An RFE is almost never about the founder being unqualified. It is about a petition that made a qualified person look unproven. The Request for Evidence lands because the filing asked a USCIS officer to do the assembly work the petitioner should have done.
The numbers say this plainly. In FY2025, 19.7% of O-1 petitions received an RFE, down from 27.8% in FY2021. The headline approval rate held at 93.9%. But that approval figure is survivorship: of petitions that draw an RFE, only around 60 to 70% are approved after the response. So the RFE is the real fork in the road. Clear it well and you join the 94%. Fumble the 87-day window and you become the 6%.
For founders the failure modes are specific and, frankly, avoidable. We see the same six every quarter. None of them is about the founder lacking achievement. All of them are about how the achievement was filed.
What an RFE actually is
USCIS issues a Request for Evidence when the officer cannot approve on the record as submitted but is not ready to deny. It is a second chance, not a rejection. The notice lists the specific criteria the officer finds unmet and the exact evidence they want.
The deadline matters more than founders expect. USCIS gives you a fixed response window, typically up to the maximum of about 87 calendar days from the notice date, not the date you receive it. Miss it and the case is denied outright with no further appeal of the missed deadline. There is one bite at this. Everything you wish you had filed originally now has to arrive in a single bundle, often while a premium-processing clock is also running.
And here is the uncomfortable truth: an RFE costs you months. If you filed with premium processing for a 15-business-day decision, the RFE pauses that clock entirely until you respond. A founder who needed to be in San Francisco for a board meeting in March is now looking at June. The RFE is not just an evidence problem. It is a calendar problem.
The six ways founders trigger an O-1 RFE
1. Circular and conflicted recommendation letters
This is the single most common own-goal. Founders gather letters from co-founders, current investors, their own employees, and a former manager. Every one of those people has a financial or personal interest in the petition's approval. USCIS treats them as advocacy, not independent expert testimony.
The criterion the officer is weighing is whether independent experts in the field regard the beneficiary as extraordinary. A letter from someone who profits from the founder's visa proves nothing on that point. Worse, six letters that paraphrase the same biography read as coordinated and hollow. Officers notice when every letter uses the phrase "one of the most talented engineers I have worked with" and none of them explains what the founder actually did that mattered.
2. Confusing the company's success with the founder's ability
The O-1A is about the individual. Not the cap table, not the ARR, not the logo wall of investors. Founders file decks that prove the company is impressive and assume the officer will infer that the person is therefore extraordinary. The officer will not. That inference is the petitioner's job.
"We raised a Series A from a top-tier fund" is a fact about the company. It becomes O-1 evidence only when you connect it to the individual: that this specific founder originated the technical insight, led the round, and that the funding is itself a recognition of the founder's standing in the field. The bridge has to be built explicitly. A petition that lays out company milestones and leaves the officer to reverse-engineer the founder's role is an RFE waiting to be printed.
3. Thin "original contributions of major significance" evidence
Across technology, research, and business, this criterion generates the most RFE activity of any single category. It is the hardest because it demands two separate showings, and founders usually prove only one.
First, that the contribution was original. Second, that it had major significance in the field, beyond the founder's own company. A founder can prove they built a novel system. They struggle to prove the field changed because of it. Adoption by other companies, citations, the contribution being referenced by independent practitioners, downstream products built on it, measurable industry shift, these are what convert "impressive at your startup" into "major significance in the field." Without that second layer, the officer asks for it. Every time.
4. Employer-employee and petitioner-structure doubts
Founder-owned companies create a structural problem the O-1 was not designed around. You cannot self-petition for an O-1. Yet your own US entity can petition for you, and as of 2026 USCIS has confirmed this is permissible even where the founder holds a majority stake, provided there is a genuine employer-employee relationship.
The trap: a founder who is the sole owner, sole director, and sole authority over their own employment cannot show anyone has the power to hire, pay, supervise, or fire them. There is no employer separate from the employee. The officer cannot find the bona fide relationship the regulation requires, and issues an RFE on petitioner standing. The fix is governance: a board with independent or co-founder members, a written employment agreement, corporate records showing the entity controls the terms of the work, or filing through a qualified US agent instead. The structure has to exist before you file, not be improvised in the response.
5. Misusing comparable evidence
When the standard O-1A criteria do not fit an occupation, the rules allow "comparable evidence." Founders reach for this too early. They decide the listed criteria are too hard, declare them inapplicable, and substitute their own metrics.
An officer reads that as the petitioner trying to lower the bar. Comparable evidence is only valid when a specific criterion is genuinely not applicable to the occupation, and you must say why before offering the substitute. A business founder cannot skip "high salary" or "original contributions" simply because gathering the proof is inconvenient. Used as an escape hatch, comparable evidence reads as weakness and invites an RFE on the criteria you tried to dodge.
6. Vague itinerary and unclear role
The petition must establish real work in the field for the validity period requested. A founder asking for three years needs to show three years of credible activity, role, and engagements, not "will run the company." If the work spans multiple entities or locations, USCIS wants a dated itinerary.
Founders treat this as paperwork and write something generic. An incomplete or vague itinerary is a classic RFE trigger because it suggests the work is speculative. "CEO, ongoing" tells the officer nothing about what the next three years actually contain.
RFE trigger, why it happens, and how to pre-empt it
| RFE trigger | Why it happens | How to pre-empt |
|---|---|---|
| Circular or conflicted letters | Letters from co-founders, investors, employees read as advocacy, not independent expert testimony | Source 60% or more of letters from independent experts with no stake; each must describe specific contributions, not paraphrase the bio |
| Company success used as proof of personal ability | O-1A judges the individual; officer will not infer the founder is extraordinary from company metrics | Explicitly tie each company milestone to the founder's specific role and field recognition |
| Thin original-contributions evidence | Founder proves novelty but not that the field changed; major significance is the most-contested criterion | Document external impact: adoption, citations, downstream use, industry shift beyond your own company |
| Petitioner-structure doubt (founder-owned co.) | Sole owner and sole authority means no bona fide employer-employee relationship exists | Establish a board, written employment terms, governance that can hire/fire, or file via a qualified US agent |
| Comparable-evidence misuse | Reads as an attempt to dodge criteria that are actually applicable | Use only where a criterion is genuinely inapplicable; state why, then offer the substitute |
| Vague itinerary or unclear role | Generic role description makes multi-year work look speculative | Provide a dated itinerary and concrete role detail covering the full validity period requested |
Why the first filing is the whole game
Almost every RFE on this list is pre-emptable at initial filing. The officer is not hostile. They are reading a record and asking for the connective tissue that should already be there. A strong O-1 petition does the officer's reasoning for them: it names the criterion, presents the evidence, and explains the significance in the same breath, so nothing has to be inferred.
The RFE rate falling from 27.8% to 19.7% over four years is partly USCIS consistency and partly the market learning that presentation is the variable, not raw merit. The founders who clear without an RFE are rarely more accomplished than those who get one. They are better filed.
This is also why the DIY math rarely works for founders. A founder filing solo does not know that an investor letter hurts more than it helps, or that majority ownership without a board is a standing problem, or that comparable evidence used as a shortcut is a red flag. They learn it from the RFE, which is the most expensive way to learn it: months lost, a premium clock frozen, and one shot to fix everything at once. The cost of a clean first filing is always lower than the cost of an RFE response.
How SaathiVisa thinks about this
We tell founders to assume the officer will believe nothing they do not prove and infer nothing they do not connect. An O-1 is not a test of how extraordinary you are; it is a test of how well your record was built. For complex founder cases, particularly founder-owned petitioners and original-contribution arguments, this is precisely the work we do personally before a single form is filed, because the cheapest RFE is the one that never gets issued.
FAQ
Does getting an RFE mean my O-1 will probably be denied?
No. An RFE means the officer cannot approve on the current record but has not decided to deny. Of O-1 petitions that draw an RFE, roughly 60 to 70% are approved after a well-prepared response. A strong response with the exact evidence requested usually clears it, but you get one attempt, so it has to be complete.
How long do I have to respond to an O-1 RFE?
USCIS sets a fixed deadline, typically up to about 87 calendar days from the date on the notice, not the date you receive it. Miss it and the case is denied with no second chance on that deadline. If you filed premium processing, the RFE pauses the clock until you respond, which is why an RFE commonly adds two to three months to the timeline.
Can a founder use their own company to file the O-1?
Yes. You cannot self-petition, but as of 2026 your own US entity can petition for you even with majority ownership, provided a genuine employer-employee relationship exists. That means governance, typically a board or co-founders with authority to hire, supervise, and fire, plus written employment terms. A sole owner who is also the sole authority over their own employment will draw an RFE on petitioner standing. See also our note on B1/B2 visas for founders.