Foundations

The seven questions that decide it

"Can I work for my own company?" is not one question. It is seven. The confident answers you have read online are usually answers to only one of them.

prepared 27 August 2026 · revised 2 October 2026 · checked 2 October 2026 · publication gated on source-check against primary authority and Serotte review

Review status, 2 October 2026. The rule statements in this revision were source-checked against the Federal Register on 2 October 2026. The attorney review named above has not yet taken place on this revision.

"Start a company" is easy advice. It fits in a comment. What the comment never carries is the list of questions that actually decides whether the structure works, because every one of them depends on facts the commenter does not have.

Here is the list.

Who owns it? Ownership is holding equity. On its own, holding shares is treated very differently from working, and for many statuses it is the easier half of the problem. For H-1B, ownership has a threshold that matters. Owning more than 50% of the company, or holding majority voting rights, makes you a beneficiary-owner under the January 2025 rule (89 FR 103054, FINAL, effective 17 January 2025). A beneficiary-owner's first approval and first extension are each capped at 18 months.

Who controls it? Control is not the same as ownership. A person can own most of a company that they do not control, because control can sit with a board, with other shareholders, or with an agreement written for exactly this purpose. For H-1B since 17 January 2025, a controlling interest means more than 50% ownership or majority voting rights, and an independent board does not take a majority owner out of that definition. For other categories, whether separating control from ownership matters depends on the test that category uses. Whether any separation is real rather than decorative is among the questions considered in owner cases.

Who employs you? An employment relationship has an employer side and an employee side. For H-1B, the January 2025 rule asks for a bona fide job offer in place of the earlier employer-employee relationship requirement. For other categories, the questions considered can still include who can hire, supervise, discipline and end the relationship. Which test applies to you is a question for your attorney.

What exactly will you be doing? Not the title. The duties. A specific, documented role is measurable against the requirements of a visa category. A vague one is not.

Is the position a qualifying one? Categories have definitions. A role either sits inside the definition, with evidence, or it does not. Wanting it to qualify is not evidence.

Can the company support the employment? A petition asserts that the company can carry the role it describes: the work exists, and the ability to pay exists. Both are shown with documents, not with optimism.

What evidence proves all of that? Every yes above is only as strong as the paper behind it. Formation records, ownership ledgers, governance documents, contracts, financials. The structure is the story; the evidence is what makes the story a file.

Notice what is not on the list: your ambition, your work ethic, and the success story of someone whose facts were different from yours. Those seven questions are why the honest general answer is "it depends," and why that phrase, which sounds like an evasion, is actually the beginning of the real work.

These are not internet-comment questions. They are questions for careful research, documentation, and qualified immigration counsel. What the library can do is make sure that when you sit down with counsel, you already understand the territory well enough to ask about all seven, and to notice when an answer has only covered one.