Aizada Marat is co-founder and CEO of Alma, an immigration law firm that combines the expertise of seasoned attorneys with AI to streamline the immigration process for individuals and businesses. Alma has achieved a 98% approval rate on its cases and can prosecute in half the time of a traditional firm.

Amrit Rao, General Partner at Village Global, sits down with Aizada to trace her journey from a small village in Kyrgyzstan to founding one of the fastest-growing legal tech companies in the Bay Area. They cover her path to the US through the Future Leaders Exchange Program, her own frustrating experience with a mishandled immigration case that left her unable to work for over a year, and how that pain point led her from Cooley to McKinsey and eventually to starting Alma. Aizada walks through the company's early pivot from selling immigration software to law firms to becoming a law firm itself, why she believes large language models can already outperform the outsourced manual labor traditional firms rely on, and where she draws the line on what should and shouldn't be automated in legal work. The conversation also gets personal: what it's like being married to fellow founder and Village Global portfolio founder Chyngyz, the advice from him she took (and the one piece she didn't), the immigrant founders and operators who inspire her, and her long-term ambition to eventually return to Kyrgyzstan and run for president.

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From Milking Cows in Kyrgyzstan to Building a $98%-Approval Law Firm | Aizada Marat (Alma)

Village Global Podcast

From Milking Cows in Kyrgyzstan to Building a $98%-Approval Law Firm | Aizada Marat (Alma)