[ecesena]

To setup the company, you don't need to live in the US. Today IMO your best solution is to register a Delaware corp via Stripe Atlas. It's relatively cheap, but keep in mind you'll have to pay taxes and an accountant, so plan for a few thousand USD.

In terms of visa/moving to the US to work on your startup, certainly you should ask a lawyer. I think you can come at least once on ESTA and/or OPT. Your best long term solution is an E2 visa, which typically cost in the order of the $10k, and it's issued after you have spent a certain amount of money through your startup, say $50k-100k. The nice thing about the E2 is that your company becomes eligible for E2, and after that you can issue multiple visas to multiple people, say 3-5.

Please note that these are all ballpark numbers to give you a sense. It worked for us, it may not work for you. You definitely need a lawyer to assist you in all these steps.