Immigration for founders and executives

Paths we file for founders

• O-1A
• EB-1A
• EB-2 NIW

Your own company as the petitioner

The O-1A does not allow self-petitioning. Someone has to file for you, and for a founder the obvious candidate is the company you built. That is permitted, and it comes with a problem worth understanding before you structure anything.

USCIS looks at whether a genuine employment relationship exists, and a sole owner who answers to nobody does not obviously have an employer. The company has to be a separate legal entity, and there has to be something or someone with authority over your employment: a board, independent directors, investors with governance rights, or an ownership structure where you do not control the decision to hire and fire yourself.

Founders with investors usually satisfy this without doing anything special, because a board already exists. Sole owners often need to put real governance in place, and doing that for the petition alone, after the fact, reads exactly as what it is. Build it early or choose a different route.

An agent can also petition, which sidesteps the question entirely for founders whose work spans several ventures.

Funding rounds as evidence

A raise is useful in more ways than founders expect, and it maps onto several criteria at once.

• Original contributions of major significance. Professional investors doing diligence and committing capital is independent validation of the thing you built.
• Published material. Rounds generate press, and sector coverage of your company that names you is the kind of press the criteria want.
• Critical capacity for a distinguished organization. Easier to establish once the company has backing, customers, and a public profile.
• High remuneration. Founder salaries are often low, so this frequently has to come from equity value, prior compensation, or a market comparison rather than payroll.

What matters is the diligence behind the money rather than its size. A modest round from a known fund with a real process proves more than a large one from friends and family.

Bootstrapped founders

No raise, no press cycle, no board. This is a harder case and it is not a lost one. It is built from the business rather than from the fundraising around it.

• Revenue, growth, and customers, particularly named customers with standing of their own
• Market position, documented with third-party data rather than asserted
• Trade press and industry recognition, which exist in most sectors even where consumer press does not
• Speaking, judging, advisory roles, and board seats at other organizations
• Your own compensation, benchmarked against published data for the role

Profitability is an asset here. A company that funds itself is a stronger story in some respects than one that has raised and not yet delivered, and the petition should say so rather than apologizing for the absent round.

Where the E-2 fits, and where it does not

The E-2 treaty investor visa comes up constantly in founder conversations, and it answers a narrower question than people think.

It works if you hold the nationality of a treaty country, you are investing a substantial amount in a U.S. business, and you will direct it. Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Chile and Spain are among the treaty countries. Brazil is not. It renews indefinitely while the business qualifies, and your spouse can work.

It does not lead to permanent residence. No amount of time on an E-2 creates a green card. If residence is the goal, the E-2 can be the thing that gets you here while a NIW or an EB-1A runs in parallel, but it is not itself the path and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.

Where founders usually land

• O-1A as the working visa, petitioned by your company or an agent, where governance supports it.
• EB-1A for permanent residence, self-petitioned, where the public record is strong.
• EB-2 NIW for permanent residence where the company's work has clear national importance. Often the better fit for a first-time founder.
• E-2 where your nationality allows it and the immediate need is to be here running the business.

Which fits your record is what the strategy session is for. These are starting points, not advice on your case.