O-1A Case Study: Executives

Background 

V.W. came to the U.S. for her MBA studies and joined a CleanTech startup as a Founding Team member. She was instrumental in helping the CleanTech startup in raising >US$1m in Seed funding and getting admission into the highly coveted Techstars Accelerator. 

V.W. was exploring an O-1 qualification which would allow her to work on the startup while taking on other finance related contractual work to sustain herself while her startup scales. 

V.W. holds a Taiwanese Passport. 

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Initial Problems 

V.W. meet 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 build at least 3-4 press mentions with major circulation 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 of acceptable formats to be useful evidence. 

This meant that her articles could not be of paid placements, and needed to have sufficient quotes and portraits in the featured articles. We also decided to add into the mix a few featured interview attempts 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 to O-1 standards. 

2. Establishing Expertise through Panel and Event Features 

V.W. had good operator networks and connection to the commerce chamber of Taiwan in the U.S. Upon gap analysis on her O-1 profile, we identified network nodes from her connections which frequently host business events and entrepreneurship competitions. 

We suggested V.W. on hosting fireside chats and panel discussions related to venture financing, and reviewed potential speaker lists at her events to ensure that they reflect high caliber talent in the venture realm. This included making sure that she was interviewing Series A and beyond operators, and advising her on the right speaker panels (in 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 for invitation letters to ensure no efforts wasted on her ‘Scholarly Articles’ criterion building. 

3. Seamless Petition Experience 

We worked closely with V.W. on her profile building journey, and managed to get her profile O-1 ready in a span of 4 months.