Ask HN: 4th member of startup. I missed out on the H1B lottery. Options? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: 4th member of startup. I missed out on the H1B lottery. Options?

11 pointskeerthiko7 comments

I'm 23. I joined as the fourth member of an extremely early stage startup (post-angel, pre-series). I have been here a year, fully responsible for the company's entire Android footprint, as well as your average startup first-five product design and general engineering responsibilities.

I am on the dregs of my post-graduation OPT. I find it more than mildly frustrating and unreasonable that a willingly tax-paying, non-criminal person trying to innovate in a way that, if it has positive benefits for anyone, will benefit the US economy, is going to be thrown out of the country with little in his power. But that's a separate rant.

Given that a) I believe the fields I'm interested in have the best opportunities in US, and I want to pursue my career here and b) my current employer is willing to go to some lengths to help me out within reason, but does not have bottomless funds to do so, What are my best options in your opinions? a) Apply for H1B again next year, figure some productive way to pass time outside US in the interim (this includes grad school, working for MNCs such as MS or Google to hedge H1B bets, etc) b) Start a company in my home-country, and try to use the L1 visa to return here and then change status as needed c) Get married to a US citizen (used to be accompanied with "jk") d) Other suggestions?

Three ideas that haven't come up yet:

- Most realistic: Work with your Bay Area startup from your home country. I don't know specifics about Indian nationals, but many people work remotely with a team in the US, and then travel to the US on visa waiver (often up to 90 days) or tourist visa (up to 6 months) to sync with the team. You will likely be a foreign contractor, and the startup will pay salary to your Indian bank account. You will likely not owe income tax to the US because the service is technically performed overseas, but you'll have to pay tax to India.

- Invite your team to work overseas together: Stripe prototyped the service in Buenos Aires. Buffer traveled to Hong Kong and Israel. We spent our first months in Thailand. Going overseas for a limited period of time can be a great way to bootstrap at a lower cost. Especially if your startup is very early stage (we are too).

- Open a business entity in home country, and make it a liaison office or subsidiary (or whatever requires the least amount of logistics) of your Bay Area startup.

I'm not a lawyer. But I'm bootstrapping from Seoul for some time and have seen multiple teams that work across locations. Good luck!

You don't say where you're from or where you're based but let's assume the bay area. If I were very happy with the company, I'd set up shop in Vancouver and/or Rosarito (depending on your weather preference/season), work remotely and try again next year.

On the other hand, if you (or the company) is ready to part ways, I'd do the same. ;)

I am an Indian national, based in the Bay Area for now, and until my OPT expires in October 2013.

Thanks for the ideas! I really have no concerns with weather having gone to school in New England, so that is an option. However, from my initial research into immigrating to Canada, it seems the requirements for available options are out of my scope (own >30% share of company, have an offer letter from a Canadian employer, significant amount of investment in my company, etc) in the short term. If I'm mistaken, I would love to have a conversation with you offline to find out more!

Yes, parting ways is always an option, but regardless, I want to pursue my career opportunities in this part of the world, so the plan needs to result in some way for me to be able to legally come back here.

I wish you luck but just in case it doesn't go through, come back home. Make it better :-)

The diversity visa lottery is worth a shot. The odds of winning are worse than getting hit by lightning, unfortunately.

In the same vein as the L1, you could try the B1. For your purposes, both of these look kind of dodgy to me, though.

Diversity visa lottery is for only national of under-represented. So I assume it is not for people from countries such as China or India.

I'm a Canadian citizen applying to the best US tech jobs and I feel your pain man. I'm having visa troubles too and it really sucks, you feel helpless. That's why so many people are working on immigration reform.

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