No. Each person’s own continuous full-time qualifying foreign year and relevant history must be assessed. A group start date cannot supply a missing period.
Use individual chronologies within the company plan
Exclude U.S. days while considering whether brief trips preserve continuity. Coordinate the actual processes without promising that both applicants will be ready at the same time.
The company needs to prepare evidence of the proposed operation itself, not just the individual and the corporate relationship, and that means reviewing premises, staffing, and financial capacity before treating a planned launch date as a guaranteed immigration outcome. If the strongest continuous twelve-month stretch occurred before the layoff, delaying the petition risks pushing that period outside the three-year lookback entirely, leaving only the post-rehire period available, and that period may not yet reach a full year. The requirement is one continuous year of qualifying employment abroad within the three years preceding the petition, so filing early on the strength of a fourteen-month association that includes contract months puts the case at risk over a point that four months of patience resolves. For a new office, the initial period lasts one year, the filing must show sufficient premises and financial ability to remunerate the beneficiary and commence doing business, and the business must develop enough to sustain qualifying management; the L-1A limit is seven years.