Owning shares is not automatically disqualifying, but TN requires employment with a U.S. employer and does not permit self-employment. A stake that gives you control over the enterprise, or over your own employment, can cause the arrangement to be treated as working for yourself rather than for an employer.
Control, not percentage, is what the analysis looks for
People reach for a number — is ten percent safe, is fifty percent fatal — and no reliable number exists, because the assessment is about whether someone genuinely employs you. A minority holding paired with a shareholders' agreement that gives veto rights over your own termination can look more like self-employment than a larger holding in a company with an independent board. The documents that decide it are the shareholders' agreement, the articles, any voting trust and the employment agreement itself.
It is also worth separating the commercial motive from the immigration one: an equity award intended as recognition can often be restructured, deferred or held through a Canadian entity in a way that changes the analysis. A licensed U.S. immigration attorney should review the actual documents before anything is presented.
Hypothetical example: Mateo is a prosthetics designer offered a minority interest in a U.S. rehabilitation-products company that wants to hire him. The initial assessment should yield a rights table showing who elects directors, approves his pay and can terminate him; the signed shareholders’ agreement, not an informal assurance, settles those questions.
He should sequence the work by checking the profession and credential first, then testing the ownership rights before accepting the shares. A common error is focusing on the percentage while overlooking a veto over his own removal. TN is confined to citizens of Canada or Mexico, and the proposed work cannot involve operating the applicant’s own U.S.
business.