10/21: U.S. Visa Pathways for Founders and Early-Stage St (financial district)
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Your startup is the reason you need a visa and the reason the visa is hard. There's no HR department to file for you, no decade-long track record to point at, and the only company that would sponsor you is the one you incorporated eight months ago.
Founders have more options than they think. Some of them work best early — before the cap table, the board, and the payroll settle into a shape that closes doors. And the category you pick now decides what evidence you spend the next year building.
Ana Senior, immigration attorney at Manifest Law, walks through:
The pathways founders actually use — O-1A, EB-1A, EB-2 NIW, and a self-sponsored H-1B through your own company — and how they differ
What your startup needs to look like to sponsor you: ownership, control, who signs the petition, and who has the authority to let you go
Which extraordinary ability criteria founders tend to already meet — funding, press, critical roles, judging — and which ones take deliberate building
What to start collecting at pre-seed and seed, so filing later isn't a scramble