What advice do you have for someone who's on a H1B visa, wants to co-found a startup, incorporate it, work on it part-time until it receives VC funding, and continue working at their H1B "day job" in the interim?
My understanding is that the H1B visa does not allow you to do any work for anyone apart from your visa sponsor. If a co-founder were to spend his evenings working on his startup which has been incorporated, I'm not sure if that would conflict with the above regulation, and if so, how to work around this.
I'd be happy to contact you privately if you prefer that.
It's possible to have two H-1B employers, one based on full-time employment and another based on part-time employment. This is referred to as concurrent H-1B employment and it requires two approved H-1B petitions.
A lawyer once explained to me that there needs to be an employer - employee relationship. Basically, there needs to be a possibility of being fired. So if you have total control of a company the H1B visa would not be possible.
Not a lawyer: Yes, as long as there is an employer-employee relationship. Meaning, someone in your company should have the power to fire you, usually a Board of Directors.
That's right, in the H-1B context, there needs to be an employer-employee relationship between the petitioning company and the sponsored worker and this (in the eyes of USCIS) ultimately means the ability of the petitioning company to fire the sponsored worker and otherwise control his or her employment.
A CEO, CTO, CFO, CXO etc. are all "employees", technically an employee is someone who works for the company (unpaid work also counts) the company.
E.g. You can have 100% equity, be sole shareholder, pay money to a manager/employee to conduct work/business. You can even derive a dividend from the said business. however you cannot "engage in business" which means that you cannot write code whose IP gets assigned to the company. You also cannot have day-to-day management responsibilities. If I remember correctly planning a business and/or attending meetings of board of directors is allowed.
At end of the day shareholding pattern trumps everything else.
The problem here is if you are A, then no one will give 49% stake to you because of your idea. This only works on paper but in reality you will get screwed.
My understanding is that the H1B visa does not allow you to do any work for anyone apart from your visa sponsor. If a co-founder were to spend his evenings working on his startup which has been incorporated, I'm not sure if that would conflict with the above regulation, and if so, how to work around this.
I'd be happy to contact you privately if you prefer that.