perczel

Probably Jeff Bezos is the most prominent example. He is credited as the sole founder of Amazon. Though it should be noted that he received immense support from his wife.

I’d recommend you consult with a lawyer not HN. :)

I am a founder/CEO and got my green card through the NIW category (I have a PhD). I’d highly recommend the law firm I worked with: www.wegreened.com Don’t be misled by the fact that their website looks really bad. They handle thousands of green cards every year (NIW, EB1, O1) with a very high success rate. They do free consultations, so you have nothing to lose by contacting them!

This is really helpful. I am surprised — why doesn't HackerNews have a page outlining these policies themselves?

Wow, how did you know that? It is true! Can you see how many upvotes I have? In any case, thank you for your upvote. :)

Ultimately, getting VC funding is a network problem. The overwhelming majority of VC funding goes to founders who get a warm intro to the firm somehow (at least in Silicon Valley). Therefore, I’d focus on VC firms you have some connections through your network.

If you have many options, start with the firms that you are less excited about to debug the pitch. Only once you are confident you got the deck and narrative right go for the top ones.

Finally, remember that your top priorities are (in that order): closing quickly, quality of the investor and valuation & control.

As a founder of a fast-growing venture-backed company, I have found that there is no better resource to read than Paul Graham’s essays (paulgraham.com). He has seen more startups succeed and fail than any other individual in the history of startups. As such he has come closest to having a statistically representative sample to distill insights from. He is an excellent writer too.

I have also found Peter Thiel’s book Zero To One to be full of actionable insights and recommendations.

Finally, Eric Ries’s The Lean Startup is the bible of iterating fast and finding product-market fit before you invest in a product no one wants (#1 most common way to fail).

Just my 2 cents.

(Disclaimer: we are not funded by YC)