Hi everybody.
Ruhollah and I are the co-founders plus the CEO and CTO of Roadern, respectively. Roadern is a deep tech startup founded in July 2021. We’ve developed the MVP of an innovative AI-based road management platform and received positive feedback from professionals, including Allan Venema (Principal, Infrastructure Management and Pavement Engineering at Stantec) and Arash Khojinian (Head of Pavements at UK National Highways). But we’ve used our own money to cover Roadern’s expenses. In other words, we didn’t do any fundraising. Moreover, we haven’t had any sales and of course any revenues until now. Considering these, are we eligible to apply for Tech Nation endorsement? In Tech Nation Visa Guide, I read that we should submit financial documents about our fundraising and revenue.
I’ll be so thankful if you review our LinkedIn profiles here and here before answering my question.
Regarding eligibility: anyone who has some experience in the digital technology sector is essentially eligible.
TN hardly appraises an application based on the product that one is working on, rather than on the contribution of the worker to such product. So, it’s all about YOU.
In your case, you are the the CTO and going by your profile, you seem to be more suitable for OC1 (assuming that Roadern is indeed innovative) and OC4 since you are a published author in a journal with 10+ impact factor apart from the MC.
With these two OCs, you can avoid mentions about sales, revenue and everything regarding traction and focus on the ingenuity (innovation) of the product itself (OC1).
For Ruhollah, OC1 is similar to yours but maybe he can try to look for other ways to demonstrate OC3 as the CEO of Roadern. For instance, efforts in registration of Roadern, growing the team, statistics relating to Roadern usage, media recognition for the work etc.
This is not to say that you would still not have to put in the extra effort to make sure that you include corroborative evidences for any criterion that you opt for.
Note: this is just a personal feedback based on the shared profiles.
But you both have pretty remarkable background. So, give it a shot.