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?
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).
Hmm, I guess what OP and grand-parent comment are talking about is exactly the visa question. The problem is not so much setting up a US corporation, but actually running the business while living in the US.
Remember that for anyone wanting to apply for funding to Y Combinator that we only invest in US corporations (registered in Delaware), which means that the parent company will need to be a US company. So if you're thinking about applying you probably should hold off on any type of incorporation in the UK, until you know whether you'll be in Mountain View over the summer!
