Ask HN: legally start a Bay Area startup without being American?
I'm a Canadian, and have worked in the Bay Area on various visas since 2005 or so. Now I'd like to start my own venture here, but I don't yet have a Green Card. What are the options?
Some have advised that I create some sort of corporation, technically owned by an investor or someone else I trust, of which I'm an employee. That's a bit scary to me for obvious reasons. At the moment I don't have an American co-founder I trust enough. (I know that according to pg's criteria this means the whole thing is a non-starter anyway, but let's assume that I'd get some co-founders later once I had a spiffy proof of concept.)
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[ 545 ms ] story [ 748 ms ] threadOn that note, it may just be (substantially) easier to start your business in Canada. Are there specific reasons you want to start your business in the Bay Area, aside from personal preference?
I have lived in Vancouver and I'm not going to knock it, all kinds of cool things have come out of there, and the lifestyle is great too. But where is my Maker Faire? My functional language discussion groups?
To me, this is an attempt at lifestyle design. If I just wanted to grind away at something without my friends and preferred hangouts in close reach... well, that's not enough right now.
Perhaps the idea of 'lifestyle design' is incompatible with starting a new venture. I suppose I have to just sacrifice everything for the good of the idea?
As a Canadian you have some visa categories open to you that others do not. I don't know anything about those so cannot comment on them further.
However, the US has the E-2 Treaty Investor visa for situations like this - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-2_visa and http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/types/types_1273.html .. Canada is a treaty signatory. There's quite a lot to it, but essentially it allows you to enter and work within the US to control an investment. Investment must be "significant" with respect to the sort of business it is (so if you were opening a steel mill, $200k probably wouldn't cut it, but a software company? Theoretically it could be as little as $100k). There was a post linked from HN recently about a British group of guys who used the E-2 successfully to set up a company in the Bay Area.
Alternatively, you could work on your company in Canada for a period of a couple of years then open a US branch/subsidary and transfer to it through an L visa.
The short story, though, is that it's really, really hard and generally rather expensive, unless you have access to some Canadian focused visa class I'm not aware of. Going to work at an established American company is not particularly hard (assuming you have a degree) but anything beyond that involves a great deal of pain. I've been investigating moving to the US as a self employed person for about six years now and am still not close to discovering a good route (with "save $250k in cash" as my current, tricky to attain fallback position).
1. Create product on the side while working for someone OR move back to Canada and work on it full-time
2. Start an LLC (non-US citizens can do this, and C-corps)
3. Raise money or become profitable (actual amount varies, some say $200k or more)
4. Find a business co-founder and other employees
5. Sponsor your visa and come back to the US or go fulltime with your own co.
6. PROFIT !!! (oh, wait, that was step 3...)
I'd suggest getting the proof of concept done, and then worrying about everything else. Execute first, ask questions later.
As far as your options: having an American co-founder or business agent is a good start.
However, regardless of what option you choose to pursue to enter the US as a Canadian, I would recommend if you are bootstrapping your own venture, that it would be best to get to profitability or at least a promising product before exploring your options for working and living in California. It is not only expensive, but very time consuming to work out the details. It's definitely worth all the trouble, but focus on your company and product first.
I hope it works out for you.