For past few months, my life has been quite turbulent. Juggling between my messed up thesis work and a start-up I have co-founded. While my thesis no longer interests me, I had resorted to my start-up idea as an escape from academic work.

I have been part of team of various start-ups before — most of them had incompetent team members, over thinkers, non-achievers. I was foundering member of possibly first e-commerce platform in Iraq. After two months of successful operation, we were expecting huge profits during Ramadan season, when the country was hit by a war.

Parkloco is a simple app for locating open parking spot near you. However, it offers amazing features for operators that none of the existing products do. This time I have been possibly bless with an amazing team. Recently, Parkloco was accepted in DreamIt venture's philly 2014 program. Thus I started researching on possibility to temporarily move to US for managing technology for Parkloco.

@nikkidurkin99 's post inspired me to actually write this post. Well, I haven't gone through that ordeal yet, I can imagine her mental state and our app is not even out yet. It is sheer obscurity and complexity of the visa process that makes the application really scary.

Lack of start-up visa in US for founders whose company has been accepted in reputed incubator and accelerator programs is a quite disappointing. Well, the term "Lack of start-up visa " is not really true. There is E-2 for many European countries and South Asian countries that have signed "some " treaty and then there is EB-5 for people who invest more that 500k-1m.

I was born in India and in relatively middle class family. So both of these options can be ruled out. I hustled my way to Netherlands to study Master in Computer Science in TU Delft, which is country's premier university. Still, I don 't think I am super special enough to apply O-1. But most disappointing of them all is H1B. Many of my friends, who have been working for outsourcing companies in India, manually testing application, or providing production support to their clients are in US to work on a H1B visa. While, even with my Masters in Computer Science is going to be relatively difficult. I am quite sure that our start-up can generate up to 10 jobs by the end of next fiscal year yet I am not really eligible for H1B at this point. However, most ironic fact is that I can employ a developer and sponsor an H1B. There is a J-1 visa for students and recent graduate, which I think I am eligible for, however it lasts as long as the length of incubator program. Also, the complexity of the immigration process demands hiring a lawyer which costs money and may not guarantee visa grant. And when you thought you visa thingy was resolved , there is a possibility that your visa might just be rejected at port of entry.

Start-ups are really integral part of an economy. Though an average sized start-up can generate 5-10 jobs, if you see the bigger picture there are lot of jobs that are created. Some countries have identified this opportunity and have tried to attract young entrepreneurs. For instance Canada provides a permanent residence when a start up is accepted in a registered incubation program. The Netherlands, Australia, UK gives 1 year entrepreneur visa. But most surprising and reputed program is ran by government of Chile — Start-up Chile. It provides 40K equity free investment and reputed investors from Silicon valley as mentors.

I believe as an entrepreneur, visa should be the last thing that you should worry about. It isn't my mistake that I was born in India.

I just wonder how many Zuckerbergs have been denied entry into US.