I was invited last year in a round table discussion on this new rule. The original responses for the rule were mixed as there are plenty of nuances. Specificall

I was invited last year in a round table discussion on this new rule. The original responses for the rule were mixed as there are plenty of nuances. Specifically, the main concern is the rule would lead to investors demanding founders to first acquire this type of status before they were able to get funded, causing a Chicken and Egg problem. The original proposal of the rule required 375k of funding from US only accredited investors, and there are also requirements for the startup founders to maintain a certain threshold of ownership while being able to hire a lot of American employees in short period of time. I don't remember the specific number requirement/head counts but it was definitely enough to pressurize the company to expand in size quickly, while many tech startups do not necessarily need to hire dozens of employees in a 1-3 year period, not to mention they all had to be US citizens. 1-3 years would also be a stretch for most startup to figure out a concrete plan of growth in order to quality for an extension. And what if the founders want to bootstrap themselves? Ultimately this rule still doesn't show any concrete pathway of residency or visa guarantees after 6 years. And because it is not a visa, it will take time to educate immigration officers and TSAs as well as creating a reasonable structure to allow founders to travel outside US legally as well. Historically there is a huge delay of understanding OPT, STEM and O1 visas in plenty of US embassies. To make things even more complicated, it is not USCIS's interest to be a judge to tell which company would qualify for this rule, and they would need to form a group of trusted committees to check case by case if a company and their founders/co-founders qualify for this rule. I also heard that founder's spouses would be able to travel to US too.