Starting a business on F1
I have a really great idea, have built a product, and want to start my own business. I've started pitching to investors, and am getting a lot of interest already. Unfortunately, I'm a student on an F1 visa, still enrolled at a school. How do I go about building and working for my company in a reasonable way?
I've looked at the O-1, H1B, EB-5, L-1 options and so far the O-1 and EB-5 options look most promising, unfortunately I don't have $500K to invest - so for now, the EB-5 is out and so I'm left with the O-1.
Does anyone have any experience with this entire process?
6 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 25.4 ms ] threadLegally, you can't work while on a student visa in the US. Unless you can somehow get your school to sign off on it as relevant to your degree. Your best bet is probably to just launch in your home country, even remotely if necessary.
If you're still a student, absent any other information about your skillset, I doubt you'll be able to get anywhere with an O-1. If your home country is in North America, you may be able to find a NAFTA-related visa although I can't remember the details on those.
I'm 19, was sought out & contracted to work at Goldman Sachs without a degree for a year. Have written 10 scholarly papers in AI, 2 published. Have won a national business competition and semi finalist in an international one. Wrote an editorial for a big newspaper back home. 1 news article about me winning a competition. Have built some pretty interesting things with provocative demos, like a talking AI doctor in your web browser.
The laws are about creating legal entities not actual work.
Do you have a product? Is it a website of software application? Ship it and keep improving it based on feedback. Working on software in your spare time is not prohibited and even good products take time to become successful.
Do you want to charge for the product?
That becomes a bit more complicated because for accepting payments you might need some legal entity (i.e. a company). First try to setup payments (using PayPal or Stripe) simply in your name, without creating a company. If not possible, try setting up a company in your own country and use that.
The things that you cannot do is to register one of the legal entities that we call companies (llc etc.) in US and work for that company. This also blocks you from doing things that require such entity (like getting funding or hiring people).
Legal entity is not required to have a successful, income generating product or needed to work on such product.
In context of the law "work" is "work for recognized legal entity and being paid for it". You can't work as a cook for a restaurant but you can cook a dinner for your friend, even though both require the same kind of "work". Similarly, the law doesn't allow you to work for a startup in US and being paid for it but doesn't prohibit you from working on an open-source project or on your own project.
While I see the merit in the first half of your post - I'm still looking for outside investment, and I'm unsure a seed/angel investor would be willing to put a bet on an international company. As well as that "working" for a for-profit entity, even if it is back home - I believe is violation of status.
Tricky problem :-(
I know there is a certain appeal to starting a startup in Silicon Valley and going through the motions of being an entrepreneur, but you don't have to be based in the US to be a successful tech entrepreneur. Virtually any big VC that invests in the US also has an international investment arm. You can hire remote talent to work on your product, or even talent in countries other than the US. In fact, I hypothesize that you may be able to find better talent elsewhere because job hopping isn't as common in other parts of the world.
Canada has an excellent startup visa program and it is the closest thing you will find to actually doing a startup in the US.
Why do you want to start your company in the US?
Though, your comment is indeed helpful, thank you very much for it! I'll consider a strategy that works.