SponsorReady

Idea

SponsorReady keeps small and mid-size H-1B/E-3 sponsoring employers audit-ready for Department of Labor wage-and-hour investigations. It continuously tracks every Labor Condition Application's Public Access File requirements, flags gaps the moment a wage change, worksite move, or bench period creates one, and exports a DOL-ready audit binder within the required one business day. It sells to HR teams that sponsor a handful of visa holders and have no in-house immigration counsel.

Market gap

Every US employer that files an LCA for an H-1B, H-1B1, or E-3 worker must build a Public Access File within one business day of filing and produce it to DOL within one business day of an audit request. Missing or incomplete documentation counts as noncompliance even when the gap was unintentional.

The timing is now for three reasons. First, DOL launched Project Firewall in September 2025, a dedicated enforcement initiative that moves H-1B oversight from complaint-driven investigations to proactive employer audits, coordinated with USCIS, EEOC, and the DOJ Civil Rights Division. Second, the maximum civil penalty for PAF and LCA violations rose to $50,758 per violation in February 2025. Third, the September 2025 proclamation adding a $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions has pushed employer and legal attention toward maintaining existing sponsorships rather than filing new ones, meaning more employers are stuck managing compliance on visa holders they already have, with fewer resources devoted to it.

The buyer population is a long tail with no dedicated staff for this. 28,277 unique US employers had at least one new H-1B petition approved in FY2025. Of those, 61 percent had exactly one petition and 95 percent had ten or fewer. These are exactly the companies without an immigration compliance function, and their payroll platforms explicitly do not cover this: Gusto does not track visa expirations, manage LCA postings, maintain Public Access Files, or monitor prevailing wage compliance, and Rippling and Deel have no native equivalent module either.

Total Addressable Market (TAM)

Bottom-up, from the small and mid tier of active H-1B/E-3 sponsors:

• Target base: the 95 percent of FY2025 new-petition employers with ten or fewer petitions, per NFAP's November 2025 policy brief: roughly 26,800 employers (95% of 28,277). This is a conservative anchor since it counts only new FY2025 approvals, not the larger pool of employers with active multi-year sponsorships from prior years.
• ACV: comparable per-seat immigration software runs $30 to $90 per user per month; a flat company-level subscription tiered by sponsored-headcount lands around $150 to $400 per month ($1,800 to $4,800 per year), defensible against a $50,758-per-violation downside.
• TAM: 26,800 employers x ~$3,000 average ACV ≈ $80M.
• SAM: employers already on Gusto, Rippling, Deel, or QuickBooks-tier payroll (no enterprise immigration vendor in place today), estimated at 60 to 70 percent of the base: 16,000 to 19,000 employers x ~$3,000 ≈ $48M to $57M.
• SOM: realistic year one to two capture for a 1 to 3 person team, 150 to 400 customers x $2,400 to $3,600 per year ≈ $400K to $1.4M ARR.

Monetization strategy

Flat monthly SaaS subscription per company, billed to the HR or People team (sometimes finance/controller for a small company). Tiered by number of actively sponsored employees, not per seat, since the buyer thinks in terms of "how many visa holders am I exposed on," not user count. Retention comes from the multi-year nature of a sponsorship: a single H-1B runs up to six years across extensions, and every renewal, wage change, and worksite move reopens the compliance obligation, so the tool stays relevant for the life of each sponsorship, not just at filing time.

Pricing strategy

• Starter, 1 to 3 sponsored employees: $149/month ($1,788/year if paid annually). Entry point for the majority of the buyer base (61 percent of employers sponsor exactly one worker).
• Growth, 4 to 10 sponsored employees: $349/month ($4,188/year). Anchor tier: most marketing and case studies target this segment, since it is the largest pool with real audit exposure and enough budget authority to buy software without a committee.
• Scale, 11 to 25 sponsored employees: $699/month, with custom pricing above 25.

Lead magnet

A free, no-login "PAF Audit Readiness Score": a five-minute checklist about a company's current LCAs (wage postings, worksite records, notice documentation) that returns an instant gap report showing exactly which required Public Access File documents are missing or stale, plus what a DOL investigator would flag first. Captures an email to send the full PDF report.

Social proof that the problem exists

1. Forbes, December 2025: documents roughly 200 active DOL investigations opened under Project Firewall and the specific violation patterns employers are getting caught on, including underpaying visa holders after fee deductions and unpaid benching. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2025/12/04/unprepared-companies-at-risk-in-h-1b-visa-immigration-crackdown/
2. G2 reviews of OnBlick HR Compliance (446 reviews, 4.9/5): real paying customers confirm demand for this problem category, while reviewers separately flag that the product is "not customizable," has "only a specific way to upload documents," and features that are "not well inter-linked," meaning small buyers are forced into a rigid, full-suite platform to solve a narrow need. https://www.g2.com/products/onblick-hr-compliance/reviews
3. NFAP policy brief, November 17, 2025: hard numbers on the underserved long tail, 28,277 unique H-1B sponsoring employers in FY2025, 61 percent with exactly one petition, 95 percent with ten or fewer. https://nfap.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/H-1B-Petitions-and-Denial-Rates-For-FY-2025.NFAP-Policy-Brief.2025.pdf
4. Morgan Lewis and Holland & Knight both published client alerts within days of the September 2025 announcement warning employers to prepare for expanded wage-and-hour, immigration, and even criminal exposure under Project Firewall, evidence that law firms are fielding real client anxiety about this exact gap. https://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/2025/09/dol-launches-project-firewall-with-immigration-wage-and-hour-and-criminal-implications-for-employers and https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2025/09/dol-launches-project-firewall-new-h1b-enforcement-initiative
5. SHRM, a mainstream HR-generalist body (not an immigration specialist publication), felt the need to publish a dedicated explainer on Public Access File obligations, evidence this is a widely misunderstood requirement among ordinary HR staff rather than a niche legal question. https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/talent-acquisition/h-1b-employers-must-comply-with-public-access-file-requirements
6. VisaVerge confirms the February 2025 penalty increase to $50,758 per PAF violation, the concrete dollar exposure driving urgency. https://www.visaverge.com/h1b/updated-h-1b-rules-tighten-requirements-for-public-access-file-compliance/

Competitors

• OnBlick (onblick.com): the closest direct competitor. Auto-generates PAFs, plus I-9/E-Verify, work-authorization tracking, timesheets, and onboarding. A full bundled HR-compliance suite, not a narrow point tool. No public pricing.
• Envoy Global (envoyglobal.com): enterprise immigration case-management platform covering 180+ countries, custom quotes only, built for large multinational employers.
• Boundless (boundless.com): immigration services platform, entry pricing around €175 per employee per month, built around visa filing services rather than ongoing standalone compliance monitoring.
• Alma (tryalma.com): hybrid attorney-plus-platform, flat per-filing fees (for example $3,500 for an H-1B cap filing). Alma's own materials describe PAF maintenance, LCA posting, and wage-level monitoring as the employer's own responsibility requiring attorney guidance, not an automated platform feature.
• Gusto, Rippling, Deel: the payroll and HRIS platforms small employers already run on. None track visa expirations, manage LCA postings, maintain Public Access Files, or monitor prevailing wage compliance natively.
• Fragomen, LawLogix/Symphony, Docketwise, INSZoom: case management systems built for immigration attorneys running large caseloads, priced and designed for law firms, not for a single in-house HR generalist with three sponsored employees.

What competitors offer now

Nothing sits between "the payroll platform ignores this entirely" and "buy a full enterprise immigration suite or pay attorney hourly rates to stay audit-ready." OnBlick is the only real point of comparison and it bundles PAF management inside a much larger HR-compliance product, which reviewers say is rigid and hard to customize for a narrow use case. Everyone else is either an enterprise case-management platform priced and scoped for companies with dozens or hundreds of sponsorships, or a law firm charging hourly to review files that were never continuously monitored in the first place.

What can be done differently to attract customers

Ship a narrow point solution built around monitoring, extraction, and generation rather than a bundled HR suite. The product watches for the specific events that create PAF and LCA exposure (a raise, a worksite move, an unpaid bench period, an approaching renewal window), flags whether documentation exists to cover it, and auto-assembles a DOL-ready binder on demand. It is explicitly positioned to sit alongside Gusto, Rippling, or Deel rather than replace them, marketed directly against the gap those platforms disclose they don't cover. That is a clean wedge against both "buy the whole enterprise suite" (OnBlick, Envoy, Boundless) and "pay your attorney hourly to audit your own files" (Alma and most immigration law firms).