eduardo_f

In Spain most of my friends who got entry-level developer jobs used to make between €20k and €30k. It's been two years since I moved to the US, but I doubt things changed much.

I'm interested too. I used to work in enterprise software sales (average sale in the $M range), so I know a little bit from the selling side, but it's always very educational to learn from the buying side.

1) Yes, of course. 2) No, but my guess is that if you have a good product, the immigration status is less important. 3) Yes. 4) I will probably go back to my home country and continue working there.

That's bad advice. You CANNOT work unpaid. If you don't have a work permit you can't do any type of activity that might be considered _work_ by the DHS, even if you are not compensated. Work is defined as an activity that usually carries compensation.

I'm on an F1 visa and have been working as the sole founder of my startup since May. You have to apply for OPT and choose the "self-employed business owner" option.

The biggest problem is that OPT is valid for one year, plus 17 months if you're coming from a technical (STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) degree. So you have about 2.5 years to do something so big that you can transition to something else (EB-5, startup visa?).

Feel free to ask me more, I did lots of research in this area before quitting my job and starting to work full-time for my own business.

I am a nonresident and I have incorporated in the US. I live in Chicago, however, on an F1 student visa (did my master's here), so some things were easier for me. Opening a bank account is not a problem, the problem is obtaining an EIN. Read this very carefully: http://danashultz.com/blog/2009/11/30/foreign-company-alert-...

TL;DR: opening a bank account is easy with an EIN, and obtaining an EIN is very easy if the foreign company looking to start up in the U.S. includes, among its officers, at least one who (a) controls, manages, or directs the corporation and the disposition of its funds and assets and (b) has an SSN.

FWIW, I did C-corp in Illinois through MyCorporation. Total cost was about $200 and it took almost a month (chose non-express option).

You are looking for Page Plus Cellular. Pay as you go on Verizon's network. That's what I do on my Droid. 50 MB limit on data though :(

You can work on your startup full-time on an F1 visa after you complete your studies in the US.

I'm from Spain. My F1 visa allows to me work for my own business for 29 months.

I quit my job 3 weeks ago to work on a Gmail migration app. It's in beta:

https://apps.improffice.com/migrationbeta/

Get in touch @123Edu, eduardo at improffice dot com

When I read the title I was thinking in the US... I'm bootstrapping in Chicago but I'm actually from Madrid.

Anyway, the entrepreneurship community in Spain is small but tight and well-connected. I took the time to put together all blogs of Spanish entrepreneurs that I follow in a blog post here:

http://eduardolog.com/post/610275411/active-blogs-by-spanish...

If you are just going to read one blog, I recommend http://loogic.com

I also invited some Spanish entrepreneurs on Twitter to chime in here. I hope they have the time to say hi!

IANAL, but I'm a self-employed business owner on an F1 visa. It seems few people is aware of this option, but AFAIK this is completely legal. Search for "self-employed" here:

http://www.ice.gov/sevis/updates_postcompletion_opt.htm

I think LinkedIn is very useful if you sell to or deal a lot with medium and large corporations in the US (in Europe LinkedIn competes with Xing). I work in big-ticket B2B sales and LinkedIn is an awesome tool to prospect and research potential partners and clients.

OT question for entrepreneurial LinkedIn experts reading this thread: what would you do with 9 InMail grants to advance your project or startup?

Regarding the group, I'd love to join it but I don't have 20 karma points on HN.