# Founder Relocation Readiness Checklist

**For foreign founders considering US relocation, US hiring, or heavier US customer commitments.**

Every item below is a statement about your launch, and each asks the same thing in a different form: is this true, owned, and settled, or only an assumption? Mark each item **Ready** (true today, with a named owner), **In progress** (someone owns it and is building it), or **No owner** (nobody is responsible for making it true). Use it alone or with your leadership team. The goal is not to score all Ready; the goal is to know exactly which items are not, before movement turns them into expensive local problems.

From statesideops.com. Free to use and share. July 2026 edition. This is an operating checklist, not legal, tax, immigration, accounting, or investment advice; those questions belong to licensed professionals, and several items below exist to make sure you have asked them.

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## 1. Decision rights and authority

- [ ] A named person can make US decisions when you are unavailable or asleep in another time zone.
- [ ] The decisions that require your written approval before money, people, or customer promises move are defined in writing.
- [ ] The questions reserved for licensed professionals are listed, and your team knows what they are.
- [ ] An escalation path exists for anything urgent that happens during US business hours.

## 2. Entity, banking, and money

- [ ] The US entity question (type, state, ownership structure) is settled with professional input, not assumed.
- [ ] The US banking setup has an owner, and a fallback plan exists if account opening stalls.
- [ ] Who can sign, pay, and approve spending in the US is defined, with written limits.
- [ ] A US budget for the first year exists, and someone actively maintains it.

## 3. Employment and people

- [ ] The engagement model for the first US hires (direct payroll, contractors, or an employer of record, a service that employs staff on your behalf) is chosen, with professional advice behind the choice.
- [ ] Offer terms, benefits expectations, and employment policies are prepared for US norms rather than home-country norms.
- [ ] The first US employee's onboarding has an owner and prepared materials.
- [ ] For each key person who relocates, someone is named to take over the function they leave behind at headquarters.

## 4. Customers and promises

- [ ] Every US customer commitment that exists today, in writing or implied, is listed.
- [ ] Each commitment can be supported from the US, in US business hours: support, response times, escalation.
- [ ] Each US customer relationship has a named owner for when you are no longer in every conversation.
- [ ] A plan protects service quality during the transition months.

## 5. Providers and licensed professionals

- [ ] Named providers are in place for legal, tax, accounting, and immigration work, not just intentions to find them.
- [ ] Each provider knows the others exist and what the others are doing.
- [ ] One person prepares the questions for providers and tracks their open items week to week.
- [ ] The provider deliverables that block other work are identified and first in line.

## 6. Security, compliance, and information

- [ ] A US customer's security or compliance questionnaire could be answered today, and the answers have an owner.
- [ ] The data, contracts, or systems that must not move across borders, or must move only with professional guidance, are identified.
- [ ] Where trade-sanctions or export rules could apply to your business, licensed professionals have checked them.

## 7. The founder's own move (if relocation is planned)

- [ ] The immigration path is professionally advised, with realistic timing, before other commitments depend on it.
- [ ] What breaks at headquarters when you leave is known, and someone owns it from day one.
- [ ] Your personal decision deadline is set, and what must be true by that date is written down.
- [ ] If your relocation slips by six months, the US launch continues without you on the ground rather than stalling.

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## What your result means

Count the **No owner** answers. A few are normal; every expansion has open items. Many, spread across several areas, means the constraint is not demand and not ambition. It is operating structure, and structure should come before movement.

If you want a second pair of eyes on your answers, that is exactly what the free US Expansion Wall Assessment is for: statesideops.com/us-expansion-wall-assessment. I reply within 3 business days, I am the only person who reads what you send, and if you are too early I will say so.

The full method behind this checklist is documented in The Foreign Founder's Guide to a US Launch, free at statesideops.com/founder-resources.

Slava Rozner, Stateside Operator
statesideops.com