Can you drop me a line at michael.schade@openai.com with more info and your account email? I'll take a look. And yes, that bot has to go—many improvements coming on that front!
660 karma · joined January 7, 2011
Also pumped to see them officially releasing a Chrome extension to send to reMarkable. Long overdue. It doesn't look like it's out yet, so here's a link to the unofficial version I made last year (used by over 700 other reMarkable owners):
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/send-to-remarkable...
Open source at https://github.com/michaelschade/remarklater
The technical solution to modeling this out and providing more advanced forecasting is super interesting, and the product itself looks delightful to use (more than the spreadsheets our early support team used to be buried in navigating, at least :)
If it's helpful context, Home has been around for two years and People (its precursor) was made in 2014. We now have a team helping shepherd it along -- you're right that an staple is curating so it doesn't become bloated. We intend to continue to share updates as we learn more, so hopefully others can learn from what works (and doesn't!) as well.
We don't think of Home that way, but there is an element of helping people know each other. We intentionally haven't built any liking, following, or even posts on Home. Home excels at taking information Stripes produce elsewhere -- in code, documents, and so on -- and surfacing that up through common interfaces to improve access for all; on the people side, Home excels at helping folks learn about others they might not have otherwise met (we're a distributed company and so it's not as easy as seeing someone in the hall). This part of the post attempts to speak to that:
> Home can’t paint the complete picture of the person behind the page, but it helps break the ice. Outside Home, we encourage people to meet in person—one of our more structured approaches involves a chat bot that helps schedule lunches among Stripes who are least likely to know each other (more than 5,000 lunches have been facilitated since it was set up!).
Check out https://www.donut.ai/ -- the company behind it is up to some neat stuff.
We regularly discuss this :) I'm not sure yet how valuable open sourcing it will be in the long run. Part of what makes Home work well for us is how tied it is to how we actually work day-to-day -- that regularly changes as we grow and learn. As an open source project, we'd feel a commitment to keep it working for the existing user base, which might perversely hold back progress on Home and be a net negative for the community as Stripe itself tries new ways to operate.
For now, we intend to continue sharing the lessons we learn from Home and similar tools so that others can benefit from that, and to keep open sourcing it in the back of our head as we design the underlying APIs and infrastructure so we have optionality if it makes sense down the line.
The tax requirements will vary for each company. At a minimum, you'll need to pay US federal income taxes on your US income, and pay the Delaware Franchise Tax each year. Since we know this is a nuanced topic, we've partnered with PwC to give you guidance from a US perspective when you are invited to Atlas.
The gist is that certain countries have a better business and banking infrastructure than others for entrepreneurs looking to establish a global company. This isn't necessarily specific to the US—and we'll be expanding Atlas to more countries—but the US is a solid starting point, based on what many entrepreneurs in emerging markets already do.
For example, incorporating in a place like Delaware allows companies to issue stock to employees, makes it easy to raise money from global investors, and provides the stability of clear corporate rules and case law. (Most Fortune 500 companies are established in Delaware). Getting started with a US incorporation also makes many more services accessible to you, that might not be available if you incorporated in your own country with less support for new businesses.
It's a personal decision, for sure, but if you're in a country where you're finding your business constrained by the lack of particular banking infrastructure or access to business services, we think Atlas can help.
Being able to move Stripe accounts between countries more effortlessly would make a lot of sense. There are a couple technical aspects we have to think through, but I'd like to see more support for it myself. In the meantime, maybe we can do something faster to help out with your current setup -- want to drop me a line at michael@stripe.com with more details? (Would love to hear any other feedback you have too!)
As for Norway, we're actually live already! You can start accepting payments today: https://dashboard.stripe.com/register?country=NO.
We've worked closely with Silicon Valley Bank to make the setup tenable for entrepreneurs in emerging markets. Making it easy to start a business from outside the US is the point of this program, and we're looking forward to making more improvements as we work closely with more entrepreneurs outside the US during the beta and continue expanding Atlas globally.
Thanks for the feedback! If you end up taking part in the beta, we'd love to hear more about how it works for you in practice.
https://stripe.com/atlas/faq#Are-there-any-additional-costs-...
To kick off the beta, we found that the C Corp was the best place to start based on what entrepreneurs in emerging markets were already looking to do. We go into much more detail about C Corps and their tradeoffs when we invite someone to the beta. In addition to other company structures (like LLCs) here in the US, we're also looking at equivalent structures as we expand Atlas globally.
No need to come to the US for the bank account or any other part of the process.
We kicked off a private beta in Brazil not too long ago that might interest you. You can sign up here: https://stripe.com/global#br. (Once you have a Stripe account, you can accept payments from anyone, no matter where they're based.)
If you end up deciding to incorporate in the US (say, if it helps with your fundraising), the best approach during the beta is a referral through the Atlas network. We're eager to expand this as we learn more from entrepreneurs like yourself.
> - Can I get some virtual office with address, mail forwarding, etc, sometimes offered by registry?
After incorporation, you’ll have a registered agent in Delaware with a corresponding address. We’re looking at adding support for incorporation in other geographies as we expand Atlas.
> - Is Stripe a full state approved registry or do they use 3rd party registries? What are the ongoing costs (there can be significant differences)?
We work with a third party service. More on costs here: https://stripe.com/atlas/faq#Are-there-any-additional-costs-...
> - I Striped stated as the registrant in the Delaware corp database?
Nope.
Incorporating in the US, for example, allows companies to issue stock to employees, makes it easy to raise money from global investors, and provides the stability of clear corporate rules and case law. (This is why 60% of the Fortune 500 are incorporated in Delaware). There are also many more business services available to US companies than might otherwise be available to companies based in smaller countries with emerging economies.
So while you're right that there are taxes and other things that come into play when running a business, we find people are already coming up against these roadblocks today -- we built Atlas to reduce this complexity. We hope to see more businesses started because of this.