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I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

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Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#251

Post by dang »

owathray123 wrote: post #119

I for one am more than faintly relieved that Starfighter has fallen. It looked to me like an attempt to find the most direct way possible to parlay the prominent position that Thomas and Patrick have in this community into cash - by literally selling its members. There's a line that's crossed here between being a member of HN buoyed up by the good wishes and advice of your fellows, and using the community as a resour…

To add to what eropple pointed out: what you posted is so uncharitable as to cross into personal attack, and also absurdity, and also makes me wince for this site. Please don't do this, and certainly not create accounts to do it with; we've banned this one for breaking the HN guidelines.

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#252

Post by dang »

102193109301 wrote: post #248

There are enough fools/cheerleaders here for sure, following the same 20 top commenters for a decade.

If you want to posture above the rest of this community, please do so elsewhere; it's in bad taste to do it here.

Also, we've banned this account for making personal attacks, and please don't make throwaway accounts to break HN's rules with.

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12466792 and marked it off-topic.

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#253

Post by antoinevg »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #170
antoinevg wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're based in South Africa and joined the Stripe Atlas beta earlier this year. Solving the incorporation problem is only the first of many problems. --- Please understand that none of the following is a criticism of Stripe. If we hadn't been accepted to the beta we'd be dead in the water right now and our customers would have been screwed. I also expect the solutions to become easier as more people in more countries…

Possibly stupid question for you. Why did you chose Atlas (ie US Incorporation), giving those micro-scale multinational issues, rather than incorporate in SA?

Our situation is quite complex but the tl;dr is:

We were already incorporated in SA but we also needed to be incorporated in the USA if we wanted to keep serving our customers.

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#254

Post by eropple »

tptacek wrote: post #189
owathray123 wrote: post #119

I for one am more than faintly relieved that Starfighter has fallen. It looked to me like an attempt to find the most direct way possible to parlay the prominent position that Thomas and Patrick have in this community into cash - by literally selling its members. There's a line that's crossed here between being a member of HN buoyed up by the good wishes and advice of your fellows, and using the community as a resour…

You'll be happy to know that me and my cofounders are still diligently at work finding new ways to convert HN karma to cold hard cash.

I'm just surprised you and patio11 don't have Patreons already.

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#255

Post by borski »

jjguy wrote: post #250
tptacek wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so cool. I'd love to swap notes sometime; as you know, I did pretty much the same thing for Matasano, which is why we started this company. I am still totally sold on challenges and hiring! That's still what I'm doing! We're just changing the business model.

It's clear tech recruiting needs disrupting. We're still too dominated by traditional procedures that provide poor results. Folks with our background know in our guts this CTF-style thing has potential, we've just got to work out how to make it sustainable. Would love to swap notes sometime. My wife is angling for an excuse to visit Chicago, but seeing as how winter's coming maybe y'all should visit Austin!

You went public?! This is madness. Does this mean I can use my 'volatile' moniker again? :)

As one of the guys hired through this (who later helped, though 99% of it was cav), if you guys do catch up and trade notes, I would /love/ to be there. We're actually thinking of building something similar at my current company, but focused on a bit of a different type of hire.

[edit] look what I found: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4work5wxys4i29z/Photo%20Sep%2009%2...

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#256

Post by antoinevg »

markdown wrote: post #216
antoinevg wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're based in South Africa and joined the Stripe Atlas beta earlier this year. Solving the incorporation problem is only the first of many problems. --- Please understand that none of the following is a criticism of Stripe. If we hadn't been accepted to the beta we'd be dead in the water right now and our customers would have been screwed. I also expect the solutions to become easier as more people in more countries…

> The moment you're operating in two countries you are subject to the same legal, tax & accounting rules that multi-national corporations have to conform to. Was it necessary to set up a company in RSA? Why not just be employees or contractors of the US company you happen you own? That's what I was going to do when I looked into doing this (myself, not via Atlas).

That was also our original idea but it turns out to not be that simple:

1) Whether you are an individual or a company, you still need permission from the South African Reserve bank to "just happen to own" a US company.

2) Whether the offshore company is owned by an individual or another .za company, you are still liable for tax to both the .za government and the offshore country. If you don't want to be double-taxed you need to set up a structure that allows for transfer-pricing and that conforms with the international tax treaties in effect between the two countries.

tl;dr whether you or your company owns the offshore entity makes no difference to your legal & tax obligations. :-P

edit: word salad

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#257

Post by thr0waway1239 »

antoinevg wrote: post #148
basisword wrote: post #48

First time I've seen Atlas. I'm immediately worried. If someone starts a company using this I presume it's subject to US laws? What does this mean: 1. For taxes? If I live in the UK and start my business with Atlas does the US get the corporation tax revenue or the UK (or a split of the two)? 2. For data security/privacy? Is the data I store now subject to access by the US government through National Security letters…

We're based in South Africa and joined the Stripe Atlas beta earlier this year. Solving the incorporation problem is only the first of many problems. --- Please understand that none of the following is a criticism of Stripe. If we hadn't been accepted to the beta we'd be dead in the water right now and our customers would have been screwed. I also expect the solutions to become easier as more people in more countries…

> one small suggestion for the Stripe Atlas team if anyone there is reading this

Well, there happens to be this guy Patrick, who sometimes hangs out here under the nickname patio11 :-) And he even left a comment on this story:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12465108

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#258

Post by antoinevg »

patio11 wrote: post #36
antoniuschan99 wrote: post #24

Wasn't Paypal taking payments over the internet in 2006?

It took me ~2 months to get BCC sold over Paypal, which was my major processor until Stripe came along. (I don't remember what the holdup was, but I very keenly remember the shucks-have-to-do-eSellerate decision.)

thr0waway1239 pointed out the obvious: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12467898

So I thought I'd try to draw your attention to a suggestion I made in:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12465972

;-)

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#259

Post by chvid »

davidw wrote: post #41
chvid wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Denmark you log in using your national identity card (a card with some one-off passcodes) on the following webpage; limited liability companies carries a fee of approx 100 USD, other forms of companies are free. The process takes a few minutes in the simplest case: https://indberet.virk.dk/myndigheder/stat/ERST/Start_virksom...

It's not for nothing that .dk is #3 on this list: http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings But their reported procedures/costs differ from what you wrote: http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/denmark/#... Something that's nice in the US as compared to most continental European countries is that no 'initial capital' is required.

It is the same here.

Over the past few decades we got our rules "synced" to the rest of the EU (or the rest of the world). We now have several forms of limited liability companies. The capital requirement ranges from approx. 0.20 USD (IVS) to 100.000 USD (A/S) (or more ... if you want to make a bank).

It used to be that to do a Danish LLC you had to put up at least 20.000 USD in capital but because of the EU you could just go to the UK and start a LLC with no/very little capital there and then operate in DK with the same creditor protection.

Anyways; the point was that in many places creating a company is of very little trouble.

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#260

Post by syngrog66 »

JamesBarney wrote: post #143
angersock wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was there a pattern in them getting turned down, like that applicants were too expensive or had the wrong skillset or something? I stopped referring people to a former employer because I saw how much they jerked around people during the pipeline. Good luck on the new news, and thanks for getting Starfighter as far as you did. :)

Totally Speculating but I bet it was that software companies have enormously high false negative rates. Each company has it's own set of weird totally random interview biases. So Thomas kept on finding awesome recruits who were getting turned down for totally dumb reasons. I imagine it's like the HomeBrew situation every day except 10 times worse because you recommended the candidate and the interviewer is your clien…

》 otally Speculating but I bet it was that software companies have enormously high false negative rates. Each company has it's own set of weird totally random interview biases. So Thomas kept on finding awesome recruits who were getting turned down for totally dumb reasons.

THIS

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