laverick

Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan is a great book / documentary that explores this view.

Related project & TED talk - Open Source Blueprints for Rebuilding Civilization

https://www.opensourceecology.org/

upwork, linkedin, codementor.io

I've done this before and found it excellent.

I used this service before and found it quite good.

https://findyourcoach.com

Anyone know good SVB alternatives that don’t require US residence? Any that can be opened remotely?

Same issue. iOS w/ Safari & Chrome

About 2 years after starting Basecamp DHH & his biz partner sold a minority stake to Jeff Bezos for "a few million dollars each".

https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-day-i-became-a-millionaire-55...

This is amazing. Belongs in a museum.

Isn't Zillow ignoring the immense value created from all those new beachfront properties?

Looks like they use Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation (tACS).

The military has been doing tDCS (direct current) experiments for a while for increased learning & performance.

I had a friend who used to swear by tDCS and did it very frequently. He attributed all kinds of mood & cognition improvements to it, including substantially reduced need for sleep, improved eyesight (he was born partially blind), etc. He also complained about migraines a lot and liked to experiment with all kinds of supplements, so YMMV.

Tried tDCS myself a handful of times, not for improved learning but for improved focus. If applied correctly it definitely has an effect that I'd consider better / stronger than a cup of coffee. I wouldn't feel comfortable doing it regularly though.

There's a subreddit that used to be pretty active: https://www.reddit.com/r/tDCS/

And here's a good Radiolab podcast, including DARPA Sniper experiments, etc: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/9-volt-nirvana/

I find the issue a bit more complex. If keeping a Greek statue is indefensible, what about land in North America?

No thanks. When that "random freezing" happens your entire subscription business model is at PayPal's mercy.

Circle seems to be far from a Goldman subsidiary. According to Crunchbase Goldman invested once in their Series C. If anything the Bloomberg headline seems to overplay the Goldman connection.

I'd expect $10+k/quarter to require high touch sales & account management in most cases.

Well, starting around grade 3 kids in the Philippines are taught primarily in English, so that's probably not the biggest hurdle there.

Thanks for the German link, made my morning :)

The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr / Tony Schwartz is basically all about that:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68985.The_Power_of_Full_...

I'm in the middle of converting a small production Rails API + Ember app to Rails Views + Vue.js using webpacker and a lot of the techniques discussed. It's certainly been a learning curve, but I'm definitely happier with the new setup for all of the reasons you mentioned.

It's not a one-size-fits-all solution, but for a single dev / small team working on a web-only application it can make a lot of sense.

For anyone interested, Gorails has a series on Vue + Rails that's been very helpful. https://gorails.com/series/using-vuejs-with-rails

I agree. Even if it's a bit of a roundup post, there's limited material on this stuff in general. Even small tidbits on process or philosophy are helpful.

Same. Has worked well all over the world for me, small towns notwithstanding.

:~(

+1 Atlas LLC

We used Adyen for a German-based startup about five years ago. I don't remember it being that difficult back then, but I just handled code. Our biz guys handled the account stuff. For what it's worth, they were both a little profligate and good at telling a big tale, so it may not have been an affordable or easy option back then either.

Yep. The Stripe account isn't the hard part. All you need is a US Address (sorta) and an EIN (I think). You can go for a while without adding either to your account. The US bank account is the hard part, because they have some serious KYC checks, and most banks simply don't do it at all.

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.

two thumbs up if something can be done to improve this that makes my complicated solution below superfluous

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 is more or less correct. As you say, though, they're misguided is in pushing Atlas. It's probably the simplest way for you to get a US bank account, but in many ways it's the worst long-term option. That's because Stripe Atlas creates a C-Corp, which is liable for US corporation taxes and has to file them every year.

You have two other options: 1) Get a US Bank account for your foreign company directly. This is not easy, many banks won't do it, but some will. E.g. I have a SVB account for a foreign corporation (with an EIN) so I can use Stripe in the US for my subscription app.

2) Form a US LLC that's fully owned by your EU corp. A single member LLC can elect to be tax transparent in the US. That means you don't have to pay US corporate taxes as long as you don't have business operations (employees, basically) in the US. With a US LLC it's relatively easy to open a US bank account, though you may need to travel to the US. If you want some expert tax advice for the US component of this setup here's a good guy to ask: http://ustax.bz/

Once you have a US bank account sorted you may need to migrate your Stripe subscriptions. This is not something that Stripe officially supports or will do for you, but after lots of digging with their support I was told that it's possible to do without requiring any re-opt-in from your subscribers. It's just that you need to do the migration yourself by transferring the subscription data. (Details escape me. Please confirm this with them yourself.)

What's the benefit of all this, other than adding a few percent to your gross profits? Well, the market for online business buyers is much stronger in the US than anywhere else. I'm betting on the fact that it'll be significantly easier to sell a business with a US Stripe account than a business with a German / Irish / Hong Kong / Singapore / whatever stripe account.

Of course we're talking a few percent here and a few percent here. Before diving into this rabbit hole I would ask yourself if marketing & sales for a few percent increase might not be less effort than all of the above.

Right, that was a bit long-winded. I don't monitor my replies here much, but feel free to ping me if you have questions.

public @ my_hn_username . org

Thanks for the post. I've been running a small SAAS via Stripe billing and definitely used some of these tricks.

Uhm. That code wouldn't even compile...

Something suspiciously like this happened to me on a second-hand iPhone 6 I bought a few weeks ago. Talk about crappy timing.

Everything pointed to a software issue, but every repair person I took it to (both apple and non-apple) kept saying it was a hardware fault.

Touch ID stopped working and the phone drains super quickly despite not being in use. Hoping Apple can provide a "fix", not gonna hold my breath though.