Immigration lawyers and corporate HR teams must manually dig through Department of Labor data to track filing trends, benchmark salary offers, and advise clients on sponsorship strategy amid rapidly changing policy.
Aggregates DOL certification data, USCIS approval/denial rates, and policy changes into a searchable dashboard with employer benchmarks, approval probability scores, and alerts on regulatory shifts.
subscription — tiered plans for solo attorneys ($99/mo), firms ($299/mo), and enterprise HR ($999/mo)
The pain is real and well-documented. Attorneys currently spend hours downloading DOL Excel dumps, manually cross-referencing USCIS data, and guessing at approval probabilities. HR teams pay $500+/hr to attorneys partly because this analysis is so manual. The Reddit thread with 169 upvotes confirms that even applicants are hungry for this data — professionals who bill for this analysis are desperate for it. The pain compounds with every policy change.
TAM is meaningful but bounded. There are ~15,000 immigration attorneys in the US, ~5,000 corporate HR departments with active H-1B programs, and ~2,000 relocation agencies. At blended $200/mo ARPU, that is roughly $50M TAM. Not venture-scale, but excellent for a bootstrapped or lightly-funded SaaS. Could expand into other visa categories (L-1, O-1, EB-1/2/3) and international markets to push toward $150M+.
Immigration attorneys bill $300-$800/hr. A tool saving 2-3 hours per week easily justifies $99-$299/mo. Corporate HR teams already spend $5K-$15K per H-1B petition — a $999/mo analytics tool that improves filing strategy is a rounding error. Docketwise proves this market pays for software. The pricing in the idea is well-calibrated and possibly conservative.
DOL LCA data is publicly available and machine-readable (quarterly CSV dumps). USCIS publishes approval/denial statistics. Policy changes can be scraped from Federal Register. A solo dev can absolutely build an MVP in 4-6 weeks: ingest public data into Postgres, build a Next.js/React dashboard with search + charts, add basic email alerts. No ML needed for MVP — simple trend calculations and percentile benchmarks deliver immediate value. The hard part is not tech, it is data normalization across messy government datasets.
This is the strongest signal. No one is selling a standalone H-1B analytics dashboard at this price point. Free tools serve job seekers with basic lookups. Enterprise platforms bundle analytics into $50K+ case management suites. Big Law hoards analytics internally. The mid-market — solo attorneys, small firms, mid-size HR teams — is completely unserved. This is a classic 'stuck in the middle' gap waiting to be filled.
Data refreshes quarterly, policy changes constantly, and filing seasons are annual cycles. Attorneys and HR teams need ongoing monitoring, not one-time reports. Alerts on regulatory changes, employer benchmark updates, and approval trend shifts create natural retention loops. Immigration is inherently recurring — clients file renewals, extensions, and new petitions year after year. Churn should be very low if the data stays fresh.
- +Clear competition gap: no standalone analytics product exists at this price point for this audience
- +High willingness to pay in a profession where time is billed at $300-$800/hr
- +Public government data means no data acquisition cost and no moat concerns from incumbents
- +Policy volatility is a persistent tailwind driving demand for data-driven strategy
- +Natural expansion path into adjacent visa categories and international markets
- !Government data quality and timeliness: DOL/USCIS data is messy, inconsistent, and sometimes delayed — data normalization will be an ongoing operational burden
- !Policy risk: a major immigration reform simplifying the H-1B process (unlikely but possible) could reduce demand for analytics
- !Big Law response: Fragomen or BAL could productize their internal tools if they see traction in this space
- !Niche market ceiling: pure H-1B analytics may cap out at $5-10M ARR without expanding to other visa categories or adjacent services
- !Sales cycle: enterprise HR deals ($999/mo) require relationship selling and security reviews, which slow growth for a solo founder
Free public tool that lets users search H-1B employer data from DOL LCA filings — shows salaries, job titles, approval rates by employer and location.
Full-service immigration case management platform for corporate HR teams — handles petitions, compliance tracking, document management, and employee communication.
Department of Labor's public disclosure data and search tool for LCA filings — the raw data source most attorneys manually download and parse.
Top-tier immigration law firms that have built internal proprietary analytics tools for their clients — benchmark data, approval rates, processing times.
Immigration-specific case and forms management software for attorneys — auto-fills USCIS forms, tracks deadlines, manages client intake.
Searchable dashboard with 3 core features: (1) Employer lookup — search any company, see their H-1B filing volume, prevailing wage levels, job titles, and approval rates over time; (2) Salary benchmarker — input job title + location, get DOL prevailing wage percentiles and how a proposed salary compares to recent certifications; (3) Weekly email digest — regulatory changes and notable trends (e.g., 'Amazon H-1B filings down 40% QoQ'). Built on public DOL OFLC data + USCIS statistics. No login required for basic lookups (lead gen), paid plans for full historical data, exports, and alerts.
Free tier with limited lookups (3/day) to build SEO and word-of-mouth → $99/mo solo attorney plan with full search + alerts → $299/mo firm plan with team access + API + white-label reports → $999/mo enterprise with custom benchmarks, compliance dashboards, and SSO. Add-on: one-time $499 'filing strategy report' per employer for HR teams evaluating whether to sponsor.
4-6 weeks to MVP with public data ingestion and basic dashboard. First paying customers within 8-10 weeks if founder has any immigration law network. Path to $10K MRR within 6 months by targeting solo immigration attorneys through immigration law forums, AILA (American Immigration Lawyers Association) channels, and LinkedIn outreach.
- “costlier process and tighter scrutiny making planning harder”
- “need to track certified application volumes across employers”
- “confusion over whether declines are policy-driven or market-driven (correlation vs causation)”