Whether a route is needed at all
Established before anything is built on an assumption, because some people already have what they need.
Corporate immigration
Founder routes.
A business expanding into the United Kingdom eventually reaches the problem that the people who built it cannot simply arrive and run it. Founders and controlling shareholders sit awkwardly in a system designed around employers sponsoring employees, and the answer tends to shape the corporate structure rather than the other way round.
What this looks like when it goes wrong
The commonest version is a company set up here with nobody able to run it. The entity is registered, the account is opened and the founder is somewhere else, visiting when they can and directing a business they cannot lawfully work in. This surfaces when a customer, an investor or a bank asks a straightforward question about who is actually running it.
The next is a founder who assumed the company could simply sponsor them. Sponsorship is built around an employer and an employee, and where the individual controls the business, restrictions can apply to whether that arrangement is available at all. Where the line sits has moved over time and continues to be adjusted, which makes it a particularly poor thing to assume.
Then there is the structure built backwards. Shareholdings are rearranged, an entity is inserted, or people are given titles they do not hold in reality, all in order to fit a route. The result is a corporate structure the business would never have chosen, which causes problems on the next funding round or sale, and which does not survive being examined anyway.
The quietest version is a founder whose time in the country was never planned. Trips are taken as they arise, nobody is recording the pattern, and the accumulation of it starts to matter to the individual's position and sometimes to the company's tax position as well. Nobody decided any of this. It simply happened.
What actually decides it
Routes for people building a business are different in kind from employee sponsorship, and they change more than most. Some turn on an assessment of the business itself, some on the individual's standing in their field, some on investment, and some on an existing corporate group wanting to establish itself here. Which of them exist, and what each involves, is revised regularly, so the position at the time of asking is the only one worth relying on.
Where somebody holds a stake in the business, that fact matters. Arrangements in which an individual is effectively sponsoring themselves are treated with caution and the rules address it. The practical consequence is that the founder's shareholding, the composition of the board and the identity of whoever really controls the company are immigration facts as well as corporate ones, and they should be settled with both in view.
The business case has to be genuine and it has to be evidenced. Where a route assesses the venture, what is being tested is whether there is a real business, with a real plan and a real prospect of doing what it says it will do. That is much closer to an investment process than to a form filling one, and the work of making the case coherent is the work. A business that cannot explain itself to an investor will not explain itself here either.
Then there is sequence, and it is unforgiving. Incorporation, banking, premises, the corporate structure, the founder's own position and any staff coming with them all have dependencies, and they interact with tax and employment questions that are separate from immigration and just as consequential. Doing them in the wrong order is what turns a straightforward expansion into a long one.
What we do
Comparing the options
The routes open to the individual and to the business set against each other, on the position as it stands.
Structure that works both ways
A shareholding and a board the business would have chosen anyway, with the immigration consequences understood.
Making the case
The venture explained in a form that stands up to assessment, because coherence is what is being tested.
The people coming with them
Founders rarely arrive alone, and the team behind them planned at the same time rather than afterwards.
Regulated advice, co ordinated
Applications and regulated immigration advice delivered with our regulated partners, with the strategy and sequencing here.
When to spend nothing
If the founder already holds permission allowing them to work here, there is no route to pursue and no structure to redesign. That sounds obvious and it is regularly missed by businesses that begin with the process rather than with the question. It is also worth asking whether the founder needs to be here at all, because a business can be run from elsewhere with somebody credible in place, and that is sometimes a better answer than reorganising a company around a visa.
Where the venture is not yet real, waiting costs less than applying. Routes that assess a business assess it as it is, and an early application built on an idea and a deck spends money in order to be told that the business is early. The same money spent getting the venture to a point where it can be assessed properly is the same money spent considerably better.
Before anything is sent
Positions harden the moment the other side takes advice, and the quiet routes stop being available once a demand has gone out. While nothing has been sent, everything is still open.