I’m applying for the Global Talent Visa under Exceptional Promise and would really appreciate some clarity on a few points.
I’m currently the sole designer at a YC-backed fintech startup, where I’ve worked for about three years after joining shortly post-YC funding. During this time, I’ve designed all our customer-facing and internal products, helped shape product direction alongside the founders, and supported our international expansion by designing our products for new markets.
The company has achieved strong commercial results in transaction volume and has also even begun expanding internationally, but we don’t have any public press coverage or media features as our founders prefer to build in stealth.
My questions are:
For my Mandatory Criteria, can I focus on demonstrating my design leadership within the startup by showing internal conversations, design work, and how I guided developers in implementing designs, while using the company’s commercial metrics and a co-founder’s letter to support Optional Criteria 3 (impact through technical and commercial contribution)?
I started learning design in 2020 and worked mostly on freelance projects in 2021 before landing my first full-time role in 2022. Does my learning and freelance work from 2020 count toward my years of experience, given that I plan to apply under Exceptional Promise?
Thank you in advance for any insights or examples from those who’ve structured their evidence similarly.
For MC, you can present evidence of leading the growth of a product-led digital technology company’s product, and this should be supported by a reference letter by an expert describing your work. However, your narrative of guiding developers should be used with caution as most times, designers work with developer, as they are self organizing, except if you are the CTO.
Yes! You can use company’s commercial metrics and a co-founder’s letter to support Optional Criteria 3 (impact through technical and commercial contribution), but also using similar evidence or evidence from the same domain across criteria begins to weaken your overall narrative, at their best, they should be unique. But in the absent of non, and if presented strategically, could work
If your freelance jobs were paid jobs. Did you work with few companies?
Just having freelance role on your CV, without stating the names of the companies will weaken your experience positioning.
@Raphael Thank you so much for taking the time to respond and for the detailed insight. This really helps clarify things, and I’ll make sure to incorporate your feedback into my application.
And yes, the freelance roles were in 2021. What I did on my CV was to include the names of those startup products and specify them as “freelance” roles before stating my contribution and impact.
Thanks again for your time and guidance Raphael. I really, really appreciate it!
Your freelance experience from 2021 absolutely counts toward your years of experience, especially since you properly documented the company names and your specific contributions. The only issue would be that you can’t use this towards any criteria that mentions “product-led digital technology company”. If this was done for companies where you were a significant contributor, it might be better to reframe this as full-time employment instead where valid.
For your Mandatory Criteria evidence, focus on demonstrating your design leadership role at the YC-backed fintech startup through concrete examples of your individual contributions rather than just internal conversations. Include specific design decisions you made that drove product growth, user adoption metrics that resulted from your designs, and how your work enabled the company’s international expansion. The key is showing that you weren’t just executing designs but actually leading product direction and making strategic decisions that had measurable impact.
Your approach to use company metrics and co-founder letters for Optional Criteria 3 is solid, but make sure you’re not repeating the same evidence across criteria. Since your startup operates in stealth mode, focus on quantifiable internal metrics like user growth, transaction volume improvements, or market expansion that you directly influenced through your design work. One successful application I reviewed used internal analytics and founder testimonials effectively by clearly attributing specific business outcomes to the applicant’s design innovations.
You’re in a strong position with three years of consistent product design leadership at a funded startup. Many successful designers have built compelling applications around similar experiences by focusing on their individual impact rather than team achievements. Your role as the sole designer actually works in your favor since it clearly demonstrates individual responsibility and leadership in shaping the entire product experience.
Thank you so much for this detailed and thoughtful response Akash. It really helps clarify how to structure my evidence more strategically.
I’ll take your advice and focus more on highlighting the design decisions I led that contributed to product growth and our international expansion, rather than relying too much on internal conversations. I’ll also make sure to avoid using repetitive evidence across criteria or simply use a different piece of evidence where necessary. Also, even though I wasn’t planning to include my freelance work since those projects didn’t grow enough to show measurable impact, it’s still very helpful to have this perspective.
I really appreciate you taking the time to explain all this in such depth. It’s been very helpful and gives me a clearer direction for refining my application. Thanks again!