EB-5 asks whether the business can be built.

What makes this document different

Investor materials argue that a business is attractive. An EB-5 plan argues that it is possible: that the premises can be obtained, the equipment bought, the staff hired and the revenue produced, in that order, within the stated time.

Reviewers apply established expectations for what such a plan must contain, and they compare every claim against the supporting documents.

Direct and regional centre are different documents

A direct investment plan describes one operating business. A regional centre project describes an enterprise whose economic effect has to be modelled. The analytical burden differs, but both live or die on the same thing: whether the numbers are traceable.

The four anchors

• The enterprise is real and described at operating level: location, activity, capacity, staffing.
• Capital is lawful, committed and sufficient for the described build.
• The job-creation requirement is met by a hiring and spending schedule, not by an assertion.
• The timeline is achievable: permits, fit-out, hiring, ramp, with dependencies named.

Where the numbers have to come from

Costs from quotes rather than estimates, hiring from an operating model rather than from an industry average, revenue from a market reading that names comparables. Every figure should be traceable to something outside the plan.

Failure patterns

• A plan copied from a different project in the same sector, with the location changed.
• Job counts derived from a multiplier rather than from a staffing plan with dates.
• Construction costs without quotes, on a schedule that ignores permitting.
• Revenue that assumes full capacity from month one.
• A source-of-funds story that is never reconciled with the capital budget.

None of these are caught by better prose. They are caught by building the model first and writing to it.

The long tail

These cases are read again at removal of conditions. A plan that was optimistic in year one becomes a documentation problem in year three.

The document set

• Business plan to reviewer expectations, with the build and operating logic up front.
• Capital budget tied to quotes, contracts and a drawdown schedule.
• Job-creation schedule: roles, dates, basis, and the evidence that will support each one.
• Operating model with ramp, cost base and sensitivity to delay.
• Source-of-funds report reconciled to the budget, with a gap register where documentation is incomplete.

What we need from you

Project or business documents, quotes and term sheets, the capital structure, and the funding trail. Where the trail has gaps, we would rather name them than write around them.

Four stages

Model first: capital, build, hiring, ramp.

Evidence: quotes, leases, permits, contracts, funding documents.

Drafting to the reviewer's order of questions rather than to a marketing order.

Reconciliation with the source-of-funds report and with the securities documentation where a syndicate is involved.

Who does what

Counsel owns the filing, the regional centre questions and securities compliance. We own the business and financial case.

Three things outside the plan

It does not make a marginal project viable. Where the model does not hold, we say so before the file is built.

It does not establish lawful source of funds where the trail does not exist. It documents what is there: source of funds report.

It does not value the investment or advise on the project choice: project and investment strategy.

Related documents

For a smaller single-business investment under a treaty, the standard is different: E-2 business plan.

Where this work leads

One document answers one reader, but the question behind it rarely stays inside a single direction.

• Project & Investment Strategy

The level above

Documents solve a defined file. Where the decision itself is open, the work moves up a level, into a direction, and eventually into growth strategy.