Concord charges between US$6500 ($10,912) and US$10,000 to shepherd an individual through a O-1 application, which Beaton says can potentially be approved in just over a month (“Concord” is a reference to speed).

The price is pitched as being around 40% the rate charged by a law firm specialising in immigration (the traditional route). The US$10,000 tier offers more assistance “building your profile”.

Chance meeting

As with Crimson, Concord was born in part out of Beaton’s own experience, after earning the first of his (now half dozen) US post-graduate degrees at Princeton.

“When I first came to the US, I was on the F1, the student visa. And I wasn’t really sure how one stays in the US post-degree for an extended period of time,” Beaton said.

“Getting an O-1 visa was totally random. I bumped into a fellow Kiwi entrepreneur, Divya Dhar, who mentioned she’s secured a green card through this mystical process. After going through the application, I managed to land my visa, enabling me to build Crimson at full speed.”

Beaton said even with the serendipity of meeting Dhar, it was a slog, with around 200 pages of paperwork, and, as with trying to penetrate the Ivy League, it can be hard for a novice to navigate the best path.

He sees a “massive information barrier”, now compounded by a growing AI slop of misinformation online.

The New Zealander still has an O-1, today, which he’s renewed several times. He says once you’ve secured it, the visa is relatively straightforward to renew.

Beaton co-founded Concord with Kevin Park, a fellow Auckland University grad who is familiar with the ins and outs of immigration through his former role as Crimson’s shock trooper, setting up beachheads in a series of countries during the firm’s early days.

“Crimson went from one country to 20 really fast, with plenty of messy chaos, with Kevin and many other great folks leading the charge to go through that baptism by fire.”

‘Trump throwing visa bombs’

There’s plenty of messy chaos in the US now, of course – though these days it’s more likely to emanate from the White House.

Beaton says Concord recently helped a crypto entrepreneur from China gain a visa to build his firm in the US.

“It’s really exciting to see cases like this, especially as Trump is throwing visa bombs left, right and centre,” Beaton says.

“A lot of our families are very keen to have clarity as to what a multi-year journey looks like in America or other countries, and this is really designed to be that next step in the Crimson journey for them.”

Park says it’s important to get all your paperwork correct. But, as with trying to get into Harvard or Yale, it’s also a matter of putting together the right “narrative” for the talent-based O-1, which is often restricted to around 10,000 people each year.

Park says Concord offers more than 10 types of visas, including those in various skills shortage categories, and will match a candidate to the best type.

His pitch is that traditional immigration advisers are often used to dealing with the requirements of big corporates.

He and Beaton are more savvy about the potential quirks and complications of smaller firms, like Silicon Valley startups, where a funding round or change of ownership can pull the rug out from under an E2 visa (a business investment and employee transfer visa that has been another traditionally popular way for Kiwis to set up shop in the US).

A venture capital round that brings in a range of international investors would see a US-based firm majority-owned offshore, and an E2 visa holder suddenly asked to leave the country within 60 days, Park says.

The firm also helps with immigration into Australia, Britain and New Zealand.

Beaton says the business is a natural extension of Crimson, which has helped “several thousand” students secure F1 visas.

Although only up and running for a few months – with its consultancy business just launched – Concord has already helped more than 100 people secure US visas, Beaton and Park say.

Their hero client is Auckland brand-tracking start-up Tracksuit, which has been pushing into the US after a $42 million raise earlier this year.

Inside help

It also helped the East Auckland-raised Wayne Zhou secure an O-1 visa for his move from Australia to the US as his Silicon Valley-based startup staged a US$20m Series A raise led by US venture capital firms Felicis and supported by BOND (the venture capital firm that also recently backed another Kiwi as Substack’s Hamish McKenzie and his fellow cofounders raised funds at a US$1 billion valuation. BOND has also funded Halter.)

Macleans College old boy Zhou has quite the backstory.

He enrolled at the University of Sydney but was only two years into a seven-year path to a Doctor of Dentistry (“my immigrant parents’ dream”) before he dropped out. Zhou had been running a recruitment consultancy as a side hustle.

“I was basically helping my friends get jobs in the best industries; in finance, investment banking and professional services,” he says.

“Ruler”, as he called his careers platform, blossomed during his second year, as the 2020 Covid lockdown hit – to the point where he left university.

Crimson acquired Ruler in 2022, and Zhou stayed on until mid-2023, until striking out on his own again to form a fintech called Verve.

“It flopped,” he says.

A year ago, he founded Paraform, “a recruiting marketplace that connects companies with a network of specialised recruiters to fill their hardest roles”.

With backing from the founders of Canva and Instacart, among others, his start-up quickly grew to 40 staff, with plans for 100 by year’s end. Paraform partners have included the Peter Thiels co-founded Palantir.

It’s a roller-coaster story, especially for someone yet to hit 30. But how should it be framed in a bid for an O-1 talent visa?

Zhou says the Concord consultant assigned to him had previously worked on the other side of the fence, where she had conducted more than 10,000 visa interviews while with the US Embassy in Australia.

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.