From Dentistry Student to Silicon Valley Operator: How Wayne Zhou Secured His O-1A

Concord made every step clear and tailored the strategy to my journey as a founder. Instead of researching visa options, I could focus on building.

Wayne Zhou

GM @ Paraform

Overview

Wayne Zhou grew up in Auckland, New Zealand, and enrolled on a dentistry and medical track at the University of Sydney. But by 2020, COVID and a restless ambition had converged: he co-founded his first company and dropped out of university to build it full-time.

That decision set off a chain of bold moves. His first startup was acquired by Crimson Education, where he honed his skills as an operator. A second venture won Y Combinator’s $500K backing but ultimately dissolved over team dynamics. Then came Paraform, the one that stuck. Wayne joined as effectively the first employee and built a scaled outbound growth engine that landed clients like Palantir, Shopify, Coinbase, and Cursor. Today, as GM, he leads a team of 55 at a company that recently celebrated a $20M Series A led by Felicis.

But none of it would have been possible without being physically present in San Francisco, walking past venture capital firms on his way to work, sharing an office building first with Cursor and then inheriting Anthropic’s former space. For Wayne, proximity is everything. And for that, he needed an O-1A visa.

Challenge

Visa Uncertainty at a Critical Growth Moment

Wayne was instrumental to Paraform’s early US growth, but without a clear path to long-term residency, his future in the country, and the company’s momentum — remained precarious. As he put it: “The biggest questions weren’t just about product-market fit… it was, can I actually stay here to build this?

Traditional Lawyers Didn’t Match Startup Speed

Previous immigration advisors didn’t grasp the urgency or complexity of a founding team member’s situation. The process felt ad hoc and disconnected — a stark contrast to the pace at which Paraform was scaling, onboarding 150–200 new customers monthly.

Meeting the “Extraordinary Ability” Standard

The O-1A demands evidence of extraordinary ability, a high bar that requires careful strategy around how achievements are framed and documented. For a 24-year-old operator, the challenge was translating real-world impact into the language immigration officers recognise.

Staying Focused While the Stakes Were Highest

With Paraform in hypergrowth and revenue last quarter exceeding the company’s entire lifetime total, Wayne couldn’t afford to be buried in paperwork and anxiety. He needed an immigration partner who would carry the complexity so he could keep building.

The Turning Point: Finding Concord

Concord was different from the start. Led by Jamie Beaton, who personally knew Wayne from their Crimson Education days, the team understood his profile from the inside out. This wasn’t a generic application process. Concord mapped a clear, curated strategy that highlighted Wayne’s YC experience, his track record of building a scaled outbound engine at Paraform, and the leadership impact that had won clients like Envoy, Palantir, and Shopify.

Where traditional lawyers offered ad hoc service, Concord provided what Wayne describes as an “emotional safety net.” The journey felt mapped out and clear. Relevant case studies from other founders with similar APAC backgrounds gave Wayne confidence that his profile could succeed. And the high-touch, personalised approach meant he never felt like just another file on a desk.

With Concord handling the complexity, Wayne was free to do what he does best: build. And that’s exactly what happened.

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The Outcome

Wayne’s O-1A was approved in June 2025, allowing him to remain in San Francisco and Paraform to keep scaling without disruption. The results since speak volumes: last quarter’s revenue exceeded the company’s entire lifetime total. The team has grown from 15 to 55 people. And Paraform paid out roughly $10 million to recruiters in a single quarter, some of whom quit their salaried jobs to build independent recruiting businesses on the platform.

Wayne now works out of Paraform’s SoMa office, which happens to be Anthropic’s former space, whiteboards still marked with faint loss functions. He walks past legendary venture capital firms each morning and counts angel investors like the CTO of Palantir and the President of Shopify among Paraform’s backers. The proximity that once felt aspirational is now his daily reality.

He’s now working with Concord on his EB-1A, the next chapter in cementing his place in the US. And Paraform is expanding beyond tech recruiting into legal and healthcare, with plans to go global.

“America feels like home,” Wayne says. “I genuinely feel like I’ve always been American-inclined. When I was 10, I visited San Francisco and loved it, something about it reminded me of Auckland. Now it’s where I’m building my life.”

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