Can You Start a Company on F-1, OPT, or H-1B? Entrepreneurship and Your Visa 2026

Starting a US company on a student or work visa is legal — but the rules differ sharply across F-1, OPT, and H-1B, and one wrong move can end your status.

You built something. A tool that solves a real problem, a SaaS idea you've been prototyping on weekends, or a consulting practice that clients are already willing to pay for. Now the question that keeps you up at night: can you actually do this without blowing up your visa?

The good news is that entrepreneurship and US immigration law are not mutually exclusive. The hard news is that the rules vary significantly depending on whether you're on F-1, OPT, STEM OPT, or H-1B — and the penalties for getting it wrong range from losing your OPT to being barred from re-entry. This guide gives you the accurate picture so you can move forward deliberately rather than freeze up or, worse, act without knowing the risks.

The core distinction every founder must understand

Before diving into visa-by-visa rules, internalize this one principle: incorporation is not work. Forming an LLC or C-Corp, holding equity, attending board meetings, and making strategic decisions as an owner do not constitute "employment" under US immigration law. What counts as unauthorized employment is receiving compensation for performing services — including a salary, hourly pay, equity distributions from active work, or even commission.

This means you can legally:

• Incorporate a Delaware C-Corp or a Wyoming LLC while on any visa
• Hold any percentage of equity, including 100%
• Be named a director or officer in the articles of incorporation
• Negotiate with investors and sign term sheets as a company principal

You cannot do without proper work authorization:

• Draw a salary or W-2 wages from the company
• Perform work for the company (coding, sales calls, client deliveries) as a compensated activity
• Take 1099 payments as a contractor to your own company

With that distinction in hand, here is how each status category actually works.

F-1 status and entrepreneurship

What you can do

As a full-time F-1 student (not yet on OPT or CPT), your work authorization is extremely limited: on-campus work up to 20 hours per week, or off-campus work under severe economic hardship authorization. Starting an active business falls outside both.

However, you can incorporate a company, hold equity, and do pre-revenue planning work without compensation — building the product nights and weekends as a non-paid founder is legally permissible. Many successful startups were incubated this way while the founder was still in school.

On-campus incubators and CPT

Some universities have business incubators or accelerator programs that allow students to work on their ventures under on-campus employment or as part of a formal curricular program. If your school offers CPT (Curricular Practical Training) tied to an entrepreneurship curriculum, and if your startup qualifies as the practical training component of your degree, you may be able to work in your own company under CPT authorization.

Caution on Day 1 CPT: Using 12 or more months of full-time CPT eliminates OPT eligibility. If you use a Day 1 CPT program primarily to self-authorize work at a startup rather than for bona fide curricular training, you risk USCIS finding it fraudulent — with consequences including unlawful presence findings. This is a high-risk path that deserves very careful immigration counsel before you go near it.

OPT and STEM OPT entrepreneurship

OPT self-employment — the rules

OPT is authorized for employment "directly related to your major area of study." USCIS and SEVP allow self-employment on OPT, but with significant constraints that many founders discover too late.

The core requirement is that you must have a bona fide employer-employee relationship with your company, which means the entity must be able to hire, fire, supervise, and control your work. For a startup where you are the only owner and only employee, this is structurally very difficult to demonstrate — you cannot be your own supervisor in the way USCIS requires.

The clearest path to OPT self-employment that satisfies the standard:

1. Incorporate a formal legal entity — not a sole proprietorship. A Delaware C-Corp is the strongest structure because it has a board of directors separate from the officer/employee.
2. Establish a board with at least one outside director who has actual authority over your employment.
3. Create a formal employment agreement between you personally and the company, signed on behalf of the company by a board member.
4. Register your employer in SEVIS through your DSO (Designated School Official) — the company must be a proper SEVIS employer of record before you begin work.
5. Maintain all payroll records, paystubs, and board minutes as evidence of the legitimate relationship.
6. Stay within your authorized dates. The 90-day unemployment limit applies: if you cannot show active, compensated employment in your field within 90 days, you accrue unemployment time toward the limit that ends your OPT.

You should also know that working for your own company does not by itself exempt you from the OPT requirement that the work be related to your degree field. A computer science graduate running a software startup is clearly within scope. A business administration graduate running the same startup may face more scrutiny. Document the field connection explicitly.

STEM OPT and the 24-month extension

STEM OPT adds complexity for founders. The 24-month STEM OPT extension requires your employer to submit a Form I-983 Training Plan to your DSO, signed by both you and the employer. When you are the employer, USCIS scrutinizes I-983 submissions from self-directed arrangements very carefully.

The I-983 must specify formal goals, mentorship, supervision, and performance reviews. A startup where you are simultaneously the trainee and the evaluating supervisor raises obvious authenticity questions. If you have a board member, advisor, or formal mentor who can credibly sign the employer sections and provide real oversight, the STEM OPT self-employment path becomes more defensible.

The STEM OPT employer training plan requirements are strict — an immigration attorney should review your I-983 before submission if self-employment is involved.

Key OPT entrepreneurship checklist

H-1B and entrepreneurship

Equity ownership — no restrictions

If you're on H-1B, you can own any percentage of any company, including 100%, without any immigration implications. Buying stock, holding a founder equity stake, or being a named co-founder on paper is entirely separate from your H-1B status. Many H-1B workers are angel investors, hold equity in pre-IPO startups as advisors, or have founding-level stakes in companies they started before or after getting H-1B status.

Working for your own startup — the H-1B petition requirement

Here is where it gets more involved. To actually work in your startup — writing code, running sales, managing operations, receiving a salary — you need a valid H-1B petition with your startup as the petitioning employer, just as if a completely separate company were sponsoring you.

This means your startup must:

1. Be a legitimate US employer — registered, EIN obtained, able to demonstrate it has the financial ability to pay prevailing wages.
2. File a Labor Condition Application (LCA) with the Department of Labor (DOL) for the specific role and worksite.
3. File Form I-129 with USCIS, with the certified LCA attached, and satisfy the specialty occupation standard for your role.
4. Demonstrate the employer-employee relationship — including that the company has the right to control and supervise your work. USCIS has historically scrutinized this in situations where the H-1B beneficiary is also a majority owner, because the agency is skeptical that someone can truly supervise themselves.

The itinerary / third-party worksite doctrine (from Matter of Simeio Solutions and related policy) can complicate situations where work happens at client sites rather than the startup's own location.

The control problem for majority owners

USCIS policy — most directly stated in the 2010 memorandum "Determining Employer-Employee Relationship for Adjudication of H-1B Petitions" — explicitly addresses co-founders and majority owners. A beneficiary who owns more than 50% of the company and sits on the board creates a presumption that no true employer-employee control exists.

The way around this: a board with real authority over your employment. If the company's board has the documented power to terminate your employment (even if you hold majority equity), and if the board has outside directors who credibly exercise that authority, USCIS may find a valid employer-employee relationship.

For startups with VC investors, this becomes easier — investors often hold board seats and have genuine termination rights over founders via employment agreements. Early-stage bootstrapped startups have a harder time satisfying this.

Getting this right requires an experienced H-1B attorney. See our guide on whether a startup can sponsor H-1B for the employer-side requirements.

If you're already on H-1B and want to start a side project

If you want to work on a startup in addition to your existing H-1B job, you are looking at concurrent H-1B employment — which requires a second I-129 petition filed by the startup. Your primary employer's petition is unaffected, but your startup must independently qualify as an H-1B employer and file its own LCA and I-129.

Alternatively, passive activities — advising, holding equity as an investor, being a silent co-founder who does not personally perform services — do not require a second petition at all.

Visa pathways designed for founders

The US does not have a dedicated "startup visa" as of 2026. Legislative proposals like the Startup Visa Act and International Entrepreneur Rule (IER) have had a turbulent history, and while the IER was finalized and is technically on the books, it has seen very limited use and is not a reliable long-term path. Here is what actually works:

O-1A — Extraordinary Ability

The O-1A is the most practical near-term option for founders with demonstrated traction. To qualify, you must show extraordinary ability in your field through at least three of the regulatory criteria: prizes/awards, membership in selective associations, media coverage, judging others' work, original contributions of major significance, authorship of scholarly articles, critical capacity for distinguished organizations, or high salary relative to peers.

For a startup founder, this translates to: a successful fundraise from recognized VCs (critical capacity), meaningful press coverage (media), patents or published technical work (original contributions), or speaking at industry conferences (judging). The O-1A is sponsored by your startup — which means it faces the same employer-employee scrutiny described above, but O-1 has a somewhat more flexible standard on control than H-1B.

Our O-1A complete guide walks through all the criteria in detail.

EB-1A — Extraordinary Ability Green Card

The EB-1A green card uses the same extraordinary ability standard as the O-1A but provides permanent residency. It is self-petitioned (no employer sponsorship required), which is a major advantage for founders who cannot or do not want to have their own startup sponsor them. Approval without a job offer is possible. Processing can be expedited with premium processing ($2,965 as of 2026).

EB-2 NIW — National Interest Waiver

The EB-2 NIW allows self-petition for a green card if you can show your work has substantial merit, national scope, and that the benefit of waiving the PERM labor certification is in the national interest. The Matter of Dhanasar (2016) standard applies. For startup founders, the argument is typically that your company is creating jobs, advancing technology, and that requiring PERM would be contrary to the national interest.

NIW petitions for founders are viable but require strong evidence: a detailed business plan, letters from experts in your field, patent filings, revenue or employment data, and ideally at least some external validation (investors, customers, media). See our guide on EB-1A vs EB-2 NIW for engineers for a side-by-side comparison.

L-1A — Intracompany Transferee

If you founded a company outside the US and want to open a US entity, the L-1A (intracompany manager/executive transferee) or L-1B (specialized knowledge) allows you to transfer yourself to the US affiliate. This requires the foreign company to have operated for at least one year with you in a qualifying managerial, executive, or specialized knowledge role. It's a viable path for serial founders who already have a running international business.

Comparison of founder visa paths

Remote work while building your startup

One pattern that works for some H-1B holders is keeping a traditional employer as the primary H-1B sponsor while working on a startup as a side project in genuinely non-compensated capacity. For the startup activities to remain compliant, they must truly be without compensation — no salary, no 1099, no equity distributions from work performed.

If you're considering a remote-work arrangement that would give you more time to build a startup on the side, understand the remote work and H-1B compliance rules before you make any moves.

Common mistakes

Incorporating a sole proprietorship and calling it OPT self-employment. A sole proprietorship cannot satisfy the employer-employee requirement. You need a separate legal entity with at least the structural possibility of outside control.

Skipping SEVIS registration before starting work. On OPT, your DSO must register the employer in SEVIS before you begin working. Starting work before that registration, even one day early, creates an unauthorized employment period that can invalidate your OPT authorization.

Taking a founders' salary on H-1B without a separate H-1B petition. Your primary employer's H-1B does not authorize work at any other company, including one you own. Even one paycheck from your startup without a valid H-1B petition covering that employment is unauthorized work.

Believing the International Entrepreneur Rule is a reliable path. The IER exists on paper but has had very limited operational use and faces ongoing policy uncertainty. Do not build a multi-year plan around it without current legal advice on its actual availability.

Forgetting the 90-day unemployment rule on OPT. If your startup takes longer to get off the ground than expected and you cannot show active compensated employment in your field, you can accumulate unemployment days against the 60-day or 90-day limits on standard and STEM OPT respectively. Always have a backup plan.

Using a startup salary to "prove" OPT employment without real business operations. Paying yourself a nominal salary from a company with no revenue, no clients, and no real operations may be viewed as a sham arrangement. USCIS and ICE look at substance, not just paperwork.

Assuming a minority equity stake makes the H-1B employer-employee question go away. Even a 49% ownership stake can raise questions if you are also the sole operator with no board oversight. The control question is about structure, not just percentage.

Frequently asked questions

Can an F-1 student incorporate a US company?

Yes — incorporating (forming the legal entity, holding equity) is not considered "work" under immigration law, so it does not require work authorization. However, actively running the company, taking a salary, or performing compensated tasks for it does require authorization. F-1 students must limit themselves to ownership and passive oversight unless they have an eligible CPT or OPT work authorization tied to that business activity.

Can I be self-employed on OPT?

Yes, self-employment is allowed on OPT, including STEM OPT, but the bar is high. USCIS requires that you have a bona fide employer-employee relationship where the company can hire, fire, supervise, and control your work — and for a sole proprietorship where you own 100%, that standard is nearly impossible to meet. A properly structured LLC or corporation with a board, formal employment agreement, and outside oversight has a better chance. An immigration attorney review before you file is strongly advised.

Can an H-1B holder own or start a company?

H-1B holders can own equity in any company — including one they founded — without restriction. The restriction is on working for that company. To perform work for your own startup, you need a separate H-1B petition filed by the company naming you as a beneficiary. The company must qualify as a legitimate H-1B employer, meaning it must have the legal ability to hire, fire, supervise and control your work, even if you are also an owner.

What visa options exist specifically for international founders who want to build a US startup full-time?

The most common paths are the O-1A visa (extraordinary ability), which rewards proven startup traction like funding, press, or a track record of high impact; the EB-1A green card for founders with a strong international portfolio; and the EB-2 NIW (National Interest Waiver) for founders whose work has broad national benefit. The much-discussed "startup visa" or dedicated founder visa does not exist in the US as of 2026 — Congress has repeatedly failed to pass it.

Does taking a salary from my own startup violate my H-1B status?

Taking a salary from a startup where you are also a part-owner only violates H-1B status if there is no separate valid H-1B petition covering that employment. You need the startup to file an I-129 petition with a certified LCA naming you as the H-1B worker. The salary must meet prevailing wage requirements for your role and location. Equity ownership alone does not trigger a status violation — only receiving compensation for work does.

Building something and want to make sure your visa situation is set up correctly? Reach out to F1Jobs — we help international founders understand their options before they make moves they can't undo.