No. The investor must be engaged in management or policy formulation, and a limited-partner interest with genuine voting rights in a regional-center partnership meets that standard. Day-to-day operation is not required.
Engagement is read from the partnership agreement
A contractor who spent thirty years directing crews may expect to be told he must manage the U.S. enterprise, but the requirement is engagement in management or policy formulation, which the regulations satisfy where a limited partner holds the rights that partnership law ordinarily gives limited partners. What matters is that the partnership agreement actually confers those rights: voting on amendments, on removal of the general partner, on major transactions, together with access to financial information.
Read the agreement rather than the brochure, and ask the regional center to point to the clauses. The other requirements do not soften because the structure is passive. The capital must be placed at risk in the new commercial enterprise, the lawful source and path of funds must be shown in full, the ten jobs must be created and attributable to the investment, and the investor must be admissible.
His sale of an excavation business shows business experience but is not a requirement of the category; the documents from that sale matter for source of funds, not for eligibility.