Ask HN:Can I start a company on an H1B visa? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN:Can I start a company on an H1B visa?

#31

Post by kodeshpa » Thu, Mar 15, 2012, 7:59 PM UTC

H1B -> Starting company -> Getting Funding -> Transferring Visa is not impossible but have lot of hurdles.

Irrespective of traction,you have to do following which is very frustrating & time consuming.

1. Your company need to demonstrate ability to pay us "prevailing wages" as per SF standards [76k per year per person ] or Santa Clara [82 k per year person], office space and other general needs.

2. You need to hire some one (contractor is okie ) US citizen/Green card holder to sign off on the H1 application. That person can be any non technical person .e.g. accounting or marketing to demonstrate employee employer relationship.

3. You need to hire yourself as software developer demonstrating right skills and acting temp CEO /CTO . C position usually have higher salary ranges and have USCIS complications.

4.Form a board of directors who will have right to hire and fire you

Get lawyer who knows and have experience in immigration.

Re: Ask HN:Can I start a company on an H1B visa?

#32

Post by ramiyer21a » Thu, Mar 15, 2012, 9:25 PM UTC

All wonderful advice and legally accurate. The best thing I can tell you is...start the business. If you have paying customers...everything else will fall into place automatically. Getting paying customers is the hardest part of starting any business. At worse, you will be able to run your company remotely from whatever country you are from. However, if your intent is to get the GC by way of starting a company, then there are lot of other easier options without suffering thru starting a company.

Re: Ask HN:Can I start a company on an H1B visa?

#33

Post by ramiyer21a » Fri, Mar 16, 2012, 7:06 PM UTC

ramiyer21a wrote: post #32

All wonderful advice and legally accurate. The best thing I can tell you is...start the business. If you have paying customers...everything else will fall into place automatically. Getting paying customers is the hardest part of starting any business. At worse, you will be able to run your company remotely from whatever country you are from. However, if your intent is to get the GC by way of starting a company, then…

BTW, read this post...http://nodemaker.posterous.com/the-problem-with-ideas