I believe that Self Employment is allowed on OPT and For STEM categories you can also do the 17 month extension with your own employment provided that you have proper registrations and business license and that you register your company as an E-verify Company. Has any one around here taken this route ?  Also I found some cases, where students on OPT started their own company and later sponsored H1B for themselves and got approved as well.  Yeah, but the company needs to perform business directly in the field of your education ( same as jobs in OPT ) . Any one has any experience ? knowledge about this ?