Tech startups face an E-2 tension that most other business types don't: the startup playbook is built around raising outside venture capital, but E-2 requires your own capital to be substantially and irrevocably at risk. A plan that leans too heavily on future VC funding as the growth story can undercut the very requirement it needs to satisfy.
Whose Capital Is at Risk?
If your investment is your own personal capital — savings, proceeds from a prior venture, personal loans secured against your own assets — that's straightforwardly at-risk investment. If you're counting on future venture funding to reach the scale your plan describes, that future funding is not yours, is not committed, and does not count toward your E-2 investment. Your plan should be explicit about what you have personally committed now, and treat any future funding narrative as separate from your substantiality argument, not a substitute for it.
Revenue Model Specificity Matters More for Tech
"We will monetize through subscriptions" is not sufficient — your plan should specify pricing, expected customer acquisition costs, and a credible path to the revenue figures in your financial projections, grounded in your own market knowledge rather than generic SaaS benchmarks.
IP and Technology Assets
If proprietary technology, software, or IP is central to your business, describe it specifically — what it does, its current stage of development, and why it's a genuine competitive asset — rather than describing your product at a marketing level.
Hiring Plan for a Remote-Capable Business
Tech businesses can often hire remotely or scale team size quickly relative to physical businesses, which is an advantage for the non-marginality argument if handled credibly — a specific hiring plan with real roles (engineering, sales, support) tied to revenue milestones, not a vague "we will scale the team as needed."
Avoid the Passive Investor Trap
If you're the technical or business co-founder actively building the product and running operations, your active-direction argument is usually straightforward. If your role is closer to a financial backer with day-to-day operations run by others, that's a genuine E-2 problem worth discussing directly with your attorney before building a plan around it.
This is a draft for your attorney's review before filing — not a legal document itself, and no outcome is ever guaranteed.