Physical premises secured for the operation, a qualifying relationship between the entities, qualifying employment abroad, and evidence that the operation will support a managerial or executive position within one year. A plan alone, without premises, funding and a credible staffing sequence, is unlikely to carry it.
Match the plan to the resources
The plan is read against what the business has committed: the lease term, the funding available, the contracts or pipeline, and the hiring already underway. Ambitious projections unsupported by any of these weaken rather than strengthen the case. Where the operation is genuinely small at the start, describe it accurately and show the mechanism for growth.
Counsel can advise whether the first-year showing is realistic before the file is built. Two features of this classification shape everything in a first-year plan and are worth stating plainly at the outset. A new-office approval is generally granted for one year initially, and the extension is assessed on what the operation actually became rather than on what was projected — which makes the first year an evidence period rather than a settling-in period.
Separately, L-1A stay is capped at seven years in total, so the first year is not merely a hurdle but the opening portion of a finite run that the business should be planning against from the beginning. Both facts argue for a modest plan the operation can exceed rather than an ambitious one it will have to explain. Hypothetical example: a freight forwarding group projects eight hires in the first year, reaches four, and would have been in a considerably stronger position having projected four and reached five.