The easiest way to apply for Taiwan Entrepreneur Visa

Michael Fahey, originally from United States, is a lawyer with the firm Winkler Partners’ corporate commercial practice group since the firm’s founding in 2002. 

Eighty-five percent of Winkler Partners’ clients are foreign businesses investing in or operating in Taiwan. Clients range in size from startups to some of the world’s largest multinationals. They also represent Taiwanese businesses with investments, operations, or legal problems overseas.

Fahey is also known in Taiwan’s international community for his leadership role in Forward Taiwan, a public interest group working on reform of Taiwanese immigration law founded by Ping Chu.

The Entrepreneur Visa is a fairly new and special form of resident visa in Taiwan. For the experts who helps foreigners apply for visas it has taken a lot of efforts of studying the new law to be able to assist their clients, luckily Winkler Partners now has everything they need.

In 2016, Fahey helped Vectr on a successful application for two entrepreneur visas and their first renewals. Vectr is a cloud-based SaaS US company backed by venture capital from the US and Canada. While their market is global, they chose to base their development team in Taiwan. 

Vectr co-founder Nick Budden has only the best of accolades for the services received, “Fahey is the best lawyer I have ever worked with.”

Fahey has also advised several other founders and teams on their eligibility for the entrepreneur visa. 

There are many benefits exclusively for Entrepreneur Visa holders. Fahey says “One very important benefit are the relaxed requirements for employee work permits enabling companies to hire foreign talent from all over the world with relative ease.”

“Even if the application is lengthy and document intensive, the various government agencies were very helpful.” says Fahey about the experiences during the application process. 

The Entrepreneur Visa is issued first for one year and can then be extended twice for one year each. Fahey just helped Budden with the first extension. 

“Compared to the initial document verification and notarization, the renewal process was rather easy and clear.” 

Of all the different requirements for Entrepreneur Visa, Fahey states that the easiest by far is being accepted into an approved incubator. There are currently 26 such incubators all over Taiwan.

Overall, Fahey highly praises the Entrepreneur Visa and look forward to helping many more foreign entrepreneurs come and explore Taiwan.