As a solo european with a secret startup Ive been working on for a couple of years ( Im semi retired young ) where should I apply for an assessment for possible seed? Is enrolling onto ycombinator still the best way?
Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow
21–30 of 242 posts
Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow
#22Payflow: https://www.payflow.es/ (surprisingly, no english version) This is a fantastic innovation if it takes off and if the charges aren't prohibitive; it has the potential to obliterate predatory payday lending. In a world of free instant automatic electronic payments, there's no good reason to delay salary payments until the end of the month.
Interesting, I didn't know payday lending was a thing in Spain.
Delaying salary payments serves two purposes: first, to benefit the employer by keeping your money in their account longer; and second, at least culturally, to force you into a budget cycle "for your own good." People accept these things culturally but there's no reason they should have to.
When I moved to Germany from the US I was a little shocked to discover that I would be paid at the end of the month and not every two weeks. They took the cyclical paternalism one step further, and of course also forced me to give my employer an interest-free credit line. It would be fun to have the leverage to challenge that, but I did not.
What do you think the ideal payment frequency would be?
For wage labor it seems like you should get paid daily at least, but then why not hourly? Might it even be motivational to see your net pay (after deductions of course) dropping into your account every hour, and you get a notification in some app?
For a salaried position I think I'd be quite happy getting paid by the week, especially if my actual salary were set on a weekly basis so I always got the same amount.
Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow
#23Payflow: https://www.payflow.es/ (surprisingly, no english version) This is a fantastic innovation if it takes off and if the charges aren't prohibitive; it has the potential to obliterate predatory payday lending. In a world of free instant automatic electronic payments, there's no good reason to delay salary payments until the end of the month.
I don’t quite understand the benefit. Surely, if you have to take loans to get over the month, this won’t change anything as your overall income is still the same. I guess for unexpected expenses, you can bridge the gap one-time by borrowing from future-you. What am I missing?
Cashflow, the same as for busineses. If you don't have one months' spare cash as a "float", then you may have to resort to lending at the end of the month.
Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not "European startup ecosystem", it's basically "European societies". Imagine how well would SV work if being involved in a bankrupt company (co-founder, major investor, C-suite) made banks refuse to talk to you again for 10-20 years. I believe that was the case in France. You wouldn't even be able to open a checking account, never mention any credit again.
Exactly. If you live in a safe and secured society why would you want to do something risky like creating a startup. One of the biggest success for the EU startup scene was just copying what is done in California, avoiding the risk of trying out new ideas. On the top of that, regulation in the EU is much worse than in the US. This does not help either.
It seems to me that this article is saying exactly the opposite of what you say.
The article is about how Europeans, that live in that "safe and secured society", are creating more startups than before.
>>"On the top of that, regulation in the EU is much worse than in the US. This does not help either. "
If you check those start-ups you can see that most of them are joining Y-combinator but they stay in Europe. So, also the opposite of what you are implying.
Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not "European startup ecosystem", it's basically "European societies". Imagine how well would SV work if being involved in a bankrupt company (co-founder, major investor, C-suite) made banks refuse to talk to you again for 10-20 years. I believe that was the case in France. You wouldn't even be able to open a checking account, never mention any credit again.
> You wouldn't even be able to open a checking account, never mention any credit again. Is this just hearsay? It seems extreme, even for French levels of bureaucracy.
I'm fairly sure you have the right to a bank account under French law, but banks have the right to refuse you as a client.
This means that if you get rejected as a client by enough banks you can go to the Banque de France and they will select a bank that is then obligated to provide you with an account.
Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow
#26This is basically failure in European startup ecosystem that companies needs to go SF, but good for Y Combinator and SF that they can attract best talent.
No. European "companies" look to the US and see that you can lose billions of unlimited investor money for years with no repercussions and no negative consequences for the founders. Now "successful" European startups want in on the money. YC's "most successful startups" routinely lose hundreds of millions of dollars every year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27485360
We have to prevent deflation so money is cheap, and the tech sector is one of the first in line to get it. We have it good folks, cash in while the music is playing.
Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t quite understand the benefit. Surely, if you have to take loans to get over the month, this won’t change anything as your overall income is still the same. I guess for unexpected expenses, you can bridge the gap one-time by borrowing from future-you. What am I missing?
Cashflow, the same as for busineses. If you don't have one months' spare cash as a "float", then you may have to resort to lending at the end of the month.
But again, this reduces next month’s income. So you’ll end up having the same problem every month. Unlike with companies, employed people’s income doesn’t vary between months (or maybe it does for some?).
Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow
#28Payflow: https://www.payflow.es/ (surprisingly, no english version) This is a fantastic innovation if it takes off and if the charges aren't prohibitive; it has the potential to obliterate predatory payday lending. In a world of free instant automatic electronic payments, there's no good reason to delay salary payments until the end of the month.
Interesting, I didn't know payday lending was a thing in Spain. Delaying salary payments serves two purposes: first, to benefit the employer by keeping your money in their account longer; and second, at least culturally, to force you into a budget cycle "for your own good." People accept these things culturally but there's no reason they should have to. When I moved to Germany from the US I was a little shocked to di…
Weekly feels about right, but as you say: what reason is there for the lower bound? We have high frequency trading, why not high frequency wages?
I'm reminded of the minimum wage machine paying out one US penny every five seconds: https://www.blakefallconroy.com/minimum-wage-machine.html
(The minimum granularity is probably that of your timesheet or timeclock, and then we get into how oppressive the surveillance involved in policing that can be, bathroom breaks, screen-watching software, etc.)
Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow
#29Payflow: https://www.payflow.es/ (surprisingly, no english version) This is a fantastic innovation if it takes off and if the charges aren't prohibitive; it has the potential to obliterate predatory payday lending. In a world of free instant automatic electronic payments, there's no good reason to delay salary payments until the end of the month.
Revolut just launched the same feature this week [1]
Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You wouldn't even be able to open a checking account, never mention any credit again. Is this just hearsay? It seems extreme, even for French levels of bureaucracy.
I'm fairly sure you have the right to a bank account under French law, but banks have the right to refuse you as a client. This means that if you get rejected as a client by enough banks you can go to the Banque de France and they will select a bank that is then obligated to provide you with an account.
I don't get why they'd refuse you a checking account, even if you were the founder or one (or several bankrupt) companies. Would they be worried you wouldn't pay their crummy fees? :-)