Ask HN: Entrepreneurship for Non-US Citizens

A bit of background. I'm an Indian citizen on a H-1, just finished my Masters and I'm working on my first fulltime job.

I've realized simply remaining as a programmer for the rest of my life is simply not going to cut it and I was looking at starting something on my own. But so far, everything I looked at is disheartening. Let me briefly state my concerns -

It's impossible to get into incubator programs like YC/TechStars.

As far as I understand, I don't think I even should build anything and raise money from investors when on H-1 working in a US company. (Including something as trivial as an iPhone app)

To top this off, you're not even supposed to be "developing" your own business part-time if someone with a green card _did_ start the business for you and you're a partner / investor in it.

And yet the apparent contradiction is there are a few indian entrepreneurs floating around in the valley, with H1s, so I'm not really sure what in the world is going on here.

Any help is much appreciated!

Thanks, Teja.

PS: I know there's the Startup Visa movement, but I somehow feel it'll take a while before something materializes.