unicornication

That's a solid point, maybe it's probably worth finding folk on my own rather than leveraging programs like that one. Thank you!

I suppose a better distillation of my question is: @HN, if you had a blank canvas and the budget to build an A-player team, no geographic constraints, how would you do it? Where would you do it? Remote, office? Any other advice?

Oh my mistake for lack of clarity, the specific program I am referring to in the UK has a mandated starting/1st year salary of $40K USD for high performing Oxbridge grads who understand startups. I'd gladly pay more.

I am open to paying anything up to $300k for key hires. However, the crux of my question is, what approach should I take, and what city should I take it in?

Hi! Thank you for the reply :-)

I stumbled across Bento - the fact that it was based off a central deposit system means we need a high degree of liquidity 7 days in advance?

We are interested in a way to acquire and spend customer funds in near real-time. If Bento had a service that masked customer card information with a virtual card and charged something like 1% with a cap, that would be ideal!

Thank you for the comment!!

I actually just checked in with Stripe because that sounded awesome! They say that the funds that customers put in via ACH are not able to be drawn upon for up to 5 days, until the transaction "succeeds".

We are slightly worried about using a credit card / line of credit as a buffer to that 5 day ACH, as it would be super risky as we could easily blow past a $100K credit line in the few days ACH would take to settle, leaving us high and dry.

If customers were to "pre-fill" accounts, that would allow for some really cheap funds, though :O Thank you so much for that tip!

Unfortunately the product I'm looking to build is a large logistical undertaking as well as a technical one, and I have great (and American!) co-founders that can help with the funding and hiring.

While I see the merit in the first half of your post - I'm still looking for outside investment, and I'm unsure a seed/angel investor would be willing to put a bet on an international company. As well as that "working" for a for-profit entity, even if it is back home - I believe is violation of status.

Tricky problem :-(

You make a good point. Unfortunately, our product is still in its infancy and we're not looking for VC funding for a while. We're still in seed/angel territory, and that's the round I'd like to work toward, those smaller investments typically won't be made in overseas businesses because of higher risk.

Though, your comment is indeed helpful, thank you very much for it! I'll consider a strategy that works.

I think I'm potentially on the right track for an O-1, but I think I should get a lawyer to help clarify the probability of success.

I'm 19, was sought out & contracted to work at Goldman Sachs without a degree for a year. Have written 10 scholarly papers in AI, 2 published. Have won a national business competition and semi finalist in an international one. Wrote an editorial for a big newspaper back home. 1 news article about me winning a competition. Have built some pretty interesting things with provocative demos, like a talking AI doctor in your web browser.