Background 

V.W. came to the U.S. to pursue her MBA and joined a Clean-Tech startup as a Founding Team member. She was instrumental in helping the Clean-Tech startup raise US$1m in Seed funding and gain admission to the highly coveted Techstars Accelerator. 

V.W. was exploring an O-1 visa, which would allow her to work on the startup and take on other finance-related contract work to sustain herself as her startup scales. 

V.W. holds a Taiwanese Passport. 

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Initial Problems 

V.W. meets 2 of the 8 qualifying criteria in our initial assessment, meaning she hasn’t met the initial qualification threshold for the O-1 visa yet. 

Critically, V.W. had yet to build up her public presence in the press and could use work to establish her expertise in startup fundraising. 

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Our work 

1. Guidance on Press Features 

V.W. needed to secure at least 3-4 press mentions in major publications to support her O-1 profile. 

Importantly, not all press mentions are equal when it comes to supporting evidence for O-1 qualification. We needed to prove circulation volumes and ensure that her press features were in acceptable formats to be useful evidence. 

This meant that her articles could not be paid placements and needed to have sufficient quotes and portraits in the featured articles. We also decided to add a few featured interview attempts to the mix to strengthen her press portfolio and accentuate her expertise in venture financing.

In V.W.’s case, she had elected to work with a press agency that she knew of. We collaborated closely with their agencies to review pitch drafts and press outreach lists to ensure compliance with O-1 standards. 

2. Establishing Expertise through Panel and Event Features 

V.W. had strong operator networks and connections to the Chamber of Commerce of Taiwan in the U.S. During a gap analysis of her O-1 profile, we identified network nodes among her connections that frequently host business events and entrepreneurship competitions. 

We suggested V.W. host fireside chats and panel discussions on venture financing and reviewed potential speaker lists for her events to ensure they reflect high-caliber talent in the venture realm. This included ensuring she was interviewing Series A and beyond operators and advising her on the right speaker panels (in terms of theme and panelist mix) to be featured in. 

We also kept in proactive touch with V.W. during her profile-building phase to ensure any speaking opportunities she created were of good standard and could be traced back to invitation letters to ensure no efforts were wasted on her ‘Scholarly Articles’ criterion building. 

3. Seamless Petition Experience 

We worked closely with V.W. on her profile-building journey and got her O-1 profile ready within 4 months.