The US admits about 200,000 international students from India every year. 4 years later, they graduate into a free-for-all fight for green cards.
Fewer than 3% will stay long term.
The student visa-to-green-card pipeline is broken, and it hurts everyone.
Quick math:
Hosting a thing for international founders to understand visa options.
If you're applying to YC, Speedrun or other accelerators, this is for you.
International student looking to start something? This is for you.
Drop a comment/ emoji/ whatever and I'll send you the details.
@tushant_suneja idk about overlook - the expectation is you can get to sf. They just don’t have reliable ways to make that happen, because it’s the founder that needs to take ownership of it
@pitdesi@alexrkonrad You would ask “who’s your competition?” though?
Presumably, one would call the company they are copying their competition.
I’m not a VC but I would probably google the competition/ check their site to understand how they are different.
Almost 10 years of using Superhuman, but their AI responses can’t draft:
“Let’s find a time to chat. Here’s my calendar” like I have used probably 10,000 times.
What are smart people using for email these days? I want something that sounds like me and gathers context
kinda sick of the fraudsters
might just fuck around and make a tool to help USCIS identify O-1 cases with fake media mills, pay-to-play journals, BS awards, judging events, etc.
might make things tough for a ton of “profile builders” and the firms that enable them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If this is truly a visa issue, you could attend the program on a B-1/ESTA, and have a US work visa in hand in about ~45-90 days.
From the form you shared, it looks like they are assessing some other risk related to Chinese ties. Maybe a stipulation of funding/ LPs?
DM me if you wanna chat thru visa stuff though, that's a solvable problem.
@Stef_McConnell Yes, and a decent amount of astroturfing + affiliate work, making the whole space noisy with “experts” and “profile builders” and people who don’t really know the space but get paid to pretend they do.
Huge sigh of relief - just got MY O-1 visa approved.
This was my 5th O-1 approval, and the weirdest, most complicated one yet.
My wife jokes that I'm trying to set a record for Person With The Most O-1 Approvals.
I'm definitely not.
The stress of waiting for processing has probably shaved years off my life.
But I've now hit just about every O-1 application type possible:
2018: New O-1 visa to join Legalpad, consular processing
2020: 3 year renewal/extension to stay at Legalpad (they CAN be done)
2022? Change of employer after Deel acquisition
2023: Asked to be put on a PIP at Deel so I could take a vacation and get paid / not get laid off :) Concurrent O-1 visa so I could quit, agent petitioner application submitted from Japan
2026: Agent petition amendment/ extension for Compass Visas + GTM Ventures (consulting + agent petitioner/ agent visa entity).
Huge shout out to Kim, our attorney, for discovering and fixing all the issues an overpriced boutique law firm included in my previous petition, like my supposed employment as an Industrial Engineer 🤔