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Earlier quoted context omitted.
He would be able to do only part time CPT from the get go. This is capped at a max of 20 hours per week. Once 9 months have passed, he can do full time CPT of 40 hours.
Not true. Some colleges let you take full time CPT classes (3 credit) as part of their curriculum. However, if the total exceeds 1 year of full time work he will not be eligible for a year of CPT with no school after he graduates. Where are you located?
H1-B caps have indeed been reached, and neither Startup Visa nor the Startup Act, with its entrepreneur's visa, are expected to pass anytime soon, though I'm working on that. That's the primary route folks use for hiring foreign talent, so it'd probably be difficult for your cofounder to get a visa until April anyway.
You say bootstrapping, but if you can get $50k+ in capital and your cofounder is from one of the E-2 countries on this list, this could be a viable visa: http://travel.state.gov/visa/fees/fees_3726.html/
It sounds like the startup is either unincorporated or incorporated like usual in DE. If it's incorporated for a year abroad, your cofounder could qualify for an L-1.
I've had a few friends go the route of taking an adjunct professorship in an entrepreneurship program at a county college and using the F or J academic visa to build the startup with the tacit permission of the school, but that requires friends in the school's administration and may not be legal.
Your best bet is to probably try and raise funding between now and September and go for an EB-5 (requires $500k or $1M, depending on where you're located).
There are some other hacks that might be useful once you've decided on which visa to go for in increasing your chances of a successful application that I've written out for founders here: http://www.quora.com/Blueseed/Are-there-any-interim-solution...
If you're still tracking this thread, feel free to email me: craig (at) politihacks which is a dot com