Building a company while you're still on an F-1

Nothing in your status stops you from owning a business, because ownership by itself isn't employment. Your status restricts work, and the law is imprecise about where work begins. No definition of "employment" is written for F-1 students anywhere in the regulations. 

The working question an officer comes back to is whether the thing you're doing is the thing an employee would ordinarily do... the work that lives inside an employer-employee relationship. (Important note: going unpaid helps far less than founders hope. A founder who runs operations for free has still run the operations).

So the issue becomes, what activities can you perform on an F-1, and which ones constitute “employment” such that you’re endangering your visa?

Take the F-1 student who bought a fleet of ice cream trucks in the 1980s. He leased them out to vendors and took a percentage of the sales, which on paper is an investor's position. But, he was also buying the ice cream and restocking the trucks every morning (plus driving one himself when a vendor didn't show). A court called that unauthorized employment, and he was ordered to leave the country.

When ownership crosses into employment (or the types of functions an employee would typically perform), that’s where status risk lives.

You can do quite a lot, and more than most students assume. While you're in status you can:

• form the company and hold shares in it, including a majority position
• sit on its board of directors
• do the market research and the product development work
• hold and attend meetings, board meetings included
• negotiate contracts and consult with business associates
• raise money, which covers pitching investors and negotiating with the lawyers on the other side

None of that is employment. All of it is the work of building a company before there is a company to be employed by, and students can give up years of it because nobody told them the difference.

Hiring and directing workers in the United States is out... that one isn't gray. What we build with student founders is a line between the board and shareholder level (where you can live), and daily operations (where you can't). 

You elect an officer, often the U.S. co-founder who was sitting across the desk from you at 2:00am, and that officer hires people and signs what needs signing. Decisions that matter come back to the board, and you vote on them as a director and shareholder.

In transparency, this arrangement does put material weight on the co-founder. They're taking on the operating role; if they leave, the company needs somebody else in that seat quickly (before you fill it yourself by default).

Our view, after a lot of these: the structure only protects you if you live inside it. Founders get into trouble far more often by drifting across the line in month eight than by setting the company up badly in month one.

You can work for your own start-up once you qualify for CPT or OPT. 

Curricular Practical Training (CPT) runs during your program and has to be part of your curriculum (it doesn’t apply post-graduation). Optional Practical Training (OPT) comes after, and gives you twelve months of work authorization in your field. Your DSO authorizes both. You may be able to qualify for both, if orchestrated properly.

The 24-month STEM extension is where founders get stuck, because it needs a real employer signing your training plan and you can't sign it for yourself (but your company can if established correctly).

For years students got the same answer with regards to H-1Bs: you can't get an H-1B through your own company, because somebody has to be able to fire you. That stopped being true in January 2025. The rules changed such that if you own more than half your company, you can now sponsor yourself. It’s on a compressed timeline compared to a normal H-1B (18 months at a time to start), and USCIS is free to come and look at your office. 

The door is open, though, and it wasn't before.

Post F-1, you may have other options, such as the H-1B Specialty Occupation, E-2 Treaty Investor, O-1 Outstanding Ability, NAFTA “TN” Professional Visa (for citizens of Canada and Mexico), the H-3 “training visa” and, in some instances, the L-1 intracompany transfer visa. These visas may be viable options once you have completed your studies, graduated, or will no longer be in a full course of study, and would like to begin working on a full or part-time basis.

The bottom line for building a company while still on an F-1? We'd rather talk to you in your sophomore year than 30 days after you graduate. Early on, there's time to structure the company so the separation withstands scrutiny (and to keep the kind of record that supports whatever you file three years from now). 

If you're building something, or you're two months away from building something, start a conversation with an immigration lawyer.