
Ask HN: How likely is it to get seed funding from US for a non-US company? - neroseri
We are a team of two programmers who are graduating from a top 3 engineering university in US (PhD in CS) and we are working on a prototype for our AI startup (no product yet).<p>However, due to visa related issues we have to go back to our home country for 2 years (country is in Middle East).<p>We are investigating how likely is it to search for seed funding from US investors before we go back to our country.<p>We talked to one investor today, and he said our situation is pretty hopeless and it is very tough to get funding from US if we are going back to our country. Is it really the case? Should we give up and stop looking for fundings in US?<p>We were thinking that it shouldn&#x27;t change anything from investors&#x27; perspective as long as we develop the product like we promise, and we can hire 5 good engineers in our country in the price of 1 engineer in US, so we were thinking that it might even be better for investors. But our dreams are a bit crushed today. We were planning to stay for a few months before returning back in order to search for funding, but right now we are just thinking to go back asap if we are kidding ourselves.<p>What do you think?
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montrose
It depends how promising your company is. That's the high bit of whether you
can get funding, not your immigration status.

On the other hand, when investors think your company is unpromising, it's
easier to say that the problem is your immigration status.

But don't kid yourselves that being in your home country will help your
company either. Look at the startups that have succeeded so far. The empirical
evidence says there's no advantage to being in a cheap labor market.

