It's not worse than the initial application. One crazy thing is : They force you to renew at the Embassy in your home country, in person. So, once your applic

It's not worse than the initial application. One crazy thing is : They force you to renew at the Embassy in your home country, in person. So, once your application is in, they give you a date to turn up. But they won't give you any time-line about when they'll send your passport back (with the visa). So you can't really book a cheap return flight. i.e. in order to be the person in charge of a new business in the States, they require you to periodically leave the States for an indeterminate time, and sit in your home country (which is potentially just dead time business-wise). OTOH, I have found that (i) having prepared the paperwork myself, (ii) actually being an entrepreneur, and (iii) having actual real-life experience of running the business to relate : The embassy person is actually interested in hearing about how things are going, and willing to 'relax a little'. I'm guessing that many people turn up with lawyerly papers, which don't really match the lines they are taught to say, and have marginal-to-misleading reasons for wanting the visa. So an actual real deal entrepreneur is a breath of fresh air. My initial visa was 2yrs, followed by a 2yr renewal, the 2x 5yrs. So it gets easier. But was always really tiresome.