Ask HN: What visa do foreign YC founders use to stay in US beyond 3 months?

This works if you are three co-founders each with 33%, since any two of you could fire the third. (I am also not a lawyer, but this is how I got my H-1B five years ago.)

That said, the fact that the H-1B process is now a lottery - i.e. no matter qualified you are or how good your lawyer is, it's still a roll of the dice - makes it hard to recommend if you actually want any ability to plan for the future.

H-1B also puts more scrutiny on the company, so you'll probably need to have raised money (so you can prove you can pay yourself a market rate salary), have an office, etc.

Not knowing what YC actually does, my first 2 thoughts were: O-1 and J-1 Visas (certainly there could be other solutions)

O-1: Typically I would think of athletes/entertainers, in the US for competition/show/tour/etc... It may not apply to some young founder getting into YC who has no other track record of success; however, YC/Tech are politically connected so the mere fact one is accepted into YC, it might = extraordinary ability (in the eyes of the Gov. anyway)

J-1= I personally have never gone down this path in my legal career, so I am not 100% sure, but it is possible YC is part of an exchange program...if not, they should set up their own business education exchange and consider this especially for their fellowship program...boom legal hack (and except the fact I just gave it away, I could have applied to YC with the idea of hacking the legal system to get more visas for foreign founders joining US incubators...YC application hack)

I'd imagine transferring H1B to your own company will have the same issues that applying H1B for your own company will.

US immigration system is broken & is a joke. H1B "skilled" visas are based on your luck (lottery) and not on your skills (surprise). They change the rules every now and then and its a nightmare to be on H1B worrying whether you are in legal status and the fear of being deported. Now LCA is not enough to change your work location. H1B amendment is needed which is another nightmare.

You can go for an investor visa option but it has it own quirks. With the current immigration system, foreign investors or founders should exercise a lot of caution as far the immigration system of US is concerned.

I have an O-1 visa, it's not impossible and it's a great visa to have since you can reuse the same documents for your initial application for subsequent renewal. The key is to get as many peer references you can get in your industry.

While getting letters from your advisers and investors is great, it's a common mistake to ONLY do people in your startup. You want to get recommendations from your previous employers and also academics who write about the industry you're in to justify your extraordinary ability. You don't want to put "founder" in your application (unless you're IPO'ed), you want to put "founder + professional skill".

The reason is that an O-1 is really meant for talent or skilled professionals. Being a founder is not necessarily a skill, it's just an indication that you've started a company. By applying as a founder, you miss the main purpose of the visa and that gets your application rejected.

edit: not a YC founder, just a founder.