Job seekers targeting H-1B sponsoring companies have no way to compare employers' lottery success rates, typical wage levels offered, or sponsorship track records
Aggregate the structured data people already share (Result, Company/Industry, Location, Wage Level) into a searchable database. Enrich with LCA disclosure data from DOL. Let job seekers filter by industry, location, company size, and historical selection rates
Subscription - $19/mo or $149/year for full access. Freemium tier with limited searches. Affiliate revenue from immigration attorney referrals
This is career-and-life-altering for the target audience. A bad employer choice can mean deportation, years of wasted effort, or tens of thousands in lost wages from low wage-level offers. The Reddit thread with 435 upvotes and 84 self-reports in a niche sub proves people are DESPERATE for this data. They're manually crowdsourcing it because nothing else exists. Pain doesn't get much more intense than 'will I be allowed to stay in this country?'
TAM is real but bounded. ~400K-500K unique H-1B registrants per year, plus ~200K international students actively job-hunting = ~600K-700K potential users annually. At $149/year, theoretical max ~$100M, but realistic penetration of 1-3% = $1M-$3M ARR ceiling for a bootstrapped product. This is a strong niche business, not a venture-scale market. That's fine — it's perfect for a solo founder.
This audience already pays $1,500-$5,000+ for immigration attorneys, $200-$500 for premium job boards, and spends heavily on credential evaluations and USCIS fees. $19/month is a rounding error compared to the cost of a bad H-1B outcome. International workers in tech also tend to have above-average income. The key proof: people are manually doing this work for free in Reddit threads — they'll absolutely pay for a polished, persistent, enriched version.
DOL LCA disclosure data is publicly available in bulk CSV/Excel downloads. USCIS publishes registration and approval statistics. Reddit/forum scraping for crowd-sourced data is straightforward. The core product is: ingest CSVs + build a search/filter UI + add crowd-sourced overlay. No ML needed for MVP. A competent solo dev with Python/Next.js can build this in 3-4 weeks. The hard part is data cleaning and entity matching (company names vary), not technical complexity.
The critical insight: EVERY existing tool shows LCA filing data (who APPLIED). NONE show lottery outcome data (who GOT SELECTED and at what rate). This is the gap. The Reddit crowd-sourcing proves demand for outcome-level data that simply doesn't exist in any product. Existing tools also have atrocious UX and no employer comparison features. You're building the 'Glassdoor for H-1B sponsorship' — the analogy itself sells the product.
Strong annual recurring during H-1B season (Oct-April), but usage may be seasonal/bursty. A user who gets selected may churn. Mitigation: expand to green card tracking, OPT/STEM OPT extensions, and employer wage negotiation data to increase lifecycle value. The annual cycle creates natural re-engagement: 'FY2028 data is now available.' Expect ~60% annual retention as users either succeed or re-enter the lottery.
- +Extreme pain point with proven demand — crowd-sourced data in Reddit threads is your validation AND your initial dataset
- +No existing product combines DOL data with lottery outcome intelligence — you own a unique data layer
- +Technically simple MVP with publicly available government data as the foundation
- +Audience has high willingness to pay and is concentrated in a few online communities (r/h1b, Blind, international student forums) making acquisition cheap
- +Natural network effect: each user who reports their outcome makes the database more valuable for everyone
- !Seasonal demand — H-1B lottery cycle drives ~70% of engagement in a 6-month window, requiring either diversification or acceptance of cyclical revenue
- !Policy risk — if USCIS changes the lottery system dramatically (e.g., moves to merit-based), your core value prop shifts. This is also an opportunity: every policy change drives demand for new analysis
- !Data quality — crowd-sourced outcome data can be gamed or inaccurate. Entity matching (company names) across DOL data and user reports requires careful deduplication
- !Incumbent SEO — MyVisaJobs and h1bdata.info own high-value keywords. You'll need community-driven growth (Reddit, WhatsApp groups, university career centers) rather than SEO to start
Aggregates LCA and PERM data from DOL to show H-1B sponsor history, salary data, and green card sponsorship by employer. Offers job listings tied to sponsoring companies.
Grades employers on H-1B sponsorship likelihood based on historical LCA filings. Simple letter-grade system
Searchable database of H-1B LCA disclosure data. Lets users look up salaries and job titles by employer and location.
Immigration portal with various visa trackers, forums, and community-sourced case status data. Includes H-1B filing trackers.
Not a product per se, but the de facto source of real-time H-1B lottery outcome data. Users self-report results with employer, wage level, and location.
Week 1-2: Ingest DOL LCA disclosure data (publicly available CSVs) into a Postgres database. Build a Next.js frontend with company search, salary filtering, and location views. Week 3: Add a simple crowd-sourced lottery outcome submission form (Result | Company | Industry | Location | Wage Level — mirror the Reddit format). Seed it with data scraped from the Reddit thread. Week 4: Add freemium gating (5 free searches/month, unlimited for subscribers), Stripe integration, and an immigration attorney referral directory. Launch on r/h1b, r/immigration, and international student WhatsApp/Discord groups during the FY2028 registration window.
Free tier (5 searches/month, basic company lookup) -> Pro at $19/mo or $149/year (unlimited searches, lottery outcome analytics, employer comparison, wage level breakdowns, alerts for new data) -> Affiliate revenue from immigration attorney referrals ($50-$200 per qualified lead) -> Enterprise tier for immigration law firms wanting bulk data access ($499/mo) -> Eventually: sponsored employer profiles ('We sponsor H-1B' badge program for recruiting)
4-6 weeks to MVP and first paying users if launched during H-1B season (Oct-April). The FY2028 registration window (likely March 2027) is the ideal launch target, but you can launch now with historical data and build the crowd-sourced layer ahead of the next cycle. First $1K MRR achievable within 2-3 months of launch given the concentrated, high-intent audience.
- “Structured reporting format requested (Result | Company | Location | Wage Level) shows demand for this exact dataset”
- “High engagement thread focused on employer-level outcomes”
- “84 comments of crowd-sourced data that currently dies in a Reddit thread”