Two years ago, when I was still an investor, roughly three in every ten AI or SaaS founders I met asked me when they should move to the United States.
Since then, those conversations have become more frequent and more urgent. The question is no longer simply whether the US offers better access to capital, customers, or specialist talent. Founders are increasingly asking how early they need to establish a legitimate presence there, and what could happen if they get the timing wrong.
One reason is increased scrutiny at the US border. For years, many founders followed an informal playbook: enter on a B-1/B-2 visa or through ESTA, spend a few weeks meeting investors and prospective customers, and decide later whether the market justified a more permanent move.
That approach has become harder to rely on. Visitor status permits certain business activities, such as attending meetings and conferences or negotiating contracts, but it does not provide general authorization to work in the US or run the day-to-day operations of a company from there.
Founders we speak to have reported additional questioning at the border, particularly when making repeated visits or when their activities appear to go beyond exploratory business travel. They also understand that an adverse immigration record can complicate future entries and visa applications, affecting their ability to relocate when the company genuinely needs them in the US.
For an early-stage business dependent on fundraising or customer momentum, that is not a risk founders want to discover halfway through an expansion.
Over the past 12 months, Beyond Border has spoken with approximately 6,500 founders exploring US immigration options. Around half were based in Asia, primarily in Bangalore, Delhi, Gurugram, and Singapore. Of these Asian founders, roughly 90 percent were running pre-seed or seed-stage companies.
What we observe is that founders are no longer necessarily waiting until Series A to work out their US structure and immigration plans. They are considering these questions at the earliest stages, while deciding where to incorporate, where to raise capital, which roles need to be in the US, and which capabilities should remain in Asia.
The result is a more deliberate dual-market model. Founders and selected commercial teams stay close to US investors and customers, while product, engineering, and operations continue to grow from Asia.
Plan around capital and customers
In 2025, US-based startups attracted approximately 64 percent of global startup funding, up from 56 percent the previous year, according to Crunchbase. The figure was heavily influenced by exceptionally large AI rounds, but the direction is clear: the US remains a major center of gravity for global venture capital, particularly in enterprise software and AI.
That does not mean every Asian startup should become an American company. Founders targeting US investors and enterprise customers should, however, understand their expectations early.
Some US funds are comfortable investing directly in foreign entities. Others may require a US parent company before investing. When that question arises halfway through a fundraising process, founders may have to restructure the group, transfer shares, rebuild employee equity arrangements, and work through tax consequences across several jurisdictions.
The problem goes beyond the legal bill. It can also mean losing momentum at precisely the point when the company has investor interest.
One Chinese founder we advised was building in the emerging field of memory infrastructure for AI agents. The company had established its initial operations in China, secured backing from leading Chinese venture capital firms, and later raised a Series A from a top international investor.
But the founder did not establish a US presence while that momentum was still fresh. Twelve months later, the company was still trying to build an operation beyond Asia and had struggled to begin meaningful Series B conversations with Silicon Valley investors.
It also found it difficult to recruit top US engineers, who were being courted aggressively by frontier AI labs. Without the founder in the country to develop investor relationships and meet prospective hires in person, both fundraising and recruitment became harder to pursue from a distance.
Founders need to be where important relationships are being built, particularly when their companies are competing in fast-moving sectors.
The same principle applies to customers. An Asian founder can visit the US, meet prospective buyers, and negotiate contracts without relocating the whole company. But enterprise sales depend on sustained trust, internal champions, and repeated contact. Those relationships can be difficult to build through occasional two-week trips.
This is why the first US presence for many dual-market companies is deliberately small. It may consist of a founder, one or two experienced account executives, and a small founder’s office or customer-success team. Their role is to remain close to the market while most of the company continues operating from Asia.
Put each function where it has the greatest advantage
SuperOps offers one example of how this model can work in practice. The IT management company has built a presence in the US while retaining a substantial product and technology base in India.
During its US expansion, the company prioritized having founders and selected commercial team members closer to customers and the market, while much of its technical organization remained in India.
The structure gave the company a meaningful presence close to US customers and commercial talent without uprooting the technical organization it had already built. It preserved existing networks and cost advantages while allowing the people responsible for fundraising, partnerships, and customer relationships to operate closer to the US market.
The US has an exceptional concentration of people who have sold complex software into Fortune 500 companies, built new enterprise categories, or scaled finance and operations through an initial public offering. If a company’s largest customers are in the US, hiring some of that experience locally can materially improve its ability to compete.
The mistake is assuming every function must follow.
I recruit extensively in Bangalore for product and technology roles. Competition for strong people is intense, but companies can still build deep, stable technical teams there without matching Bay Area costs. Founders also benefit from the professional networks and market knowledge they developed before expanding abroad.
This is not simply labor arbitrage. The home-market team should not be treated as a low-cost back office. In a well-designed dual-market company, engineering and product remain central to strategy, while the US team brings the company closer to capital, customers, and specialized commercial talent.
The right configuration depends on the business. An enterprise AI startup selling to US corporations has a very different reason to establish a US presence from an Indonesian consumer startup focused on Southeast Asia. The principle is to place each important function where it has the greatest strategic advantage.
Immigration is part of the operating plan
The final part of this strategy is often considered too late.
A company can be incorporated quickly. Customer meetings can be arranged within weeks. Moving a founder or key employee legally may take months.
Founders therefore need to distinguish between exploring the US market and operating within it. A short trip for meetings may be appropriate under visitor status. Spending extended periods managing staff, delivering work, or running the business may require a different immigration route.
The answer is not for every founder to apply for a work visa immediately. It is to decide early what the company intends to do in the US, who needs to be physically present, and which immigration options could support that plan.
That assessment should extend beyond the founders. A company may eventually need to move a senior commercial leader, a technical specialist, or members of its launch team. Each person may have different options, eligibility requirements, and preparation timelines.
Immigration should therefore be considered alongside incorporation, fundraising, and hiring rather than treated as an administrative step after the expansion strategy has already been decided.
Company strategy may run in weeks, but immigration often runs in months. If a founder expects to begin fundraising, hiring, or selling in the US within the next six months, corporate and immigration planning should begin early.
The strongest Asian startups are combining the advantages of both markets: access to capital and customers in the US, specialist talent where it is strongest, and product and engineering teams rooted in the ecosystems that helped them begin.
What has changed is the timing. Founders are recognizing earlier that a US presence cannot always be improvised through repeated business trips or added once the company reaches Series A. It needs to be designed deliberately before distance or immigration becomes a constraint on the company’s growth.
Fred Ng is CEO and co-founder of Beyond Border, a tech-enabled US immigration platform helping startup founders build and scale their businesses in the US. He was previously an investor at Square Peg and Country Manager at Glints.
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