- Ellen Yang launched Punctuation PR before graduating from Stanford in 2025 after repeated job rejections.
- By early 2026, her agency had grown into a six-figure public relations business with more than a dozen clients.
- The story also warns F-1 students that self-employment must fit OPT rules and reporting requirements.
(CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES) — Ellen Yang launched Punctuation PR about three weeks before graduating from Stanford University in 2025, after months of job rejections left her without a full-time offer and pushed her toward building her own company.
By early 2026, Yang had turned that decision into a six-figure public relations business, according to a first-person account published on April 18, 2026. Her path ran from freelance assignments to a full-time company, at a moment when a weaker job market has pushed more graduates toward contract work, startup roles and self-created jobs.
Yang wrote that she began applying for jobs during the first week of her senior year, expecting to secure work before commencement. Instead, she spent months tracking applications and often failed to reach even a first-round interview, despite years of prior marketing work and additional startup-related experience during college in Silicon Valley.
Project-based work began to replace the traditional job search. A professor asked her to help with a book campaign, and a journalist she met through Stanford’s alumni network hired her for editing, pitching and newsletter support.
Those assignments became the base for her agency. After a rejection for a minimum-wage internship following three interview rounds, Yang decided to form an LLC, build a website and create a role for herself rather than wait for a conventional employer to make an offer.
The move came quickly. She relocated from the Bay Area to Los Angeles the day after graduation in 2025 and started working full-time from her apartment, turning side projects into paying clients.
Money stayed tight in the early months. Yang said she sold clothing and furniture to manage credit card bills before the business gained traction.
Within six months, she was earning more than many of the entry-level jobs she had originally pursued. By early 2026, the firm had reached six figures in revenue and served more than a dozen clients.
Her account reads one way for domestic graduates and another way for foreign students. A Stanford University graduate who forms an agency after commencement may look like an example of labor-market adaptation, but the same sequence raises immediate immigration questions for anyone working under F-1 and OPT rules.
Graduating from a U.S. university does not give foreign nationals unrestricted permission to work for themselves. International students who remain in the country after completing a degree usually rely on post-completion Optional Practical Training, known as OPT, or, in some cases, the STEM OPT extension.
That framework allows some business ownership and self-employment arrangements, but not in every situation. The work must fit the person’s authorized category, and the structure of the business matters as much as the fact that income is coming in.
A common mistake starts with a simple assumption: opening an LLC, freelancing for clients or sending invoices independently counts as ordinary employment. Immigration rules ask a narrower question. They focus on whether the activity is authorized under the student’s status, properly documented, related to the degree when that link is required, and reported through the right channels.
Those distinctions carry immediate consequences during OPT. Unemployment limits still apply, and a graduate who waits until clients are already signed can discover that the business model does not match the terms of the work authorization.
That risk grows during STEM OPT. The extension carries added conditions tied to employer structure, training plans and reporting duties, which can clash with casual freelance setups or loosely organized startup arrangements.
A graduate who pieces together consulting work or project contracts may see flexibility. Immigration compliance can become harder to read at the same time, because the line between authorized employment and unauthorized work is less obvious in gig-style arrangements than in a traditional salaried job.
Yang’s experience sits inside that wider labor-market shift. Graduates who once expected to move directly from campus to large-company hiring pipelines now often build income from writing, communications, consulting, startup work and short-term contracts, especially when permanent openings remain scarce.
That change gives young workers more room to improvise. It also exposes international students to more status risk, because immigration categories were not designed around every version of modern freelance and founder work.
Starting a business also leaves a separate question unanswered: how the founder will stay in the United States over time. A profitable agency does not by itself create durable immigration status, even when the company is real, the clients are paying and the work has grown into a full-time operation.
International graduates who want to keep building beyond OPT need a separate legal path. That can involve an employment-based route, a founder-friendly visa option or another lawful status category, but the business itself and the immigration strategy are not the same thing.
The distinction matters because young founders often discover it late. Early commercial success can create the impression that the hardest part is over, even though immigration law still asks whether the person has a status that permits the next stage of work.
Students considering the same route after graduation need to check their work authorization before they rely on self-employment income. Activities have to fit OPT or STEM OPT requirements, documentation has to match the structure of the work, and reporting deadlines and unemployment limits still govern the period after graduation.
That makes Yang’s story more than a profile of one entrepreneur. It captures the pressure facing graduates who enter a weak hiring market and begin looking outside the usual script, where a small agency or freelance practice can look like the fastest way to keep moving.
For U.S. citizens, that choice may be mostly financial and professional. For international students on F-1 and OPT, the first invoice can also become an immigration decision, with consequences that last far longer than the search for a first job.
