Three ideas that haven't come up yet: - Most realistic: Work with your Bay Area startup from your home country. I don't know specifics about Indian nationals,

Three ideas that haven't come up yet: - Most realistic: Work with your Bay Area startup from your home country. I don't know specifics about Indian nationals, but many people work remotely with a team in the US, and then travel to the US on visa waiver (often up to 90 days) or tourist visa (up to 6 months) to sync with the team. You will likely be a foreign contractor, and the startup will pay salary to your Indian bank account. You will likely not owe income tax to the US because the service is technically performed overseas, but you'll have to pay tax to India. - Invite your team to work overseas together: Stripe prototyped the service in Buenos Aires. Buffer traveled to Hong Kong and Israel. We spent our first months in Thailand. Going overseas for a limited period of time can be a great way to bootstrap at a lower cost. Especially if your startup is very early stage (we are too). - Open a business entity in home country, and make it a liaison office or subsidiary (or whatever requires the least amount of logistics) of your Bay Area startup. I'm not a lawyer. But I'm bootstrapping from Seoul for some time and have seen multiple teams that work across locations. Good luck!