Business Co-Founder/Entrepreneur Application

Hello Foks,

I’ve been wondering for the past couple of months about making my application but was caught in the endless loop with the 1st step. Any help/assistance here would be highly appreciated.

A glimpse of myself: I’m an 18+ years experienced Telco business professional. As a start-up founder, I’ve been working on an Ai based SaaS platform solving day-to-day transportation problems for the past 2 years. The MVP is currently under the dev stage and shall take another 3-4 months for the beta release.

I have also built some client traction in terms of the sales pipeline and client interest. Pretty close with one of them on signing an LoI (Letter of Interest).

I’m a bit confused now as to how should I approach the application:

  1. From my professional standpoint
  2. From the startup standpoint
  3. Mix of professional and startup standpoint.

Current Stage: I have already filled in my application at the gov.UK and pending for IHS payment. Please suggest

Thanks ,
Roshan

Hi Roshan,

First of all, looks like you are getting good traction with your start-up - so Congratulations on that!

Before I comment on your confusion, I am myself confused a bit. You say:

Current Stage: I have already filled in my application at the gov.UK and pending for IHS payment. Please suggest

IHS payment is only due in Stage 2 of the Global Talent Visa, for those who have successfully received an endorsement. Is that the case with you?

Furthermore, you are asking to suggest and I am not sure to suggest on what? Can you specify the question on which you would like some comments/thoughts please?

Hi @Roshan,

I am not sure if I can be helpful but let me try.

  1. 18+ years experience means you will automatically be assessed as exceptional talent

  2. You then need to think about your profile from this perspective whether your business profile, Technical profile or both.

  3. I am sorry but I do not think depending on an MVP in Development stage ONLY will qualify you as Exceptional Talent.

  4. I am not too sure about showing client interests at Exceptional Talent level too. It may be sufficient for exceptional promise but for Talent ? Doubtful.

  5. You then need to check some of the other work you have done in the last 5 years to see if adding these would help you qualify based on the criteria.

  6. For your question, I would say use evidence for both. Showing yourself as a tech business executive (howbeit in consulting) who then moved on to build a product led digital technology company seems to be a pretty good fit to me. (Is this your case?).

I would only worry about the burden of proof of traction.

This is my opinion and not legal advice. I suggest you seek other opinion too.