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How and why I built Japan Dev

japan-dev.com

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Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#71

Post by SapporoChris »

Grimburger wrote: post #4

This was incredibly well-written and an enjoyable story. Congratulations on pushing through and getting traction. Something that resonated: > We had to put 5 million JPY (~$45k at the time) in our business bank account and leave it there. For... some reason. Living in Asia I've come across this bizarre government obsession with "money in the bank" when dealing with them: "You need $15k in a bank account to apply" "Ok…

They have a similar rule for "Specified visa: Designated activities (Long Stay for sightseeing and recreation)".

"Documents such as a bankbook to prove that the applicant’s savings is more than 30 million Japanese yen along with the records indicating the current balance as well as deposits and withdrawals for the past 6 months."

https://www.mofa.go.jp/ca/fna/page22e_000738.html

30 million yen is currently 225k USD, but rates can change rapidly so you need significantly more just to be safe as the visa application process is long. In my experience, the "such as a bankbook" is strictly interpreted as a bank account, a stock portfolio isn't acceptable.

Now the Visa is a 1 year visa, but it issued for six months and then renewed for six months. When renewing you must meet all the original requirements. So, you can withdraw the money after getting the visa, but you need to have it back in the account when renewing! The records for six months appear to indicate that you need the money in the account for six months, but I'm not certain if this is the case.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#72

Post by mytailorisrich »

radiospiel wrote: post #66
mytailorisrich wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't the 25k euros only capital requirements? (i.e. you have to bring them into the company as capital but then they don't have to remain in the company's bank account).

It is also not strictly "capital" requirement. You can bring in non-capital value (like buildings, machines, etc.) into the company, but AFAIK this is much harder and hardly worth the extra hassle.

It is capital requirement, but it does not have to be cash. It is not unique and is allowed in many jurisdictions.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#73

Post by glowingly »

Grimburger wrote: post #4

This was incredibly well-written and an enjoyable story. Congratulations on pushing through and getting traction. Something that resonated: > We had to put 5 million JPY (~$45k at the time) in our business bank account and leave it there. For... some reason. Living in Asia I've come across this bizarre government obsession with "money in the bank" when dealing with them: "You need $15k in a bank account to apply" "Ok…

I had to do this in order to get an apartment in the US, when I first moved here. Needed either proof of income or a large static amount of money in the bank. Static at time of snapshot, they didn't really care if it went away afterwards.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#74

Post by adventured »

stewx wrote: post #52
rtpg wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a huge reason this works is that this site is essentially focused on a small niche: (mostly) Tokyo-based, (mostly) English-heavy IT companies. Everyone knows each other, it’s a high trust environment anyways, and it’s hard to recruit in the first place! And like the article says, recruiting in Tokyo is kind of insanely expensive, mainly cuz it’s scaled to salary and a big chunk. But I think the fact that this…

As of 2019, Tokyo was far cheaper in terms of monthly rent than some major American cities. Rent in Tokyo for a 2BR apartment: $1,903/mo Rent in NYC for a 2BR apartment: $2,909/mo Rent in San Francisco for a 2BR apartment: $3,631/mo Src: Deutsche Bank https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD000000000049...

Tokyo is routinely ranked among the ~5-10 most expensive cities in the world to live in:

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/world-most-expensive-citi...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonytellez/2022/06/29/these-...

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#75

Post by simonswords82 »

blueflow wrote: post #70
alberth wrote: post #69

Off topic: if you’re a private business owner - why share your revenues? It seems like more negative than good can come from it. (A) if you’re in enterprise software - potential customers might be scared away by how “little” your revenues are (b) you’re inadvertently begging for new competition when another solo developer thinks I can do better and cheaper. Etc.

I think its for Self-Promotion.

100% this - it allows the author to get away with posting what is otherwise a total fluff piece promoting their website.

Without hard data, interesting anecdotes and other facts the post won't gain as much traction on sites like HN/Twitter etc.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#76

Post by justusw »

shreddit wrote: post #49
nisegami wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that meaningfully different from the LLC suffix in the US?

Yes, because Germany already has a “LLC”, its GmbH. but if you have less than 25k you have to call yourself “UG (haftungsbeschränkt)”, which, in the end, has the same meaning, only spelled out… it’s like a warning message or something

UG also stands for unlautere Geschäfte, dishonest dealings ;)

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#77

Post by wenc »

Grimburger wrote: post #4

This was incredibly well-written and an enjoyable story. Congratulations on pushing through and getting traction. Something that resonated: > We had to put 5 million JPY (~$45k at the time) in our business bank account and leave it there. For... some reason. Living in Asia I've come across this bizarre government obsession with "money in the bank" when dealing with them: "You need $15k in a bank account to apply" "Ok…

IF you try to understand it from the regulators perspective, it totally makes sense. You see, the law is written for legibility, not for variation, and rightly so. $15k cash in the bank is easier to understand than $300k in ETFs. Your $300k ETF might be stable or it might fall below the value of $15k over 6 months (not likely but government officials are not in the business of investigating the stability of individual ETFs). An old HN comment about makes this point about “legibility” well:

“To the state, one of the most important goals is legibility. The state has an enormous burden of regulation in its various enterprises, and the less variance the easier the job. This certainly isn’t ideal in many, many cases, but in this case a person who likely didn’t make the standards quite rationally trusts a vetted standard over one small trivial test given to them by a company they’re evaluating. FIPs standards are probably much more exhaustive than just a hashing performance test on one piece of hardware.”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25543818

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#78

Post by Morgawr »

adventured wrote: post #74
stewx wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As of 2019, Tokyo was far cheaper in terms of monthly rent than some major American cities. Rent in Tokyo for a 2BR apartment: $1,903/mo Rent in NYC for a 2BR apartment: $2,909/mo Rent in San Francisco for a 2BR apartment: $3,631/mo Src: Deutsche Bank https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD000000000049...

Tokyo is routinely ranked among the ~5-10 most expensive cities in the world to live in: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/world-most-expensive-citi... https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonytellez/2022/06/29/these-...

Let me tell you, I can guarantee you, that's bollocks.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#79

Post by vsareto »

Varqu wrote: post #24
atwood22 wrote: post #15

Congrats on the traction. Somewhat unrelated, but it seems a lot of bootstrapped success stories are job boards.

Yes, it's probably because this is a proven business model and if you niche-down enough, you will be able to serve the audience better than the bigger competitors. The biggest problem though is still bootstrapping the demand side (job seekers) of the platform (supply side is fairly easy, as you can even handpick the initial jobs). We ( https://swissdevjobs.ch & https://devitjobs.uk ) started with articles how to migr…

I guess an aggregator of these sites would be pretty handy. Especially if it had a narrative feature to ask what the user wanted to do, then pointed you to the niche job site.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#80

Post by bfuller »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #23
foepys wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany there is a similar thing where you need to deposit at least 25,000 € as collateral to be able to create a GmbH (similar to an LLC). This is meant to pay for debts in case the GmbH goes bankrupt. But the government recognized that this was a problem so the "UG (haftungsbeschränkt)" was made possible where you are only required to deposit 1 € initially and than can deposit more each year until you can conver…

Aren't the 25k euros only capital requirements? (i.e. you have to bring them into the company as capital but then they don't have to remain in the company's bank account).

isnt it pretty common for people to pay their expenses with their LLC bank # because it doesnt matter what you spend it on if x amount of dollars goes through the account it allows you privilege of credit
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