Don't use your race to explain why it's troublesome to move to America. I'm a caucasian from Canada and it is very difficult for even me to move there. While race does have a little bit to do with it, shitty American politics are even worse.
ASK HN: Do I have to be in America to make success?
41–50 of 62 posts
Re: ASK HN: Do I have to be in America to make success?
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
What form are you referring to? I've poked around the US Embassy Cairo site and I don't see any out of the ordinary requirements. Also, I sincerely doubt there are any forms that only have to be filled out by practitioners of a specific religion.
I imagine he's referring to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Registration program, which is pretty blatantly targeted at Muslims (based on a quick glance, the only nation on the list that's not majority Muslim is North Korea). EDIT: See ICE's website for an official source: http://www.ice.gov/pi/specialregistration/index.htm and http://www.ice.gov/pi/specialregistration/archive.htm . The domestic registration…
That's an unsourced article that has been flagged as unsourced for a long time, for something that ought to be easily sourced. The fact remains that young people from Arab countries travel to the United States a lot, and some immigrate each year.
P.S. A test case to try out would be to try to travel to all the countries that are said to be on that list with a United States passport that has a visa stamp in it from Israel. That can be problematic too.
Re: ASK HN: Do I have to be in America to make success?
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need to be in America or a US citizen to start a US company. The company is essentially just an entity to 'hold' the business assets so you can easily sell them to another American company.
1. Get visa, go to U.S. 2. Start U.S. company 3. Find U.S. investors, notify them you won't be staying in the country for more than a few months 4. ?????? 5. Profit
You don't need to go to the US to start the company. It's just a paperwork exercise so you've got a company in a convenient form to sell or raise investment later.
What's staying in the US got to do with building a website? If you build a business that makes money, then it doesn't really matter where your arse is in the world.
How is any of this fundamentally different to the Tim Ferris-style of running your business from a beach somewhere? If you have a web-based business your physical location only matters if you need millions of dollars to run it - and if that's the kind of business the OP is planning, then he needs to rethink his basic model and come up with something more appropriate to his situation.
Re: ASK HN: Do I have to be in America to make success?
#44Such an interesting discussion for me. I'm Hany, an Egyptian American, currently living in the states and involved with technology. The one thing that I absolutely will say is better in the United States than other places is funding. The idea of Venture Capital (and the sheer amount of investors) is found more here than anywhere else. A good network of capable engineers is nice but honestly you can find that in a lot…
Well, I am glad to fin you here. :) There are many challenges that guys on this website are NOT aware of! For example.. if I want to charge my users, it's very hard to do that, because PayPal is NOT available for Egyptians. Also it's NOT easy to setup an international merchant account, to accept payments on the internet. There are very critical challenges, which makes it much harder to make any success... not to ment…
You really won't find that culture anywhere but here, really. Even Europe doesn't fully have that yet.
Finding success while working in Egypt is really not impossible. It lends to just working differently. You probably can't grow a consumer website in Egypt; but SaaS (software as a service) doesn't necessarily have to be created from an American company.
Also, there's such a HUGE need for Arab consumer websites. Somehow, Masrawy, YallaKora, and yes even Maktoob just don't cut it for me. The level of quality is rather low, so that's a great in for someone like who seems knowledgeable and a HackerNews user. There's definite opportunity there.
As I said. Email me and we can talk more.
edit: I think someone mentioned this already but it's worth re-mentioning. In some aspects, living outside of America and a costly place like San Francisco, can be a great benefit. Simply put, if you and I both make $1000, your $1000 will go a much longer way in Egypt than mine will here in a big expensive American city.
Re: ASK HN: Do I have to be in America to make success?
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
For vacation only! You cannot use that for business. Being a tourist for a few weeks will not result in funding...
You said: For vacation only! You cannot use that for business. Sorry to nit pick but it's always worth clarifying these issues if people might make decisions based on them.. You can use the VWP for business: http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html The Visa Waiver Program (VWP) enables nationals of 36 participating countries to travel to the United States for tourism or business (visitor [B] visa p…
You're right, I'm wrong on that one. Business trips are covered, but you cannot actually work.
Re: ASK HN: Do I have to be in America to make success?
#46Such an interesting discussion for me. I'm Hany, an Egyptian American, currently living in the states and involved with technology. The one thing that I absolutely will say is better in the United States than other places is funding. The idea of Venture Capital (and the sheer amount of investors) is found more here than anywhere else. A good network of capable engineers is nice but honestly you can find that in a lot…
Well, I am glad to fin you here. :) There are many challenges that guys on this website are NOT aware of! For example.. if I want to charge my users, it's very hard to do that, because PayPal is NOT available for Egyptians. Also it's NOT easy to setup an international merchant account, to accept payments on the internet. There are very critical challenges, which makes it much harder to make any success... not to ment…
Just objectively, I think it's unrealistic for you to expect anyone to fund a five year old site that has only managed to attract a few thousand users, and apparently not enough paying users to cover its own server costs. The fact that you are not in the United States is probably not the reason for your lack of success to date.
That said, as an entrepreneur who is NOT in the United States, I agree that setting up payment systems is a real pain point. My suggestion is that you get a part-time job. It will cost you a few thousand a year to own an international business (register it anywhere) and you may end up paying prohibitively for the right to process credit cards (5%+ per transaction).
But it is possible. In the meantime, if you really want to slum it, there is nothing stopping you from putting up a payment screen and collecting credit card numbers, then getting your friend in the US to collect the cash for you while you build a compelling case for someone to lend you the money to do things more legitimately. I suspect that once you've started your own business and have a revenue stream, you won't want investment though.
Re: ASK HN: Do I have to be in America to make success?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
You said: For vacation only! You cannot use that for business. Sorry to nit pick but it's always worth clarifying these issues if people might make decisions based on them.. You can use the VWP for business: http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html The Visa Waiver Program (VWP) enables nationals of 36 participating countries to travel to the United States for tourism or business (visitor [B] visa p…
You're right, I'm wrong on that one. Business trips are covered, but you cannot actually work.
It's funny though because there are some exceptions even to that, if you start digging :-) Last time I checked "repairmen doing in-warranty repairs" can use B-1/VWP. There are a few other odd exceptions too.
Re: ASK HN: Do I have to be in America to make success?
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I imagine he's referring to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Registration program, which is pretty blatantly targeted at Muslims (based on a quick glance, the only nation on the list that's not majority Muslim is North Korea). EDIT: See ICE's website for an official source: http://www.ice.gov/pi/specialregistration/index.htm and http://www.ice.gov/pi/specialregistration/archive.htm . The domestic registration…
That's an unsourced article that has been flagged as unsourced for a long time, for something that ought to be easily sourced. The fact remains that young people from Arab countries travel to the United States a lot, and some immigrate each year. P.S. A test case to try out would be to try to travel to all the countries that are said to be on that list with a United States passport that has a visa stamp in it from Is…
[deleted]
Re: ASK HN: Do I have to be in America to make success?
#49Write something useful that people will pay you money for, and you can do it from anywhere. People have been successful since before America was America. This will continue.
In fact, your costs are much lower outside the developed world, reducing your risk and how much money you have to find to start your business (if anything). Your customers can be anywhere. Spend low, earn high. And I'm willing to bet that the competition is much lower because The Valley isn't even aware you exist, or that your town or city exist. You could be super-successful and still be under their radar.
Turn what you consider your weakness, into your strength.
Re: ASK HN: Do I have to be in America to make success?
#50Well, actually if you were a "young rich Arab muslim", then you'd enter without any problems. :)
I have a suggestion, not about entering USA.
From what I have observed, many of non-US based successful start-ups are domestic projects and then a big company comes and buys them, as in your example. My suggestion here is, you can target the arab world. As this has enough people, I can also suggest you targeting the muslim world which consists of 1.5 billion people. By doing so, you'd not have to leave your country or deal with the crap.