IN THIS GUIDE · Contractor-supported operations and investor direction
Start with the E-2 eligibility and application overview
Identify what is outsourced
List the functions performed by outside providers and the work retained by the enterprise. Customer delivery, administration and marketing can involve different arrangements. Explain who is responsible if service fails and which entity contracts with the customer. Avoid a diagram that shows only provider names without explaining how the U.S. business operates. Map each contractor to a business function, customer promise, and decision maker. The reader should be able to tell whether the enterprise retains commercial responsibility or merely passes work and receipts through another business.
Show retained decision authority
Document the investor’s control over strategy, budgets, provider selection and other relevant decisions. A fully managed arrangement can raise questions if the applicant merely receives distributions. Contracting out tasks does not automatically prevent direction, but a managerial title does not resolve the issue when another party holds the meaningful authority. Preserve evidence that the investor selects providers, approves budgets, directs marketing, and can change operations. A service provider's expertise can support the model, but it cannot become the evidence that the investor directs it.
Support capacity with agreements
Use executed contracts, service terms, invoices and actual delivery records where available. Distinguish guaranteed capacity from a provider’s general marketing claims. If the model relies on one critical provider, explain the dependency factually. An unsigned proposal is different from an arrangement that makes the enterprise ready to fulfil customer commitments. The first review should compare signed obligations with funds actually paid and determine whether a refund or condition leaves the capital outside genuine commercial risk. Match transfers to invoices, delivery terms, and the account from which the investor paid.
Forecast the real delivery economics
Model provider charges against revenue and customer obligations. A business can look profitable before accounting for the services it must buy. Explain how the enterprise can be more than marginal without inventing direct employees to make the structure appear conventional. Worker-classification and local compliance questions require their own professional review. Test the forecast after provider costs, not before them. The analysis should explain why expected income will exceed support of the investor's household or make a meaningful economic contribution, without treating an optimistic spreadsheet as proof.
Where an outsourced model needs advice rather than adjustment
A contractor-supported enterprise raises one question repeatedly, and knowing when to escalate it keeps the file honest. Ask who would still be making the decisions if every provider were replaced tomorrow. Where the answer is the investor, the model is direction supported by outside services and the ordinary evidence follows. Where the answer is that nobody in the enterprise would know how to proceed, the arrangement may be passive in substance whatever the agreements say, and that is a matter for advice before an application is prepared rather than after. The requirements are unchanged by the model: a real and operating enterprise, an investment substantial in proportion to it, irrevocably committed and at risk, not marginal, and an investor who will develop and direct it. Worker classification and other business obligations are separate questions requiring their own review.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.