Designated organizations for the Start-up Visa Program: Find a start-up to support

As a designated organization, you can develop your own process for receiving proposals from immigrant entrepreneurs. You can also develop your own criteria to assess them. It’s up to you to find potential immigrant entrepreneurs you’d like to support.

Make an investment or pledge your support

For an immigrant entrepreneur to be eligible for start-up visa, they must get your investment or support.

Here is the minimum investment or support you must give:

• if you are a designated venture capital fund, you must make a minimum investment of $200,000 into their business
• if you are a designated angel investor group, you must make a minimum investment of $75,000 into their business
• if you are a designated business incubator, you must accept the immigrant entrepreneur into one of your incubation/acceleration programs

You can team up with other designated organizations to meet the minimum investment or support required.

Designated organization caps

Until December 31, 2026

Each calendar year, we’ll only be considering 10 complete group applications per designated organization. Applications will be considered on a first-come, first-served basis.

What is a complete group application?

Each member must submit their own permanent residence application before we can process any of them. Once a group has submitted a complete application, it will count as 1 of the designated organization’s 2 possible submissions for the year.

If any group member doesn’t pass the completeness check, the application will still count against the cap.