E-commerce businesses present a specific E-2 challenge: they can be started with relatively low upfront capital compared to a physical location business, which puts more pressure on the substantiality and non-marginality arguments to be made through scale and growth trajectory rather than large physical investment.
What Counts as Investment in an E-Commerce Business
Inventory (if you hold stock rather than dropship), platform and technology costs, fulfillment infrastructure (whether owned or via third-party logistics), digital marketing spend genuinely committed to customer acquisition, and working capital all count. Digital marketing spend in particular should be itemized specifically — a vague "marketing budget" line is weaker than a breakdown showing platforms, expected customer acquisition cost, and how that spend drives the revenue projections in your financials.
Scale Is Your Substantiality Argument
Because e-commerce businesses can start lean, your plan needs to work harder to show the investment is substantial relative to this business's own total cost — and that non-marginality will be proven through revenue and hiring scale, not physical footprint. This means your financial projections and hiring plan carry more weight than in a brick-and-mortar E-2 plan.
Fulfillment and Operations
Whether you're using third-party fulfillment (3PL) or building in-house logistics changes both your cost structure and your hiring plan. If you're building in-house fulfillment as you scale, that transition point should appear explicitly in your operations plan and hiring timeline, since it represents genuine job creation tied to growth.
Hiring Plan for a Digital Business
Customer service, marketing, operations, and — as the business scales — warehouse or fulfillment staff if you move away from a pure dropship or 3PL model. A credible hiring plan for an e-commerce business shows real roles tied to real revenue milestones, not generic "will hire as needed" language.
This is a draft for your attorney's review before filing — not a legal document itself, and no outcome is ever guaranteed.