Two of this year’s companies finished TechStars in Boulder with healthy investor interest, but they struggled to keep their companies in the United States.

Kevin Mann, a British founder of Take Publishing, has been building a company that hopes to become the digital sales platform for the biggest comic publishers.

He wants Take Publishing to be in the United States because that’s where comic-book publishers are, and the country’s $700 million comic-book consumer market is the world’s largest.

His exposure to Boulder this summer convinced him Take Publishing should start there.

“Nowhere in the U.K. has the same degree of excitement and cooperation about starting a business,” Mann said.

Mann attended TechStars under a 90-day visa waiver. He flew back to England the day after the boot camp ended. Since then, he’s flown back and forth from England to San Francisco, Seattle, and elsewhere to meet potential investors.

Take Publishing could secure at least $1 million from VC or angel investors—if it was U.S.-based.

“But they’re not willing to deal with a non-U.S. company,” he said.

Mann’s arrived at a potential solution. Take Publishing recruited business-development veteran Micah Baldwin, a U.S. citizen, to be CEO. Mann also gave Baldwin an equity stake in the business. The move allows the company to be U.S.-based and strike deals with investors wanting to deal with a U.S. founder.

Take Publishing will sponsor Mann’s application for an H1-B visa—designed for skilled workers in specialized jobs for which there are no U.S candidates—that would let him return to the United States for three years as a temporary employee of his own company.

Take Publishing expects to hire as many as 15 workers as partnerships with comic-book publishers solidify, Mann said.

There’s potential for competition from at least one other U.S. startup building a similar business, he said, so Take Publishing will start growing as soon as it gets funded. But that growth might not be in the United States if Mann’s H1-B visa is denied or gets bogged down for months, he said.

“It would mean we’ll grow our jobs in the U.K., where I am,” Mann said.

With something like a founder’s visa, he’d choose to grow in the United States, where his market and investors are, and he knows other British entrepreneurs would move their companies here if they could.

Polis approached Stephen Yale-Loehr, Cornell Law School professor and EB-5 visa expert, for advice about visa reform even before settling in as a freshman Representative in January.

Yale-Loehr recommended Polis make founder’s visas a pilot program that would expire if it didn’t work. That would make the reform palatable to potential critics, especially given intensity of debate likely to swirl around immigration reform next year.

The buzz about founder’s visas comes at a time when, for the first time in years, a recessionary economy has left some H1-B visas available for founders who can make their situation fit the requirements. But the H1-B availability is likely temporary, Yale-Loehr said.

“As the economy returns, it will become harder again for these immigrants to keep their bright ideas in this country,” Yale-Loehr said.