By Riley Kaminer
Ramiro Roballos is more than a founder – he’s a conductor, and in a very literal sense. Roballos was introduced to the world of entrepreneurship through conducting an orchestra in his native Argentina.
“I started my professional career conducting orchestras as a musician,” he told Refresh Miami. “That led me to build my own orchestra.” From there, Roballos opened a music school as his first major entrepreneurial endeavor. “I ended up doing an MBA because I was enjoying the business aspect of my musical life so much.”
After the MBA, Roballos found himself in the world of consulting, working first at McKinsey’s Buenos Aires office before transferring to the U.S.
It was through this process of applying for American residency that Roballos saw firsthand the frustrations inherent to U.S. immigration processes. “It was so inefficient, so cumbersome, so stressful, so many manual mistakes, so many delays, such a huge feeling of uncertainty. The customer experience was really, really awful.” He spoke to friends who had gone through the process as well and no matter the size of the firm or the sponsorship route, the story was the same.
That’s when Roballos’ inner entrepreneur kicked in: “There has to be a better way.”
So in October 2023, Roballos launched Tukki, a Miami-based startup that aims to reimagine U.S. immigration processes. Currently helping clients with a narrow set of high talent-focused visas, Tukki is a digital portal that connects users with a lawyer and organizes all the entire immigration process.
At first, the Tukki team took a manual approach, with Roballos as the paralegal. “We wanted to learn,” he said of the time consuming but ultimately fruitful process. Little by little, the Tukki team began to create automations and efficiencies every step of the way. “As soon as you upload a document, our AI gives you immediate feedback – what are you missing, what could be better – and then there are two layers of human review at every step as well.”
The name Tukki is inspired by the Finnish word for support because Roballos noted that the main pain point from users was that they didn’t feel supported in their immigration processes. Tukki costs a similar amount to hiring a conventional lawyer, but the idea is that the product is ultimately higher quality, more effective, and more efficient.
One month ago, Tukki closed a friends and family round of $500,000. Since launching, the 10-person team has onboarded seven clients, representing $65,000 in revenue.
“I want to change this industry,” Roballos said of Tukki’s future prospects. “I don’t want to be another service provider – I want to change the whole process.” He noted that there are many directions in which Tukki could expand: immigration to other countries and other immigration-related services to visa clients, just to name a few.
For now though, Tukki is laser focused on the $5 billion to $6 billion immigration law industry. “This is a pretty big pool for us to dive into, and we want to start by doing a few things really well.”
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