A pre-launch venture can be considered, but it has to look like a real enterprise rather than an intention. Signed commitments, funds already spent or irrevocably committed, premises, and licensing all speak to that. The founder must also hold treaty nationality and be positioned to develop and direct the company, and the venture must not be merely marginal.
Show the enterprise as it stands today
Describe the venture in its present condition rather than as it will look in year three. What is leased, hired, ordered, licensed, and paid for right now? Which obligations would survive if the founder walked away tomorrow?
That second question is the at-risk test in plain form. Where a step is still pending, say when it is scheduled and what triggers it, so a reviewer can see a sequence in motion instead of a wish list. Two conditions deserve explicit treatment in a pre-opening case.
Marginality asks whether the enterprise has the present or future capacity to generate more than a minimal living for the investor and family; a business that will only ever support its owner does not satisfy it, and a plan asserting otherwise has to be capable of being followed line by line. Separately, E-2 remains a nonimmigrant classification, so the applicant is expected to depart when the status ends and the investment does not by itself open a route to permanent residence. Hypothetical example: a founder preparing to open a small water-testing laboratory writes the staffing plan first and the revenue forecast second, because the staffing is what the capacity argument actually rests on.