IN THIS GUIDE · Weighing an acquisition against a startup on E-2 evidence and commercial merit
What an acquisition can show that a startup cannot
A trading business arrives with history: filed accounts, tax returns, payroll records, customer lists and a lease already running. That evidence speaks directly to whether the enterprise is real and operating and whether it produces more than a minimal living. The trade-off is inherited liability and the risk that past performance depended on the departing owner. Due diligence on the seller's numbers is therefore part of the immigration preparation, not a separate commercial exercise. An acquisition also answers the non-marginality question with history rather than with a forecast, which is a genuine advantage where the history is good and a genuine problem where it is not. Read the last three years before the projections, because a business in decline is harder to present than a startup with no record at all.
What a startup has to build from scratch
With no trading history, the startup must demonstrate through commitments rather than results: a signed lease, equipment purchased, licences obtained, staff hired, inventory bought, funds moved into the business account. Money sitting in an account earmarked for the venture is not the same as capital irrevocably committed. Plan the sequence of spending so that by the time anyone examines the file, the enterprise is close to operating rather than still an intention. Sequence that spending deliberately rather than accumulating it, since the order determines what can be shown at any given moment. Premises, licences and equipment produce documents immediately; marketing and inventory produce them more slowly. A startup assessed halfway through an unplanned sequence often looks like an intention because the visible commitments happen to be the ones that were left until last.
The tests do not change with the structure
Whichever route is chosen, the same questions apply: treaty nationality for the investor and, where relevant, for the enterprise's ownership; capital that is substantial in relation to the business and genuinely at risk; a real active commercial operation; the investor able to develop and direct it; and more than marginal capacity. No dollar figure and no employee count settles any of these, so the cheaper option is not disqualified and the expensive one is not approved by size. It is worth adding what neither route can supply. Neither confers permanent residence, both depend on the enterprise continuing to operate, and both require the investor's control to persist, generally through ownership of at least half the business or operational control by another mechanism. A structure that satisfies a commercial partner but leaves control ambiguous is a problem in either case.
Choose the business you actually want to run
Buying a company the entrepreneur has no interest in operating, because it looks like an easier case, tends to produce a difficult few years and a weak account of how the investor will direct it. The classification is temporary and depends on the enterprise continuing to work. Pick the venture on commercial grounds, then have the evidence built around that choice; reversing the order distorts both decisions. Ask a plain question of each option before the evidence work begins: would the entrepreneur buy this business, or start this business, if immigration were not part of the picture. An honest negative answer to both is worth discovering now. An honest positive answer to one of them tends to produce a far better account of how the investor will develop and direct it, because the account is true.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.