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I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

kalzumeus.com

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Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#131

Post by eropple »

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…

I think this is super unfair. Connecting people with jobs isn't "selling them". I rip on recruiters a lot--probably more than most people--but a good recruiter, and I know a few of them (hat tip to Bivium here in Boston, among others), is looking for a win-win arrangement because they know they'll be working with you again down the line. Starfighter seemed like an attempt to be a good recruiter at scale. It didn't work out, and that's a bummer, but that's pretty far afield from your allegations.

And you didn't need to use a throwaway. Put your name on something if you're going to be casting shade on people. I do (here, regularly), you can too.

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#132

Post by smoyer »

dave_sullivan wrote: post #51
chatmasta wrote: post #8

What I like most about the long term vision for Atlas is that, if it's truly "as easy as spinning up an EC2 instance" to form a new corporation, then it will be possible for a single entrepreneur to create complex global corporate structures previously limited only to multinational corporations. How nice would it be, as say, a digital nomad, to be able to have a single "holding company" based in HK, and dynamically c…

From Accelerando (great book if you're into this stuff) "My name is Alan Glashwiecz, of Smoot, Sedgwick Associates. Am I correct in thinking that you are the Manfred Macx who is a director of a company called, uh, agalmic dot holdings dot root dot one-eight-four dot ninety-seven dot A-for-able dot B-for-baker dot five, incorporated?" "Uh." Manfred blinks and rubs his eyes. "Hold on a moment." When the retinal pattern…

I just reread Accelerando and had forgotten how good it was.

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#133

Post by matchagaucho »

ridruejo wrote: post #32
matchagaucho wrote: post #21

I know from personal experience the sub-title to this article is "How I'm justifying a bad decision". Entrepreneurs know when they're making a bad decision, whether consciously or not. [Edited for brevity. No disrespect, but hate to see a Developer give up on their independence]

It would be if he was joining a corporate job. This is not "just a job" at a regular company working on a regular product. People talk about making the world a better place all the time but few do. Working on Atlas at Stripe has that potential for impact and you get to work with awesome founders. Congrats both to kalzumeus and Stripe

It doesn't sound like Sr leadership role that can influence strategy, so it's basically a "job".

He'll come back to the dark side soon enough and build a sustainable business model (with the benefit of experience at Stripe, of course) :-)

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#134

Post by Bartweiss »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #70
nrb wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, in Illinois it costs more than that just to file your LLC and reserve your company name.

Wow, why is it so expensive? In the UK you fill out a form online and within 24hours it's setup. It costs £12 so approx $15.

Variance in state law, plus our always-painful bureaucratic overhead. Many states will let you set up for $50-$100, but I don't think anywhere in the US is as cheap as twelve pounds.

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#135

Post by nicky0 »

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…

I think if you had left off "I'm immediately worried" you might not have got the downvotes. It comes off as kneejerk criticism, event though you didn't mean it that way.

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#136

Post by nicky0 »

kasey_junk wrote: post #108
idlewords wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, nothing but a logo, a tiny server farm, and a long series of tweets. I spooked myself into starting the process with LegalZoom at some point, but then couldn't figure out how to transfer assets, and then I got real sleepy.

Don't forget the expensive bus insurance.

Well if you're going to drive an expensive bus, you're gonna want to insure it.

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#137

Post by superuser2 »

stdclass wrote: post #67
davidw wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In Austria, you don't need any capital at all, to start a EPU (One-Person-Company) which is really convenient.

In most states you can freely run a business under your own name, and if you'd like a business name to be simply an alias for yourself (not a separate legal person) a Doing Business As arrangement is trivial, fast, and cheap.

But the whole point of a company is limited liability, an entity which can own property, sue and be sued, etc. separately from its collection of owners.

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#138

Post by icebraining »

idlewords wrote: post #90
nstj wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorporated entities enjoy the benefit of "limited liability"[0], ie: if your company does something "bad" you can't be liable beyond your share capital contributions. For example, if you make a self driving car and sell it, and it results in harm, and someone sues the company, you can't lose any of your personal assets; rather your only loss can be the capital which you put into the company. tl;dr: if you do someth…

I think for businesses like "running a website" this threat is overrated, to the point of absurdity, but again: willing to accept that I'm the weirdo.

I wonder if you'll say the same when Pinboard gets sued for copyright infringement by its archival feature. I hope it never happens, but saying "it's just a website" is a little cavalier.

(Yes, it merely takes an publicly available work that the users could download themselves, and makes it available to each individually. That's essentially what Aereo did, and look at them now.)

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#140

Post by oldprogrammer2 »

blackbagboys wrote: post #99
rev_bird wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liability protection, if nothing else. If someone sues a company, they can't (in theory) take the CEO's house. Also, in the US, you can save a bunch of money on payroll taxes if you elect to be taxed as an S-corp. The short version is that you only pay those taxes (Social Security, FICA, Medicare, etc etc) on money you get in paychecks -- so, if you make $100k in a year and "pay" yourself $70k, you end up with the ot…

What becomes of that other $30k? I assume there's a reason why you wouldn't just pay yourself $30k and keep the tax-free $70k.

The IRS, according to FS-2008-25, requires the salary to be "reasonable", and they list factors that would be considered by the courts if a dispute arose. The IRS also has the authority to reassign dividends or distributions as compensation.
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