USCIS guidance has been updated twice for tech — including explicitly addressing founders whose own company files for them. For technical founders, the O-1 conversation changed.
The updated guidance addresses the situation founders always asked about: whether the company you own can be part of your own petition structure. The direction of travel is explicit — founder-owned companies are contemplated, and the broader tech updates read startup-shaped evidence (funding, accelerators, shipped products, press) onto the criteria more naturally than the older, academia-shaped reading did. The precise structure for any one founder is an attorney conversation; the point is that the door is documented, not theoretical.
The update that put founder-owned companies on the map.
Reading a startup record against the criteria.
The guidance now explicitly contemplates founder-owned companies in the petition structure - with real conditions on how it is set up. The structure decision is your attorney’s call; the option being documented is the change.
Funding rounds, their selectivity and their press coverage are regularly argued evidence in tech O-1 cases - one input among the criteria, strongest when documented and contextualized.
Possibly for filing, not for building: organizing the record now shows you exactly which criteria are short and what the next two quarters should produce. The profile and readiness score are free.