Company size alone does not resolve eligibility. The employer must establish a qualifying international business relationship, the required foreign employment, specialised knowledge and a U.S. position involving that knowledge.
Replace scale claims with evidence
Explain the actual business and why the transfer is needed. A small organisation can use credible project, financial and employment records even without elaborate internal systems. If transferring the specialist would leave the foreign business inactive, examine that issue directly because ongoing qualifying business activity matters.
New-office cases require their own additional evidence. Size is not a disqualification, and the analysis takes into account the reasonable needs of the organization given its size, stage and nature. What a small employer must do is replace the structural evidence it does not generate with evidence from the work.
Identify what the employee knows that the business depends on, how they came to know it, and what would happen operationally if they were unavailable. Then evidence it from ordinary records rather than from documents created for the petition. Both the corporate relationship and the year of qualifying employment abroad within the preceding three years still require establishing, and small businesses frequently have the facts without the paperwork.
Check what employment records actually exist before assuming that part is straightforward, since it is often the harder half in a small organization.