So the first thing is: It's not about who you are. It's about how much money you have.

You said your startup is a website (probably a kind of SaaS). If it's successful why not charge your users. Get paid via FastSpring (they take a fee, but deliver money to your card, bank, paypal... and manage your subscription). You don't need access to the USA. You only need to form a company in Egypt, declare your revenue, pay your taxes, pay hosting with your card (provided by Fast Spring). Hire programmers in Egypt (they are cheap) and get yourself off the ground.

Your main problem is getting into the US. But why do you want to get their? You actually don't, it actually add expenses and Visa problems. And with only thousands of users, you can live like a Prince in Egypt.

The USCIS, formerly called the BSCIS, formally called the INS is tough to go through for everyone. You need to understand that this is not becuase of your religion or whatever - its becuase you are not American like the rest of the world (be it Irish, French, SOuth African, Egyptian etc...)

They are equally unhelpful and incompetent to people of all nations.

I am talking about entering America, regardless the purpose of travel!

Sorry to nit pick but it's always worth clarifying these issues if people might make decisions based on them.. You can use the VWP for business: http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html

  The Visa Waiver Program (VWP) enables nationals of 36 participating
  countries to travel to the United States for tourism or business 
  (visitor [B] visa purposes only) for stays of 90 days or less without
  obtaining a visa.

  consult with business associates, travel for a scientific, educational, 
  professional or business convention, or conference on specific dates,
  settle an estate, or negotiate a contract

I can tell you that we had Iranian nationals studying there. (Yes, I know, not Arab). It's certainly not impossible; other posters are right that the biggest barriers are cost, US immigration services' incompetence, and slow response time to applications.

I personally hate the way US immigration policy works, and I'm American! I live in the EU and my husband is an EU citizen, and we get hassled every time.

But to me, it sounds like you're making excuses - and you're making them personal. That's no problem to me, but it will be a problem to you, because if you're in the habit of excuse-making, you will fail at business no matter what you do.

The one thing that I absolutely will say is better in the United States than other places is funding. The idea of Venture Capital (and the sheer amount of investors) is found more here than anywhere else. A good network of capable engineers is nice but honestly you can find that in a lot of places.

To this day, the idea of starting a startup, getting funding, being an entrepreneur, and possibly failing is very American. To this day, the simple idea of "failing is okay" is more concentrated here. But other than that, you can be successful anywhere, really. The odds might be harder but not necessarily so much harder that it would be deemed impossible. Just my two cents.

Feel free to contact me, btw. I'd love to help any way I can. Email's in profile.

For example.. if I want to charge my users, it's very hard to do that, because PayPal is NOT available for Egyptians. Also it's NOT easy to setup an international merchant account, to accept payments on the internet.

There are very critical challenges, which makes it much harder to make any success... not to mention that it's impossible indeed to get funding opportunity in Egypt, as you know... we don't have this culture here yet..

That said, as an entrepreneur who is NOT in the United States, I agree that setting up payment systems is a real pain point. My suggestion is that you get a part-time job. It will cost you a few thousand a year to own an international business (register it anywhere) and you may end up paying prohibitively for the right to process credit cards (5%+ per transaction).

But it is possible. In the meantime, if you really want to slum it, there is nothing stopping you from putting up a payment screen and collecting credit card numbers, then getting your friend in the US to collect the cash for you while you build a compelling case for someone to lend you the money to do things more legitimately. I suspect that once you've started your own business and have a revenue stream, you won't want investment though.

Finding success while working in Egypt is really not impossible. It lends to just working differently. You probably can't grow a consumer website in Egypt; but SaaS (software as a service) doesn't necessarily have to be created from an American company.

Also, there's such a HUGE need for Arab consumer websites. Somehow, Masrawy, YallaKora, and yes even Maktoob just don't cut it for me. The level of quality is rather low, so that's a great in for someone like who seems knowledgeable and a HackerNews user. There's definite opportunity there.

As I said. Email me and we can talk more.

edit: I think someone mentioned this already but it's worth re-mentioning. In some aspects, living outside of America and a costly place like San Francisco, can be a great benefit. Simply put, if you and I both make $1000, your $1000 will go a much longer way in Egypt than mine will here in a big expensive American city.

Nonsense. I personally live in an area with a large immigrant Muslim population, both from the Middle East and from Africa. (This is the truth regardless of what you hear in your Egyptian media.)

edit: By the way, if you didn't want all this off-topic discussion, you shouldn't have said what you did in the post. You should have asked your question with just the relevant information.

You did not apply for a U.S. visa, so of course you have no idea about it. :)

EDIT: See ICE's website for an official source: http://www.ice.gov/pi/specialregistration/index.htm and http://www.ice.gov/pi/specialregistration/archive.htm. The domestic registration procedures are on an archived page because they applied to people in the US prior to the effective date of the port-of-entry procedures.

P.S. A test case to try out would be to try to travel to all the countries that are said to be on that list with a United States passport that has a visa stamp in it from Israel. That can be problematic too.

Israeli border guards will also stamp a piece of paper stapled to your passport if you ask them (so it can be removed when you leave)

2. Start U.S. company

3. Find U.S. investors, notify them you won't be staying in the country for more than a few months

4. ??????

5. Profit

What's staying in the US got to do with building a website? If you build a business that makes money, then it doesn't really matter where your arse is in the world.

How is any of this fundamentally different to the Tim Ferris-style of running your business from a beach somewhere? If you have a web-based business your physical location only matters if you need millions of dollars to run it - and if that's the kind of business the OP is planning, then he needs to rethink his basic model and come up with something more appropriate to his situation.

The TF model is much much smarter, but it also requires the guts to create a valuable product that you can charge for directly -- not the dream of creating a delicious startup snack to be gobbled up by Google.

I've seen a lot of people in this state of mind, and it seems to me that wanting something desperately makes it hard to actually get it (it puts you in the wrong state of mind).

Focus on building a great product and don't think about being acquired. Make something people want, get users to love your product. Find ways to monetize the wealth you created.

It seems like what you're really asking is "I want to get into the U.S., can I do that by making a website and hoping to get acquired?".

I think the answer to that is "not likely".

Further, even if you don't live in the US, your sites can target US users just as any US site can. If you need to charge money, you'll need to figure out a billing system to accept $, but there are few compelling reasons to be in the US merely to serve users there (though depending on how you do it, the IRS may think otherwise).

All that said, if you look at and learn from American businesses and you have a good feel for your local market (or the Arabic market in general), you might even have a position most of us would envy! You can more easily "take" ideas that have been proven in the West and do an Arabic twist on them (I don't know about the Arabic world, but this tactic is common in non English speaking European countries).

I have a suggestion, not about entering USA.

From what I have observed, many of non-US based successful start-ups are domestic projects and then a big company comes and buys them, as in your example. My suggestion here is, you can target the arab world. As this has enough people, I can also suggest you targeting the muslim world which consists of 1.5 billion people. By doing so, you'd not have to leave your country or deal with the crap.

Do that, and I'm pretty sure those American investors will find you.

There are plenty of rich Arab Muslims around. Chase them for investment - ask them why they aren't funding Arab Muslim companies and are instead investing in News Corporation (eg http://www.kingdom.com.sa/en/MC_PR_NewsDetails.asp?p=3&I...).

Not only are they rich, but many of them are well connected, too.

1) You don't need an 'American friend' to pay for hosting, all you need is a creditcard.

2) You'll need to properly setup a company. Given your circumstances, I would look at the free zones in the UAE. There you'll find the most business friendly places of the whole (Arab) Middle East. No corruption and bureaucracy there. Second, given the focus you put on being a young Muslim Arab, I'm sure you'll find your way in the UAE, just a short flight from Egypt.

You can find more info on UAE free zones at

http://www.dubaiinternetcity.com/ (the Dubai Free Zone for IT companies)

http://www.rakftz.com/ (the (cheaper) Free Zone of Ras al Khaimah (another emirate of the UAE).

In fact, your costs are much lower outside the developed world, reducing your risk and how much money you have to find to start your business (if anything). Your customers can be anywhere. Spend low, earn high. And I'm willing to bet that the competition is much lower because The Valley isn't even aware you exist, or that your town or city exist. You could be super-successful and still be under their radar.

Turn what you consider your weakness, into your strength.

Please note that the problems are 1) you have to do this when your competitors do not, and 2) your explanations have to go though a government official, ie you will waste many years and the process has nothing to do with logic or facts.

I say this as someone who left the USA even after my employer and my wife's both offered to convert our H1B visas to greencards. But I decided that 6 years (our H1B time in the USA) was already too long that I delayed my startup, and waiting for the green card again was not worth it.

I think your real problem is not that you are not in the USA, it is that you are in Egypt. Bahrain, my country, has problems, but Egypt is something else.

So I think you should really go to Dubai. (I want to say Bahrain, but Dubia is our Silicon Valley, so go there my friend.)

Also, while in Egypt, or Dubai, or anywhere else in the Arab world... apply to Seedcamp. In my year, Talasim from Jordan won, as did my own company, although I applied from Cambridge, UK. But now I am in the Gulf, pursuing clients, and I can tell you that I have access to some here who are more sophisticated than any I saw in the USA. So use what have, go where you can work quickly, because that is what you need for success, not being in the USA.

No reason to move to the other side of the world.

Alternatively, develop a model that doesn't require external funding, at least until you've got demonstrable traction. You can create a US company even without being in the US and it can sell shares as normal.

I know there's this huge pressure to get to San Francisco, but it's really not the only place in the world where you can succeed.

Try Bangalore, India or China. Try to find a niche for your startup around your home (which means find a people with a task/problem and money and turn it into your next startup. Usually that is some internet service for an non-IT established business).

And it is also possible, but really difficult, to bootstrap yourself, if your startup idea is really innovative. Technology is very cheap nowadays.

And the last but not the least - try to find people in situation like your and cooperate and collaborate with them.

I'm personally think that geo-dispersed teams, like that one which develops FreeBSD or Webkit or Go are the answer to the problem. Communication is the key, not a connectivity.

Here's what you do to bootstrap, a time-honored technique: Build it in your spare time. Freelance, at a higher rate than you'd earn at a regular job (totally possible), so you can work fewer hours. Figure out how to create windfall incomes to help fund your project -- I cowrote a technical ebook, and develop & give training courses. I only had to develop the course once, and edit it each time.

That's how I have created Freckle (http://letsfreckle.com) and how we are creating Charm (http://charmde.sk), among other products. (I was finally able to quit consulting on the side in January, except for an outstanding contract, to focus on products alone. My tactics work.)