allows us to make those human connections possible.

Michelle: With approval rates of 99.7%, what internal processes or cultural values are most critical to achieving that performance? And how do you think about scaling it?

Xiao: First, we anchor around a core non-negotiable: applications must be accurate and successful. Everything else is oriented around that.

Scaling excellence is about mindset. Every time we triple in size, we’ve had to reinvent many of our processes. What worked at 10 people doesn’t work at 30, what worked at 90 doesn’t work at 270. Our culture is built on the value of “adapt and evolve.” Everyone is responsible for continually asking: This may have been the right decision then, but is it still the right decision today?

I sometimes describe it as a snowball rolling down a mountain. At first, it’s small and slow, but it gathers speed and mass. Our job is to keep clearing obstacles out of the way so it can keep growing without losing momentum or quality. That culture has been key.

Michelle: Boundless launched during a turbulent political period. What lessons do you have on resilience and adaptation?

Xiao: There was a stretch when immigration policy varied depending on which state you lived in. Different forms, different requirements, different amounts of evidence. It was a ridiculous way to operate. But that experience shaped how I think about startups: you succeed if you simply refuse to fail. If you refuse to die, keep adapting, and surround yourself with people who believe in the mission, you will find a way forward.

For us, the mission is clear: Boundless has to exist. Boundless has to exist. Immigration can’t keep working the way it has for the last 35 years since I came to this country. It has to be better. And if you truly believe that, then it’s not a question of if, but how.

There’s a quote I love: “The road to success is lined with many tempting parking spaces.” Many startups fall short when they settle for easy answers. From the beginning, Boundless wasn’t about raising a Series A and flipping the company. We’re here to be the most influential and transformative enabler in this industry. And if you refuse to accept easy answers, incredible things happen.

Michelle: Cultural connection – What is one tradition from your heritage that you still practice or deeply value today?

Xiao: Gathering around food. I have two young children and we always try to eat together. Food is my love language. I love cooking and eating. I like great ingredients cooked simply. I do a lot of sous vide, braising, and blanching vegetables.

Michelle: Personal philosophy – If you could place your own message inside a fortune cookie, what would it say?

Xiao: “May all of your decisions be intentional.”

Michelle: After a tough or draining meeting, what’s your go-to comfort food?

Xiao: Soup. There’s a soup for everything. Not growing fast enough? There is a soup for that. Bad eyesight? There is a soup for that. A little cold? Soup. A little hot? Soup. There’s something about soup that magically melds everything together. It’s my ultimate comfort food.