When you’re a migrant on a visa, you live as if you’re on borrowed time.
Before I secured my UK Global Talent Visa in 2016, I was on a restricted Tier 1 Entrepreneur visa* with no route to settlement. At the time, things felt rosy. I had 3.5 years to build my startup. But any entrepreneur will tell you: when you’re building a company, time doesn’t just pass, it disappears. Before I knew it, my Entrepreneur visa was approaching expiry, and I didn’t meet the criteria to renew it.
What I didn’t realise at the time was that I’d already started building my case for the Global Talent Visa. I’d been highly active in the UK tech ecosystem for years, and without knowing it, I was quietly assembling the evidence I’d eventually need. It took three years to build that evidence, and three sleepless months to pull it all together into a coherent application.
With just one month left on my Entrepreneur visa, I received my endorsement for exceptional talent and switched immediately to the Global Talent Visa aka the “Golden Tech Visa.”
It was more than just a visa. It was a route to settlement. To British citizenship. To freedom, flexibility, and security. It meant less pressure, and more space and time to focus on my startup.
It all felt too good to be true.
Only it wasn’t. In 2019, I became a British citizen.
Since then, I’ve spent the past ten years helping others navigate their own GTV Stage 1 endorsement applications so they don’t have to endure the sleepless nights I did. I help them build evidence that meets the GTV criteria, sharpen their leadership profile, and structure their case strategically. Most importantly, I help them find and tell the story that makes their application their own.
My top tips are
- Use your time wisely and strategically
- Seek support to help save you time
- Find mentors in the tech industry outside of your day to day job to champion you, sponsor you and open doors for you
- Engage with and add value to the tech ecosystem
- It’s not enough to just participate in any events and activities. Seek leadership roles outside of your day to day job to help shape the direction of and make impact to advance the tech sector.
- Know what you are an expert in. If you don’t, ask 5 different people, both inside and outside of your organization, to list 5 strengths that they value the most in you and what they think you are an expert in.
Their perspective might help you identify your expertise, strengths and achievements that you didn’t know you had.
This might also give you the clarity and confidence to start your GTV journey.
If you’d like support in your GTV journey and need an expert who has been there, done that and has supported over 2000 people with their own GTV Stage 1 endorsement applicants, complete my eligibility questionnaire here.
