O1DMatch — Angel Round | $500K SAFE for the People Behind the Platform

The Thesis

Fortune 5000 sponsors are exiting H-1B. Their talent need didn't go away.

The companies that built their engineering, finance, and research teams on H-1B for 20 years are pulling out — not because they don't need foreign talent, but because the math stopped working. Someone has to give them a different door.

📉

H-1B economics broke

Lottery selection rates collapsed below 15%. Per-hire cost crossed $30K when you include legal, premium processing, and the re-filing risk. The ROI for sponsoring three engineers to land one no longer pencils.

🚪

The retreat is already happening

Companies that sponsored 50+ H-1Bs in 2022 are now sponsoring fewer than 5. Internal counsel has been told "we're not doing H-1B this year." Their hiring managers still need the candidates.

🎯

Warm market, not cold

These employers already understand visa value. They've already done sponsor onboarding, vendor registration, and FN1099 paperwork. They're the easiest sales call in immigration — if someone shows up with a real alternative.

O-1 is the alternative they don't know yet

O-1 has no annual cap, no lottery, faster timelines, and proven approval rates for the right candidates. Most HR teams have never used it because no one packaged it as a turnkey replacement for H-1B. That's the opening.

What makes us defensible

The platform is the moat. The relationships are the network effect.

O1DMatch solved the chicken-and-egg between US employers who don't want visa-sponsorship hassle and foreign talent who need a US opportunity. Once both sides land in the same place, every additional candidate makes the platform more valuable to every employer — and vice versa.

🌉

The platform that bridged the gap

US employers historically avoided foreign talent because visa sponsorship meant cost, paperwork, and risk. We removed all three from their plate. They post a need, we deliver a pre-vetted, visa-ready candidate. The visa machinery happens behind the curtain through our attorney-partner network.

Employer never carries the sponsorship burden directly
Talent already pre-screened against visa eligibility before introductions
Filing handled by our immigration-attorney partner network — not the employer's HR team

🤝

Talent that trusts us, employers that know us

Talent agencies live and die on relationship density. Ours is built across years of one-on-one petition work. That's a roster you can't buy — and a list of references that closes deals.

2,000+ qualified O-1 candidates already in pipeline
15,000+ employer contacts already in our database — every one with prior visa-sponsorship history
References from approved petitioners across sport, entertainment, tech, research
Inbound referral flow from prior clients (the only marketing that scales)

🏛️

Vendor-registered to sell to enterprise

Most immigration shops are sole proprietorships. We've built the corporate plumbing — IGH UEI, CAGE code, EIN, federal registration — that lets us land in Fortune-5000 vendor systems and process invoices through procurement.

SAM.gov registered, federal-ready (IGH parent)
Workday/Coupa/Ariba vendor onboarding capability
NAICS 561311 — the procurement code enterprise expects

🛠️

Internal tools, not the product

Yes, we built AI tools — petition drafting, exhibit generation, USCIS-officer scoring. They make our team 5x faster. They are not the service. The service is the human picking up the phone when an RFE lands.

5 internal tools live in production
Used to reduce per-petition labor cost by ~60%
Resold to clients post-onboarding as upsell, not lead

What our humans actually do

This is a talent agency. Same playbook as WME, just with immigration expertise built in.

You don't sign with a talent agency because they have a database. You sign because someone returns your call, knows your career, and walks you into the room. That's the relationship layer angel money is funding.

For the talent

A senior recruiter, not a chatbot.

Personal eligibility consultation, with attorney-partner review built in
Career-fit screening — what role, what city, what employer profile
Petition strategy, evidence curation, and full filing
Employer introductions from our enterprise book
Onboarding through approval and Day 1 at the new employer

For the employer

A BD lead who knows your hiring map.

On-site or video meeting with the hiring manager and HR/legal
Vendor registration & MSA — we handle the procurement gauntlet
Slate of pre-vetted O-1 candidates matched to current openings
Petition filing on their behalf as employer-of-record sponsor
Compliance updates, RFE management, and renewal cadence

No part of the relationship is automated away. The platform schedules, tracks, and bills — but the trust is earned by humans.

Automated job matching tier

For talent who don't want to wait — the platform brings the jobs to them

Inside the platform, talent can upgrade to the automated job-matching tier. Instead of waiting for an employer to find them, the system pushes employer interest to the candidate: every new opening that matches their O-1 profile lands in their dashboard with a one-click apply, scored against their criteria, ranked by likelihood of approval.

Active push, not passive listing. Candidates get matched the moment a fitting employer posts.
Pre-scored against eligibility. Only opportunities the candidate has a real shot at — no spam, no filler.
Recurring revenue from talent side. Subscription tier that monetizes the candidate pipeline beyond the placement-fee model.
Network effect with employers. The more employer activity, the more value the talent tier delivers — and the more talent stays subscribed.

Try it free — code BONUS100 →

The foreign-contractor cohort — service at half the cost, twice the reach

Not every hire on this round is a US-based FTE. A meaningful slice of the budget trains a cohort of foreign contractors — many of them O-1 alumni or pipeline candidates themselves — to handle client onboarding, document chase-down, candidate-relationship support, and overnight inbox coverage. They're cheaper than US FTEs by 60–70%, they speak the talent's first language, and they extend our human touch into time zones our US team can't cover.

Trained, not just hired. Two-week program covers our case-management system, USCIS terminology, brand voice, and confidentiality protocols.
Service-side, not legal-side. They never give legal advice. They handle scheduling, document collection, candidate check-ins, and CRM hygiene — the work that frees Sherrod and the BD team to sell and file.
Pipeline benefit. Top performers become candidates themselves — we've already filed O-1 petitions for trained contractors who became elite in their own right.

See it work

Six videos. The full loop.

Real product flows on the live platform. From a candidate getting scored in two minutes to an employer sending a USCIS-formatted interest letter — every critical step, captured on video.

Sign up + get scored in 2 minutes

A candidate creates an account and gets scored against the 8 USCIS O-1 criteria. Free, in under 2 minutes. 60% of scored candidates find out they qualify.

Talent~2 min

Upload evidence → auto-classified

Drop a document. The platform extracts text, classifies it against the 8 O-1 criteria, and flags the strongest evidence. Multi-criterion tagging supported.

Talent~2 min

Talent accepts + signs digitally

The candidate reviews the employer interest letter, accepts, and signs digitally via SignWell. The signed PDF becomes part of their O-1 petition package.

Talent~1 min

Employer browses + sends interest

An employer filters the anonymized candidate pool by skill and score, then sends a one-page USCIS-formatted interest letter. No visa-sponsorship burden. No compliance exposure.

Employer~2 min

Zero-login letter retrieval by PIN

Users email letters@letters.o1dmatch.com with their PIN + email in the subject line and receive every letter back as PDFs in under a minute. Email-native UX no competitor has.

Both sides~1 min

Or try it yourself — free

Skip the videos. Create a free account at app.o1dmatch.com and use code BONUS100 at signup. You'll get full talent-side access including the AI eligibility scorer, evidence classifier, and the automated job-matching dashboard.

Live platformFree with BONUS100

Where revenue comes from

The Fortune 5000 + ex-H-1B sponsor playbook.

We don't chase startups or one-off SMBs. We target the enterprise procurement systems where one signed MSA produces 50+ placements over five years.

15,000

Employer Contacts

Already in our database — every one with prior visa-sponsorship history

2,000

Pre-Vetted Candidates

O-1-eligible talent already in pipeline, vetted by our team and attorney partners

$31K

Avg Placement Fee

20% of $155K avg O-1-eligible salary

Why the ex-H-1B sponsor list is the warmest list in immigration

Already sold on visa value. They built teams on H-1B. The reason they stopped is cost, not need.
Already have the procurement plumbing. Vendor IDs, MSA templates, FN1099 process — all done.
Hiring managers still need the talent. The retreat from H-1B was a finance/legal call. The job reqs didn't disappear.
O-1 is the lower-cost, higher-certainty replacement. No lottery. Faster. Renewable. Approval rates above 80% for qualified candidates.

Where your $25K goes

Hiring humans. That's the entire allocation.

This round funds people who carry quotas, run accounts, and shake hands. No infrastructure spend, no marketing budget, no AI training cost — those are already paid for.

Head of Talent (FT, 18 mo)

$135K

Senior recruiter who owns the talent-side relationships. Builds the bench of pre-vetted O-1 candidates and runs the talent-side service motion.

2× BD / Employer Sales (FT, 12 mo + commission)

$150K

Build the employer book. Target the ex-H-1B sponsor list. Close the MSAs. Quota-carrying with commission upside.

Vendor-Registration Specialist (contractor, 12 mo)

$60K

Owns the Workday / Coupa / Ariba onboarding for every Fortune-5000 target. The unsexy work that turns one MSA into 50 placements.

Foreign-Contractor Training Cohort (NEW)
$25K
Two-week training program + initial monthly stipend for 4–6 trained foreign contractors who handle client-success, document collection, and candidate check-ins. The service layer at 60–70% lower cost than US FTEs, with deeper reach into the talent's first language.

Client Success Lead (PT contractor, 12 mo)

$30K

Manages the foreign-contractor cohort and owns the candidate-experience score. Service quality leader so the BD team isn't pulled into delivery.

Operations / Founder support (PT, 18 mo)

$40K

Frees Sherrod from admin so he stays in front of clients and on petitions. Calendar, scheduling, contracts, vendor portal updates.

CRM, contracts, tooling

$25K

HubSpot or Salesforce, e-signature, vendor management. The minimum infrastructure to run a sales org.

Travel + employer site visits

$20K

In-person meetings with hiring managers and HR. The "human touch" that closes enterprise deals — and the entire reason this round exists.

Legal, SAFE admin, contingency

$15K

SAFE issuance, employment agreements, and a working reserve. Light because we have legal in-house.

Total — 86% on humans

$500K

$430K of $500K goes to people: 3 FT US hires, 1 PT lead, 1 vendor-reg specialist, 4–6 trained foreign contractors, plus founder support. 100% deployed within 18 months.

What we deliver

18 months of people-driven milestones.

Month 0–3

Hire and ramp

Head of Talent + 2 BD reps + Client Success Lead onboarded
First foreign-contractor cohort (4–6) trained and live
CRM stood up; ex-H-1B sponsor list loaded
First 50 employer outreach contacts made

Month 4–6

First MSAs and placements

3+ Fortune-5000 vendor registrations completed
1–2 enterprise MSAs signed
First O-1 placements filed under angel-round-funded BD

Month 7–12

Revenue ramp

10+ MSAs signed across target accounts
30+ placements filed; revenue run-rate ≥ $1M ARR
Talent bench grown from 2,000 to 3,500+ pre-vetted candidates active

Month 13–18

Series A readiness

$2M+ ARR with positive contribution margin
Repeatable BD playbook documented
Series A raise opens — angel SAFE converts at cap or round price

For investors who want the technical depth

The tools we built for ourselves.

We're a services business. The AI exists to make our team faster, not to replace them. After a client signs, we resell access to the same tools — that's the upsell layer, not the product.

🧠

USCIS Officer Scorer

Scores each petition the way a USCIS adjudicator would. Used internally before we file. Cuts RFE rate.

📄

Petition Generator

Drafts O-1, P-1, EB-1A petitions from candidate intake. Attorney partners still review every filing. Speed: 6–8 hours of case-prep time saved per petition.

📚

Exhibit Maker

URL-to-PDF exhibit generator. Used for Kazarian evidence assembly. Reduces paralegal hours per case from ~12 to ~3.

🔍

VisaClear Social Scan

Pre-filing background check on candidates' public profiles. De-risks petitions before USCIS sees them.

⚖️

AI Visa Evaluation

Quick eligibility screen on intake. Filters the calendar so our team spends hours only with viable candidates worth handing off to an attorney partner.

🔁

Resale layer

Once a client is onboarded, the tools get repackaged as self-serve products at our app.o1dmatch.com. Margin enhancement, not the entry point.

If you want the AI investment thesis, that's the Series A deck at invest.o1dmatch.com. This round is buying the people who make those tools matter.

Who you're investing in

Sherrod first. Team next. Everyone accountable.

Angel investors fund people. So this section leads with the people, not the platform.

Sherrod D. Seward — Founder & CEO

10+ years in immigration · Founder of the IGH ecosystem

Sole founder of Innovative Global Holdings (the parent) and O1DMatch (the talent agency). Has spent a decade across sport, entertainment, tech, and research immigration work — and saw firsthand that the real bottleneck wasn't visa filing, it was getting employers and foreign talent on the same platform. Built O1DMatch to solve exactly that.

Built the multi-entity organization from solo founder to platform operator
Drives the employer-relationship strategy and the attorney-partner network
Sets the bar for who makes it onto the candidate pipeline

Gabriella — Immigration Lead

Primary client point of contact. Owns case progression from intake through approval. Manages the paralegal team and ensures petitions stay on filing cadence.

Tiffany Moore — Law Clerk & Corporate Outreach

Coordinates corporate-side relationships and partner outreach. Bridges talent and employer pipelines.

Autumn Marshall — Marketing & Investor Relations

Owns the investor pipeline and marketing communications. The voice for the round and the messenger to the cap table.

Ankit Giri — Case Operations Lead

Runs case ops day-to-day. Tracks every active petition, every USCIS receipt, and every renewal due date.

Arun — Lead Developer

Owns the platform and the internal-tools stack. Ships features, maintains the case-management system, and keeps the AI tools running so the human team is force-multiplied, not gated.

Yusuf — Developer

Builds and maintains the candidate- and employer-facing apps. Handles integrations, deployments, and the data plumbing that lets recruiters, BD, and case ops work in the same system.

Hires from this round (Head of Talent, BD reps, vendor-reg specialist) plug into this team — they don't replace it.

The structure

Standard SAFE. Post-money cap. No drama.

We're using YC's post-money SAFE template. It's the cleanest paper for an angel round and the easiest to administer. Every angel gets the same terms.

Instrument

YC Post-Money SAFE

Industry-standard. No interest, no maturity date, no board seat.

Valuation cap

$6,000,000 post-money

Your SAFE converts at the lower of the cap or the next round's price.

Discount

None

Cap-only structure. Cleaner cap table at Series A.

Round target

$500,000

20 SAFEs at $25K min. Round closes when committed or in 90 days, whichever first.

Minimum check

$25,000

Lower than typical institutional, higher than F&F. Right size for angels who want exposure without leading.

Conversion trigger

Series A or liquidity

SAFE converts to preferred equity at the next priced round, or pays out at acquisition.

What does $25K turn into?

At $6M post-money cap. Move the slider to model your check.

Your investment

$25,000

Ownership at cap

0.42%

Implied value at $20M Series A

$83,333

Implied value at $40M Series A

$166,667

Illustrative only. Actual conversion math depends on Series A size, option pool refresh, and any SAFE/note stack adjustments. Not a securities offer.

What could go wrong

Honest risk disclosure.

Services businesses fail differently than SaaS. Here are the four ways this round could miss, and what we're doing about each.

Hiring risk

The threat: The Head of Talent or BD hires don't perform. The whole thesis is people, so a bad hire is a bigger problem than for a tech-first company.

The mitigation: 90-day review cadence. Commission-heavy comp on the BD side so cost scales with output. Replacement budget held in reserve in the contingency line.

Sales-cycle risk

The threat: Fortune-5000 vendor onboarding takes 4–9 months. The first dollar of placement revenue from a given employer can be a year out.

The mitigation: Pipeline runs in parallel — 50+ employer conversations open at any time. Talent-side subscription revenue (existing) covers operating cost while enterprise pipeline matures.

Regulatory risk

The threat: USCIS adjudication standards tighten. RFE rates climb. Approval rates compress.

The mitigation: Internal scoring tool flags weak petitions before filing. We turn down candidates that don't meet the bar. Better to lose a fee than carry a denial.

Concentration risk

The threat: First few enterprise MSAs may produce the bulk of early revenue. Losing one would hurt.

The mitigation: Diversify employer book to 10+ MSAs by Month 12. No single account > 30% of placement revenue by Month 18.

Submit interest

Want in?

Drop your details below. We'll send the SAFE template, the data room link, and a 30-minute call slot with Sherrod within 48 hours.

Full name * Email *

Check size you're considering * Accreditation *

What you'd want to know on the first call

By submitting, you confirm you're acting on your own behalf for a personal accredited-investor evaluation. No securities are being offered until SAFE documents are countersigned.

Or skip the form.

Email sherrod@sherrodsportsvisas.com directly. He reads every angel-round inbound personally and replies within one business day.