111–120 of 125 posts
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Do you plan to offer incorporation in other business friendly countries - say singapore?
Have you considered http://startupr.com ? I am not affiliated with them, but are using them currently and they are providing great service.
Silicon Valley bank is frankly awful. I used them for three years but just recently switched over to Capital One Spark Business Checking[1] and love it. Spark is all online, has zero fees unlike SVB (I used to pay $15/mo), and has solid technology again unlike SVB. The account gets setup instantly and your debit card and checks arrive about a week after opening. The Spark iOS mobile app is really solid and allows for…
How is this better than a traditional bank?
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One specific example is venture debt. If you raise a bunch of money from a whitelisted VC, SVB will lend you money on top of that. Maybe you raise $9 million from Accel Partners in a series B, and SVB lends you another $3 million. You get cash now without much additional due diligence, pay it back, over a few years, and keep more of the equity. Another nice perk is working a banker you can call who understands the ca…
We were profitable with 7 figure revenue in under 2 years and we couldnt get so much as factoring from SVB, even with Fortune 500 invoices. Any big bank will give great service, there's nothing unique here anymore. They all want your company to succeed as it means more business for them.
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Their pricing page says: "The minimum charge is 1,000 transactions a month, so the transaction cost will be at least €100 a month." Doesn't look startup friendly at all.
True. Unfortunately, what their website says and what their sales staff say on email are completely different things.
For US company holders, adyen is totally out.
"Adyen being a European based acquirer has set the requirement of at least 50% of the transaction volume to be European based."
"This is a rule set forth in order to comply with card schemes such as Visa and MasterCard."
From their sales.
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Honestly, talking to their sales was like pulling teeth.
I couldn't get anyone on the phone and neither would they call me. What would have taken a 5 minute call to go through the details. Turned out to be an all day event through email. /facepalm.
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Adyen does not work with startups. I contacted their sales and they slammed the door shut immediately. They were actually quite rude and the tone was like an automated email. Their wording was they only wanted to work with LARGE companies which already processed LARGE volumes. Unless someone from Adyen wants to clarify?
Their pricing page says: "The minimum charge is 1,000 transactions a month, so the transaction cost will be at least €100 a month." Doesn't look startup friendly at all.
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Aren't LLC's problematic for offering employee equity options? I've done lots of startups, and you want a structure that makes it easy to put together employee pools, easy to raise funding with, and easy to sell/merge. LLCs are easy to setup, but if they create lots of problems down the road it's not a structure you want.
LLCs are a swim army knife. You can basically do anything, with way less rules and fees. LLCs can totally offer equity. LLC's are easier to sell than a C corp. Plenty of pluses. If you don't want to get VC funded, you should default to LLC.
The fact that LLCs are indeed a 'swiss army knife' IMO also works against them. The LLC agreements tend to be bespoke documents which are far too "crafty" for my liking. I like straightforward cap tables with clearly defined rights and preferences and ISO options, whereas LLCs tend to reinvent the wheel and end up with opaque capital structures which require costly legal work to implement.
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We're happy Stripe customers, but our Stripe account is based in an EU country, and our entire volume is in USD. For some Stripe policy reason, we can't transfer USD from Stripe to our EU bank account, it's not allowed. You can only transfer USD to US or Canadian bank accounts. We've been in contact with Stripe support over this, and their recommended solution was to use Atlas and setup a US company and bank account,…
I'm going to look into this for you and will follow up by email. (If I find something which is useful for similarly situated companies, I will post what I learn here.)
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What you're describing isn't unique to Stripe. Pretty much every payment processor works this way. I've looked into a lot of them have yet to find a mainstream one that will deposit USD to a USD account in Europe, HK, SG, etc. (If Adyen does specifically that without big fees then great, but it's news to me.) What Stripe support is really telling you is that you need a US bank account to avoid the exchange fees. This…
To clarify, you managed to sign up for a US stripe account with a foreign corporation? That's an interesting approach. Thanks for sharing.
I managed to get it via SVB - just applied on their website. I originally spoke to them with the intention of doing it for a US LLC as described above.
It turns out that they were happy to open an account for the foreign corp directly without a US entity underneath. To qualify I had to demonstrate that we were potentially high growth and would be seeking accelerator / angel / VC investment at some point. (Would they fire you if you didn't end up doing that? Perhaps not.)
The monthly fees for this arrangement jump to a couple hundred $ per month maintenance after 2 years. Not sure if their deal with Atlas is different on that front.
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You should try Adyen https://www.adyen.com/ It's an European company and it's the main competitor to Stripe on our continent. They are actually a bit older and ten times bigger than Stripe, however they don't advertise much. Disclaimer: I am NOT affiliated with any of these providers.
Adyen does not work with startups. I contacted their sales and they slammed the door shut immediately. They were actually quite rude and the tone was like an automated email. Their wording was they only wanted to work with LARGE companies which already processed LARGE volumes. Unless someone from Adyen wants to clarify?