Yes. Any U.S. employer—including a newly formed startup, an LLC, or an S-corp with a single employee—can sponsor an H-1B visa. There is no minimum employee count, no minimum revenue requirement, and no age-of-company requirement. USCIS does not require the employer to be profitable.
The challenge is not eligibility—it is evidence. USCIS scrutinizes startup petitions more heavily than petitions from established companies because startups have less documented history. A petition from Google with a standard software engineer role gets approved in days. The same petition from a 3-person startup requires significantly more evidence to satisfy the same legal standards.
USCIS must be convinced that a legitimate employer-employee relationship exists. For startups where the H-1B worker is also a founder or major shareholder, this is the hardest requirement. The employer must have the ability to hire, fire, pay, and control the work of the H-1B employee.
The position must require at minimum a bachelor's degree in a specific field as a normal entry requirement. USCIS challenges whether early-stage startups genuinely need degree-level employees or whether the role could be filled by someone without a degree.
The startup must demonstrate it can pay the prevailing wage for the position from the petition start date. Bank statements, investor commitments, signed contracts, and financial projections are all valid evidence.
If the H-1B worker is a co-founder with significant equity and board control, USCIS may find that there is no genuine employer-employee relationship—the worker effectively controls their own employment. Courts have upheld USCIS denials in these scenarios (Defensor v. Meissner).
Mitigation: structure the company so the board of directors (not just the founder personally) controls hiring and firing decisions. Document corporate governance—board resolutions, employment agreements, org charts showing reporting structure, and separation of ownership from operational control.
Sumit covers H-1B visa processes, green card pathways, and employment-based immigration for foreign nationals navigating U.S. work authorization.