Founders Hub portal auto-routes my LinkedIn login to a closed prior account, blocking access to my current company's Step 2 verification - requesting moderator escalation

Question

Founders Hub portal auto-routes my LinkedIn login to a closed prior account, blocking access to my current company's Step 2 verification - requesting moderator escalation

Jannik Florian Hofmann 0

Hello Microsoft community and moderators,

I am hoping a moderator can help route this internally, because my account state straddles two contexts and I cannot bridge them from the user side.

The situation:

I previously had a Microsoft for Startups registration under a German sole proprietorship under my personal name. That registration is fully closed and the final credits expired in November 2025.

I now have a separately incorporated Estonian company, Hofmann Labs OÜ, building Astronaut Sales (astronautsales.com), a real-time AI sales coaching desktop product on Azure AI Speech and Azure OpenAI. I applied to Founders Hub with the new company about 12 days ago. The Step 2 verification was rejected with no email notification. I only saw the rejection via a banner in the Azure portal.

The core problem I cannot fix myself:

When I sign into portal.startups.microsoft.com with LinkedIn, the Founders Hub portal automatically logs me into the old, closed profile. The portal does not appear to have a way to switch to the Hofmann Labs OÜ context.

This means:

The Founders Hub portal does not show the Hofmann Labs OÜ application or the rejection.
The Re-verify Domain flow for astronautsales.com is inaccessible.
Filing a support ticket through the portal files it from the wrong account.
Re-applying after the 14-day cooldown will likely hit the same automated LinkedIn-to-old-account match and be rejected again.

The Azure portal, on the other hand, correctly recognizes the Hofmann Labs OÜ subscription. The two systems are out of sync.

What I have already done:

Opened an Azure subscription support ticket as the primary channel, since Azure is where the new company is correctly recognized. Asked for cross-team coordination with the Founders Hub team.
Filed a Founders Hub support ticket from the misrouted old account context, specifically asking for the LinkedIn decoupling. Flagged the wrong-account issue clearly in the ticket itself.

What I would appreciate from the community:

If a Microsoft moderator can flag this for internal escalation to the Microsoft for Startups team, I would be very grateful. The two ticket IDs can be shared privately. The single backend action that unblocks everything is decoupling my LinkedIn profile from the closed registration.
If any founders here have resolved a Founders Hub login that auto-routed to a closed prior account, I would appreciate hearing what worked and which team performed the decoupling.

Thank you, kind regards,

Jannik Florian Hofmann

Founder, Hofmann Labs OÜ

Divyesh Govaerdhanan 10,885 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2026-05-05T20:13:05.1466667+00:00

Hello Jannik Florian Hofmann,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A,

Your post has been flagged for escalation, and it can be routed internally to the Founders Hub team. The LinkedIn account decoupling you need is a backend operation that requires internal access, so this is the right path.

While you wait, here is a step worth trying in parallel. On portal.startups.microsoft.com, look for the option to sign in with a Microsoft account or email directly rather than using LinkedIn. If the old LinkedIn-to-profile mapping is browser session-based, signing in via a different identity provider may surface the Hofmann Labs OÜ context instead of the closed sole proprietorship registration.

I hope you are unblocked shortly.