Hiring foreign nationals at an early-stage startup

If the person is already on an H-1B at another company, bringing them on is usually a matter of transferring the petition to you. Once we have the documents we need, it usually takes 2-3 weeks to prepare; under most circumstances the employee can begin working for you as soon as USCIS receives the petition. That means they could be at their desk well before the case is decided. The work authorization usually runs three years.

The government fees depend on how quickly you want it done. Regular processing runs around $2,500, with a decision taking roughly 6-8 months. If you want that shortened, USCIS premium processing costs the employer an additional $3,000 and brings the decision down to ~3 weeks, which puts the government side closer to $5,500. You can see the full sequence in our H-1B roadmap.

F-1 status covers current students and recent graduates, and for this group OPT is often the fastest and least expensive way to get someone working legally. Optional Practical Training gives a recent graduate a year of work authorization, and in practice, bringing someone on through OPT looks a lot like hiring a U.S. citizen. For an early-stage company, that’s an inexpensive way to bring someone in and work alongside them before anything more permanent has to be decided.

If the degree is in a science, technology, engineering, or math field, OPT can be extended for two more years through STEM OPT. That extension does ask something of you as the employer. The company has to be enrolled in E-Verify, and you file a training plan (Form I-983) describing what the person will learn on the job.

CPT is the version that applies while the student is still in school, or over a summer break… which is how a strong intern often ends up working with you before they’ve even graduated. Our F-1 roadmap walks through how these pieces fit together.

H-1B and OPT are the two most founders arrive already asking about, but several other categories may fit your candidate better. The O-1 is built for people with a strong record in their field, and more early-stage hires qualify for it than assume they do. The J-1 covers certain training and exchange arrangements, and the E-2 is tied to treaty countries and investment.

A few categories hinge entirely on where the person is from. The TN is open to citizens of Canada and Mexico, and the E-3 to citizens of Australia. There’s also the H-1B1, a set-aside for citizens of Chile and Singapore. Because nationality opens some of these doors and not others, one of the first things we ask about a candidate is their citizenship. Our resources page has more on each.

Founders often assume they should wait until after the next round before sponsoring anyone. In our experience, there’s really no meaningful difference between doing it at seed and doing it later. If anything, a proactive immigration strategy can be a real advantage when you’re recruiting against larger, more established companies, which tend to sponsor on fixed timelines and rarely get creative with them.

The pattern we usually see runs something like this: Pre-seed or early seed, with limited cash in the bank, OPT tends to be the realistic path where the person is eligible (and it’s the lightest to shoulder). A founder can also do a fair amount while sorting out funding, including forming the company, sitting on the board, raising money, and holding a majority of the equity, as long as the day-to-day execution sits with someone who is authorized to do it. An H-1B is still possible at this stage, depending on whether the company can pay the required wage.

Once some institutional money is in the bank post-seed, an H-1B for a founder or an early technical hire becomes much more supportable. And post-Series A, all of these options stay open, usually with enough revenue and cash to support H-1B hires beyond the founding team.

If you’re weighing a specific person, the best time to look at the options is early, while all of them are still on the table. Start a conversation, tell us the status they hold now, and where they’re a citizen, and we can usually give you a clear sense of what’s open to you and what it’ll take.