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I wonder how you'd solve the visas in a situation like this. It seems to me the only way to found a company in the US is either via a O1 visum, a greencard, or a citizenship, all of which are rather hard to obtain, harder than the alternatives where you join an existing company. There is no big tech with on-campus immigration offices sponsoring you.

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It's really tough - we had to get professional advice.

YC connected us with an immigration attorney the moment we got accepted and he helped greatly to make sure we approached this in the right way. It would have been a maze to do this without him. It's still not easy and it's a lot of extra stress.

Certain countries like the UK have ESTAs for up to 90 days, but the program is 3 months + then you generally will want to be here to raise afterwards, so you should get some advice on how to do this specific to your home country.

Even the VISAs are painful - for example, an O1 (even if you do manage to get it) means IIRC your spouse can't work even if you can.

Thanks for the answer. What did you end up doing in your specific instances?

I'm interested in this as well.

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