I have a really good idea that I want to build on but I don't want to put my H1B visa at risk. What do I do? If I can't start something in the US, can I start something in my home country and sell it's services around the world? Will that impact my visa and/ or employment with Microsoft?
Eb5
Owning a business is allowed. You can't take a salary as an employee.
Ok maybe this can be used - I can just not take a salary at the start until the business is well established
You can’t take a salary at all. You also need to clear it with Microsoft.
What do you mean "build on"? Write code and literally build the product? Sure.. You can do that.. Make money off of it? Nope. Not allowed. You could start building it, acquire capital, move to Canada with PR and continue building it there.
That's actually all I need, thanks! I make enough money off my employment right now. I can use whatever money comes through the business back into the business and just never take a salary for now. My share can be just the ownership of the company.
Lost of people have misunderstanding about h1b visa and business, if you are ready to deal with lawyers and USCIS you can put things in order. Easiest thing to get it done is to get two h1b visa one from your employer, other business is sponsoring your 2nd h1b visa. I had a tough time to get the 2nd visa with RFE and several tons of paperwork. There are other options as well, best is to talk to business immigration lawyer who can help you out, of course it cost a lot of $$$$.
How much is a lot? How do I find a good business immigration lawyer? I've never hired a lawyer before, is there some website that tells me how good, expensive, etc. they will be before I hand over my case to them?
Also it makes sense to first build the product fully and then start this entire process or should I start it right now?
I was on this boat. Started working during moonlight on ideas without funding or salary for 4 years while at FANG. None of those took off but I got married to a citizen and 6 months later I had the GC, the Inc. and went through lots of funding pipelines. Don’t let bullshit at step 10 stop you from taking step 1 and 2.
Makes sense. I've already started the initial steps of building the product but it's unnerving to know that once the product is built, there's a lot of legal things I'm not fully aware of that I may be in trouble for. Also my girlfriend is also an immigrant so that's rules out for me :D
FYI If you're born in India and your girlfriend is NOT BORN in India, then you can switch to her country's green card line with an approved i140 after marriage.
Thanks everyone! A lot of very helpful responses here.
I think you are worrying about wrong this at this stage . Do you have any customers ? Can you line up 10 paying customers ? Have you started cold calling or cold emailing ? Do you have an mvp .
I’m not sure why op can’t start a business in his home country, isn’t the H1B restriction applies to USA only?
Just because you can do something doesn’t always make it the best course of action. An immigrant can live where they were born. By definition a chain of events led them to decide not to.
Also a chain of events can lead them back to their home country, circumstances change all the time.
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You can’t.
What about in my home country? How do folks get around this?
They move home