Dutch Startup Visa vs DAFT for American Founders

What each route is

Start-up. A one-year residence permit for an innovative founder from outside the EU/EEA/Switzerland, with a facilitator. RVO advises the IND on facilitator, innovation, and the step-by-step plan. IND start-up, RVO.

DAFT. A treaty-based self-employed residence option for US citizens. The IND fees page groups “Work as a self-employed person (including Dutch-American Friendship Treaty or Dutch-Japanese Trade Treaty).” The live conditions are on the IND self-employed page, which asks for your nationality. Use that wizard. Do not take capital amounts, permit lengths, or “easy approval” claims from immigration blogs.

Differences that actually matter

• Innovation and facilitator. Required for start-up. Not the start-up scheme’s tests on DAFT. DAFT still requires you to be self-employed in the sense the IND uses for that treaty.
• Length. Start-up is one year, then another basis (usually self-employed). DAFT validity is whatever the IND currently issues for that treaty application. Read it on IND. Do not copy a number from memory.
• Who it is for. DAFT: US citizens (the Japanese trade treaty is a parallel treaty line on the fees page, not DAFT). Start-up: non-EU/EEA/Swiss founders with an innovative company, including Americans if that is the better fit.
• Fees (2026). First application for start-up and for self-employed (including DAFT) are both listed at €423 on the IND fees page. Confirm before you pay.

When start-up still makes sense for an American

If the honest business is an innovative venture that needs a facilitator year, start-up can still be the right first permit. DAFT does not become mandatory just because you hold a US passport, and start-up does not become mandatory just because you have a pitch deck.

If the honest business is ordinary self-employment (freelance practice, existing US client base, no innovation story), start-up is the wrong product. Forcing an innovation narrative onto a DAFT-shaped life wastes a year.

What we will not invent

We will not quote an unofficial minimum capital figure, a success rate, or a claim that DAFT “has no requirements.” We will not describe NLVentureDesk as a DAFT law firm. We focus on the start-up route as a proposed facilitator. If DAFT is clearly the better first conversation, we will say so in a Strategy Session and send you to the IND wizard rather than sell the wrong year.

Japanese nationals should use the IND self-employed wizard as well; the fees page names the Dutch-Japanese Trade Treaty next to DAFT, as a separate treaty, not as DAFT.