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by antonp
5241 days ago
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> With all that said, it remains incredibly tough to set up business in the US. Even with the US funding behind us, and an American co-founder, options are surprisingly slim as the usual work visa – H1-B – is not suited for companies that are just starting out or for founders who have major stakes in the company. It doesn’t matter how many jobs you do or promise to create, the options are surprisingly limited. One gloomy forecast, this. Can anyone who's gone through the motions of starting a company in the US as a EU citizen share their experience? |
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We initially created an LLC (Distilled LLC) that was wholly controlled by the UK limited company (Distilled Ltd). We have just recently changed that to a UK holding company that owns the UK trading company and changed the LLC to a wholly-owned US corporation.
So we now have Distilled Group Ltd owning Distilled Ltd and Distilled US Inc. (we weren't allowed Distilled Inc. because of potential confusion with Distilled LLC).
I wasn't personally involved with the paperwork / legal hurdles but I believe the company creation stuff has all been pretty straight-forward - certainly compared to visas for the (2, non-founder) UK employees we sent to the US. They haven't been too troublesome, but they certainly could have been and they did cost us money (in advice).
Sidenote for anyone considering this slightly convoluted process - if you have an EMI options scheme in the UK, you need the US subsidiary to be a corporation as it must have shares (the parent must own "all the shares" (or some such language) in all subsidiaries to qualify for EMI tax protection).