California's high-speed rail project was 'captured' by costly consultants - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-california-high-speed-rail-consultants-20190426-story.html <comment><USER2> I experienced this in my first job... A regulatory decision around approval of a new power line in California... where the consulting and regulatory costs of simply discussing whether the line should be built literally ran over $100 million. Paid for by all California power users in their rates.

The sad thing is the state of affairs can be used by any party that for any reason wants to fight anything it want (with money): just leverage environmental protection laws even when it's intellectually dishonest to do so, and win by miring the process in hundreds of millions of dollars of total waste.

Of course that's just the abuse of law/process side of things. Separately we've seen the loss of expertise in house within governments and the rise of consulting firms required to do everything.

There was a time when cities built their own transit! Now you have to hire expensive Consultants from Europe or Asia because the idea that people could figure this out on their own with their civil engineering degrees and experience in adjascent fields is simply verboten.

If anyone hasn't read The Power Broker about the rise of Robert Moses, it's a great read: You can disagree with much of his methodology/power hunger/abuse of people, and you can certainly disagree with what he built, but what he did demonstrate is that the people with the plans who can execute while everyone else is talking about grand dreams can GET STUFF DONE.

We need more people in government who actually have a plan, that are actually willing to take bets on people, to hire high-quality people, to see hard projects through, not to punt everything off to consulting firms.

Let's be honest, consulting firms never feel ownership. Their deliverable is that beautiful PDF. No PDF ever built any grand infrastructure.

And the Golden Gate Bridge, and the New York subway, never even had the glorious joy of benefiting from either PDF or PowerPoint.

Let's admit it, when it comes to building infrastructure we've completely failed and we need to have a serious wake-up call.

Sadly most people have no idea how bad it has gotten because when they spend a hundred million dollars collectively deciding whether to build a power line in the San Diego desert, they barely notice that they're paying an incremental portion of a penny more for every kilowatt-hour of power.

<comment><USER3> > We need more people in government who actually have a plan, that are > actually willing to take bets on people, to hire high-quality people, to see > hard projects through, not to punt everything off to consulting firms.

I share your frustration, but there are evolutionary pressures at work here. The people most likely to be in government are those most likely to survive in it.

Seeing hard projects through does not increase your "fitness" much.

Knowing how to manipulate bureaucracies, build up little fiefdoms, acquire the pull to bring in expensive consultants, manage the reciprocal relationships with those consultants, etc. -- all this stuff _does_ increase your fitness in a bureaucracy.

The only two proven ways to cut this Gordian Knot are smaller sovereign jurisdictions (suddenly those bureaucrats have to answer to people who are many fewer degrees removed) or executives with more unilateral power (authoritarianism/CEO-style governance). For better or worse, the American system has evolved in the opposite direction on both those poles.

<comment><USER4> That's not "evolutionary pressure", it's corruption.

<comment><USER3> If you're going to comment, make it substantiative. Arguing over the definitions of words, and not the underlying phenomenon, is the opposite of that.

If "corruption", as you prefer to call it, leads to selection pressures and selects for those most "fit" in the arts of corruption, then "evolutionary pressure" is a perfectly adequate metaphor, and likely helpful for analyzing the situation.

On a related note, the knee-jerk application of moral terminology rather than clear analysis to government issues is one of the principal hacks that corrupt bureaucracies use to perpetuate themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Consultants get paid to do what you want them to do.

If the government contracts for some consultants and lets them "take over", then it's their fault. They were either unclear in their direction, providing incorrect direction, or incompetent at managing the contract.

If they do not have the expertise to act as their own general contractor, they should hire one.

Really, since federal funds went into this, the agencies managing this should be investigated by the federal government and the state should have to pay back the funds that they mismanaged.

<comment><USER6> Even the ones who saw this coming probably had no real way to work around it. I read a quote once - I can't remember who said it and am too lazy to google it - but it was something along the lines of "people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but they'll never forget how you made them feel". It's supposed to be inspirational, but to me, it's the most depressing fucking thing I've ever read in my life because it's so accurate. They won't remember that when you said "this timeline is unrealistic" that you were right, all they'll remember is that you made them feel bad. The brutal accuracy of it, though, has definitely inspired me to stop trying - I do what I'm told and no more, because trying to be helpful or actually be forward thinking is a surefire recipe for disaster. I do make people "feel" good, though, except on here where I'm "salty".

<comment><USER7> Quote is from Maya Angelou

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are some parallels here to London's troubled Crossrail project. Politicians and civil servants took their eyes of the ball and turned project management almost completely over to the private sector. For years, everything was apparently going fine and the project was on time and on budget. Suddenly, just weeks before it was supposed to open in 2018, it was revealed to be years behind and potentially billions over budget.

[https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/true-scale-of- crossr...](https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/true-scale-of-crossrail- problems-laid-bare/10038753.article)

(And, for an even more crazy civil construction project failure, see Berlin Brandenberg Airport)

<comment><USER9> For the Berlin Brandenburg Airport story, have a look here:

      https://onemileatatime.com/berlin-brandenburg-airport/

Everybody expected it to open in 2012, people even got plane tickets for flights departing from there, but then it never opened. With all the cost accumulated since then, it would have been cheaper (and faster) to just tear it down and rebuild from scratch.

<comment><USER10> [https://onemileatatime.com/berlin-brandenburg- airport/](https://onemileatatime.com/berlin-brandenburg-airport/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's amazing how terrible we've become at public works.

The Golden Gate Bridge was built in 4 years. Ahead of schedule _and_ under budget!

The Bay Bridge took 5 years, also ahead of schedule and under budget.

This was the 1930s. Imagine what people thought would be possible in the futuristic 2000s. Surely we've gotten a lot better at building things in nearly a century? Better technology, machines, engineering, materials...

Well, recently we rebuilt a small portion (just 2.2 of 8.2 miles) of the Bay Bridge. It took 11 years to build. Years behind schedule and 2,500% over budget.

Seriously, why isn't this considered unacceptable? It's such a shame compared to what we could be accomplishing.

<comment><USER12> Largely because we decided not to build public works.

When we do get one, the pressure is so high to succeed and to cut costs that people reliably focus on outsourcing responsibility and notional cost-savings, and then when that falls through on recrimination and fixes. We pressure private profit-seeking companies to make "bids" without putting up any kind of collateral, on the chance that if _we did it_ we might waste money employing some extra labor or employ a union.

Something like 50% of the politicians in this country simply _doesn 't believe we should do anything_ as a public work. They do not believe in public works. They will actively sabotage public works in the hope that they will go overbudget and prove their philosophy correct. Compromising with these people instead of cleansing their ideology with holy fire nets "public-private partnerships" and "bid processes" and "inquests" and "deadlines" and "being cancelled in disgrace" and thus further anxiety about the next project, but an inability to compensate with higher bids.

Things would be a lot easier if we just wanted to build things, and paid people to build things, even if this meant getting into the business of building things. Instead, we want to be dramatic in our compromises, pretend that waterfall infrastructure planning is viable and can achieve perfect efficiency and predictability, treat limited liability corporations as moral actors which can be held culpable for giving us the lies we asked for, and regularly re-avow our faith in the market.

<comment><USER13> Oh, let's not let the other half of the politicians off the hook entirely either. I mean, there's a reason that some proportion of each contract must go to minority owned businesses, or that employers must be union shops that pay at least the median wage, or...

And if we were still willing to kill people when making those projects, they might go a little bit faster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Calling a lot of these contractors "consultants" is rather misleading. WSP-- the biggest contractor--is the "rail delivery partner." They're responsible for overseeing everyone else, dealing with environmental review, dealing with engineering contingencies, etc. $700 million sounds like a lot for a "consultant" but seems pretty reasonable for what is basically the general contractor on a $50-100 billion engineering and construction project.

<comment><USER15> > on a $50-100 billion engineering and construction project.

That rangeright: they "estimated" the project would cost $33B and be done in 12 years .... 12 years ago. And now they want $100B and 30 years.

Such companies have an obvious profit motive to cause overruns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Okay. So the project is $44 billion over budget, and the consulting contracts (not just the overages, but the entire contracts) add up to less than $2 billion. Where does the other $42 billion in overages come from?

<comment><USER16> I'd assume that it comes from land acquisition, lawsuits, and general underestimation as to how much this would actually cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow I had no idea they were actually already constructing this rail line, and it's actually going to go all the way into central San Francisco, that's great! I thought it was all just a vague idea and people wanted a hyperloop instead.

<comment><USER2> Sadly, Newson actually cut off the ends so now that it's going to be only in the Central Valley.

Of course I think it's a political stunt on his part where he probably figures if we build the Central Valley bit it'll be politically nuts _not_ to complete the ends where all the population state lives later.

But basically it's a fiasco.

And by the way, liberal blue Peninsula residents from Palo Alto etc have been the primary blocker for this entire project from the very beginning using environmental impact statements to try and kill high speed rail line going through their environments, something that would increase the value of their cities. It's really sad. Basically another version of we don't want to see housing built NIMBYism at its worst.

<comment><USER18> > Newson actually cut off the ends so now that it's going to be only in the > Central Valley.

No, he didn't. Newsome announced that construction would proceed on the part that was already an announced as the initial construction segment with federal construction funds committed and that only design and environmental work would proceed on the rest _while additional federal and /or private funding was secured for construction._

Which was pretty much a big nothing announcement, since that was pretty much already how things were working (sure, it was theoretically possible for the state to fund construction on other segments without outside funds, but it hadn't planned on doing so), but was quickly seized on by enemies of the project (including the Trump Administration) as being something other than it was.

Which is all not to excuse Newsome; at best, his handling of the matter was grossly incompetent.

<comment><USER14> That doesn't sound quite right: [https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics- government/capitol-aler...](https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics- government/capitol-alert/article226151030.html)

> "Let's be real," the new Democratic governor said as he announced a scaled- > back plan for high speed rail. "The current project, as planned, would cost > too much and take too long."

If there is not a concrete plan that is viable, the project could sit in the "design and environmental review" phase indefinitely without moving forward.

<comment><USER18> > That doesn't sound quite right:

Yes, the non-substantive framing language around the substantive announcements sounds very different than what was actually announced, but what was actually concretely announced—that construction would proceed as committed on the ICS and that design and environmental clearance activities would proceed on the rest while the state sought federal and private funding—is _exactly_ a continuation of the status quo ante.

Whether Newsome was trying to be seen as "doing something" about an issue that was perceived as a problem without actually concretely doing anything or whether he was trying to kill the project by giving political fuel to it's enemies while being able to say to supporters of the project that he had take no concrete steps against it is unclear or whether perhaps he planned concrete changes that somehow were below the level described in the announcement but his staff drafted an announcement that was too high level to capture the substance of the change is hard to say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Public officials need to start going to jail for wasting money like this.

</comment><comment><USER20> Sounds like no one person or group wanted to take responsibility for the project. If the project fails, they wanted the blame to be distributed among as many people as possible.

<comment><USER19> Sounds like..government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you contract out your design work you need to then hire people as smart or smarter then the contractors to oversee that work.

</comment><comment><USER22> And some people want government to run healthcare? the mind boggles.

</comment><comment><USER23> Where there is money there are people trying to get a piece.

This is why we need regulations.

</comment><comment><USER24> Sounds like the problems Hertz had with Accenture

</comment><comment><USER25> This is sorta tangential...

I immediately thought of these sort of flops when I musk/spaceX announce the boring company.

These things happen all the time. Where I live (dublin), the overcoat scandal du jour is a big hospital build that is costing 300% over budget, due to this sort of failure.

Then follows the finger pointing, moral righteousnous, promises that heads will roll, long, boring speeches (we are very good at these here) about greed and accountability.

But... like enterprise software contracts... all the agreements are carefully designed so that liability doesn't stick to you when failure inevitably comes.

Anyway... Musk. Being this name-brand business magnate makes avoiding liability much harder. If they were contracted to do a boring priject, they'd naturally have something riding on success. Boring company is just an example, but name brand contractors for city level projects may be useful... A good name to put on the line.

Just a thought.</comment>


Stripe now supports ACH payments - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/accept-ach-payments <comment><USER3> When I last worked on a billing system about three years ago, we looked _so_ hard to find an ACH provider. There was just nothing out there. This is an enormous advance.

The problem we had was that we issued moderately large invoices monthly - <USER2> could be from $1k to $50k. We wanted to be paid quickly, so we tried to convince our customers to pay by credit card (through Stripe) and enable automatic payments, but we had trouble when customers would bump up against credit card limits.

So, for our bigger clients, we were relegated to asking for checks to be sent by mail. This meant we couldn't automatically charge customers every month, and instead needed to badger them to send their check - all of a sudden, we needed an accounts receivable _team_. We couldn't just ignore the problem since these were our _biggest_ accounts, too.

Stripe's pricing is almost comically friendly here - credit card transactions are usually in the ballpark of 2.7% + $0.30, so even when card limits weren't an issue, we'd be paying out the nose on the transaction - 2.7% of $10k is $270. The new ACH payments would cost just $5.

Anyways, this is a serious accomplishment. The underlying banking regulations and technologies around ACH are thorny. Good job, Stripe!

<comment><USER4> It's insane how expensive financial transactions are in the United States. In the UK, the equivalent of an ACH transaction would be a BACS payment, which costs roughly 30p ($0.45) for a small business per transaction, although some banks will do them for free. Many smaller businesses however would just use Faster Payments Service for payments under £10K, which is like wire transfers in America, except they rarely cost more than 25p ($0.35) and once again, many banks will process FPS payments for free for small businesses.

<comment><USER5> It's because of all the fraud on the backend they have to fight. I'm sure banks would like nothing more than to have a simple system where they only charge half as much but net 2x the transactions. Lots of overhead with fraud.

<comment><USER6> It's not. It's because the largest banks are all stakeholders in the Automated Clearing House system, they make far higher margins on faster out of band methods (wire transfers), therefore it doesn't behoove them to improve.

There is some progress being made though, slowly and painfully.

[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/04/229224964/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/04/229224964/episode-489-the- invisible-plumbing-of-our-economy)

<comment><USER7> I should also note that there is powerful Fed-chartered initiative, called the Faster Payments Task Force, going on right now. It combines +300 of the nation's payment stakeholders (including big banks, networks, retailers, etc). We've made a ton of meaningful progress on speed, standards, and more.

Big news coming in the next few weeks...

(learn more at [https://fedpaymentsimprovement.org/](https://fedpaymentsimprovement.org/))

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the effort, and for posting this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In college I worked part-time for a music social network startup that sold songs and paid artists a commission, kind of like iTunes. I had to write a cron job that would issue the artist payouts every night by writing ACH files in plaintext and SFTPing them to SVB.

3 years later it's great to see Stripe providing this, but I will always have an oddly fond memory of working on that. It felt so obscure and unnecessarily difficult.

<comment><USER9> > It felt so obscure and unnecessarily difficult.

I earned a bit of money in the 90's doing a lot of those types of data transfers. I get the feeling 70% of IT is just data munging.

<comment><USER10> > I get the feeling 70% of IT is just data munging.

The remaining 30% is, as far as I can tell, fixing bugs in the data munging code.

<comment><USER9> Leave some room for the UI folks - although that is basically getting humans to munge the data as a pre-step for the computer munging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The UI component presenting the login form for major banks is troubling. It seems like encouraging users to feel comfortable entering their online banking credentials into anything other than their bank's web site is a bad move.

<comment><USER12> Until banks get developer friendly and support OAuth, I'm not sure what else you could do if you want real time verification. I guess micro deposits could still work if you had faster rails, but ACH is still a batch process.

<comment><USER13> > Until banks get developer friendly and support OAuth

We may wait a long time for that one.

<comment><USER7> Not necessarily. BBVA has already this with Dwolla's real-time payment tech, FiSync. (Limited, I know, but it's the only cool proof of concept like it out in the wild)

Also, there's been a lot of work done through the Fed's remittance coalition on a supradirectory for destinations. Adding authentication capabilities would be the next logical step and they've already committed to using open standards (lots of ISO stuff to compete with though). Combined with whisperings of big bank projects and JP Morgan's CEO very vocal hatred for screen scraping, Oauth could be a powerful and quick-to-market alternative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hate to see this honestly. Stripe is already notoriously vulnerable to credit card fraud and this is likely not helping their cause.

I'd love to know how long you should expect for an ACH payment to clear and into your bank account. The two day period for credit cards is so small. Who checks their statements every single day? This is obviously the benefit of using Stripe if you're the merchant, but it leaves you vulnerable.

We can only pray that Stripe accepts some responsibility for verifying these ACH transfers.

Fraud on Stripe is a two-fold problem. They've got fraudsters signing up for Stripe accounts and running cards through them. They've also got fraudsters making purchases on Stripe-based sites. Obviously, Stripe prefers that the charges are made to legitimate users. That way they're not out all the money.

Edit: It appears it could take "up to 5 days" for the payments to be processed. This is entirely on the bank's side of the equation. I guess from there you'll only need to wait your 2 days (7 days for some users) to receive the ACH into your bank account. I see massive fraud coming in here.

<comment><USER15> Plaid co-founder here. When users connect their accounts via the Plaid instant verification process, we actually allow developers to get a greater understanding of the user. Via Plaid, you can do things like validate the available balance and check the account owner's identity -- which can significantly reduce the likelihood of ACH fraud.

<comment><USER16> Wait, so if I pay someone with ACH, they get to see how much money is in my bank account? WTF?

<comment><USER17> No. Plaid instant verification uses your bank login info to get the ACH numbers along with current balance, etc. You can't get that just with account and routing number.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, like I mentioned upstream, not sure why any developer should have access to my account balance...

<comment><USER19> I mean, these are fintech companies we're talking about here. If you're signing up for these services your generally already deciding to trust the company with personal data. Plus, you still have to login to your online banking with Plaid, it's not like developers have unlimited, unauthorized access to you r account balance and transaction information.

<comment><USER18> There's a difference between - "I am paying you with ACH routing and account information" and "The payment platform exposes, to the app, my account balances". A huge difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Glad to see Stripe release this, but the $5.00 fee cap doesn't seem competitive for frequent large transactions compared to other providers that have a flat fees from $0.25 like Dwolla, with more listed here [http://www.merchantmaverick.com/need-know-accepting-ach- paym...](http://www.merchantmaverick.com/need-know-accepting-ach-payments/). Why the higher cost?

<comment><USER21> Dwolla also charges monthly fees: [https://www.dwolla.com/pricing](https://www.dwolla.com/pricing). You need to pay $1,500 a month in order to charge more than 10 bank accounts.

In general, most providers have a lot of fine-print. We tried to come up the simplest and fairest pricing we could.

<comment><USER22> Still, it seems unusual to charge a percentage fee. From what I understand, one of the main benefits of ACH over credit cards is the flat fee structure.

<comment><USER23> Compared to credit cards, $5 is pretty flat isn't it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> From a consumer perspective, paying via ACH is much more dangerous compared to paying with a credit card. In case of fraud (e.g. hacked payment provider), recovering from ACH fraud is much harder than recovering from a credit card fraud. While you will likely get your money back at the end, it is also likely that you will spend many months talking to your bank (not to mention returned checks or other payments in the meantime).

Overall, I strongly recommend to NEVER pay via ACH from an account that is used for other purposes. Personally I have a special account at my bank just for rare ACH payments I need to make. I can transfer money instantly from my primary account when I need to make a payment. And of course this special account has all the overdraft protections, etc. disabled.

</comment><comment><USER25> Making this system integrate with Plaid out of the box was a smart move. Plaid is so much better for users' than having to manually enter bank account and routing numbers.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks like the TOS acceptance button on this page is spitting out a 500 error [https://stripe.com/docs/guides/ach](https://stripe.com/docs/guides/ach)

<comment><USER21> Sorry about that -- this only affects a small number of users, but we'll have it fixed momentarily.

<comment><USER26> This has now been fixed. Sorry again for the trouble!

<comment><USER5> Thanks! Just confirmed it's working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > "And so, today, we're delighted to launch support for ACH payments for all > U.S. Stripe users."

Any ETAs for international? More particularly Canadaland?

<comment><USER28> Hopefully they'll get there. We're a UK based company with 90% of our revenue from US based enterprises, so moving to this would be awesome :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wish the pricing was more competitive. In the US, I've used Beanstream - which is $5/mo + $0.25 flat per transfer. In Canada I've used Versapay - $0/mo + $1 per transfer.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is super important for b2b companies that need to accept payments of multiple thousands of dollars (e.g. Annual subscription / support), which largerish companies typically will not hand over a cc for, either due to CC limitations or (usually) internal process red tape.

<comment><USER31> I would say both yes, and no.

My experience in B2B is that medium to large companies will want to pay you via ACH. However they have little to no interest in entering their online banking ID and password into something like what Stripe is providing.

They already make ACH payments, using their own tools, and all they want from you is your routing and account number so they can do so. Assuming you are a US company, with a US bank account, you've already been able to accept ACH payments in this way for some time.

This setup from Stripe seems to be targeted at consumers, or maybe small business owners, as the purchaser. I'm sure that's a need, but probably not a huge one. Many of my customers that are medium/large businesses want to make ACH payments, almost none of the small businesses have an interest in that.

<comment><USER32> This is my experience too. When a customer wants to buy my product and the cost is over $5K, I give them the following and it shows up in my bank in about 3 days or so.

Bank Address, Swift Code, Account Number, Routing Number.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Wait, is there no minimum?

Because 0.8% on very small amounts is very practical for micro payments.

$1 payment would cost a fraction of a penny.

What am I missing?

This will be game changing if my observation is correct.

<comment><USER34> I'd wager the only thing you're missing is the high friction involved in setting up a bank account. I've got my credit card stored in my password manager vault, and even if not, I've got that sucker memorized. Contrast that with digging through the clutter on multiple horizontal surfaces in our house to find a checkbook so I can find the routing number and account number, waiting for the two deposits to show up (because I use a small bank that hardly ever shows up on these "automatically authenticate" lists), and then trying to remember what I was trying to spend $1 on...

But that's literally the only problem. The fee structure is AWESOME for micro- payments, so for the right things (small subscriptions?) this could be amazing.

<comment><USER35> But once you've set up your bank account once, it will work on every site that takes Stripe.

That's the big sell as a merchant -- chances are your user is already configured for payments. And the larger their network grows the more likely this is true.

<comment><USER36> I'm pretty sure this isn't true. If both Merchant A and Merchant B are using stripe, and I authorize my bank with Merchant A, that doesn't mean my bank is authorized with Merchant B.

Especially because in most cases, you can be totally transparent with the fact that you are using Stripe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Non-USA person here, I am amazed that this is even allowed. Giving your username and password to a third party? Think about all the security problems, like creating a fake Stripe. You are basically trusting every website you use. In my opinion, there should be a free and open protocol between banks for payments. Where you get redirected after you clicked on the pay button.

</comment><comment><USER38> Can this be used, or setup in a way that supports the standard invoicing model?

i.e. I want an api call to email a .pdf to a customer, and then have them "click this link and enter your info to pay via checking account". Several kinds of customers, including consulting, would be much happier with a "push" model of paying, than a "pull" model.

<comment><USER39> Our startup, Invoiced, does exactly this. You can easily send invoices through our API [1] that customers can pay from the email. Now that Stripe ACH payments have been released we will be supporting it in the near future.

[1] [https://invoiced.com/docs/api/#send-an- invoice](https://invoiced.com/docs/api/#send-an-invoice)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10889918](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10889918) looks like another announcement about this. It was posted slightly later so we'll treat it as the duplicate in this case.

Eventually we'll have some form of URL grouping when there are multiple stories on a topic.

</comment><comment><USER25> I am trying to build a lending platform where we by definition cannot afford to lose 3% on each transaction. I'm am thrilled to see this. We have had to hand jam our current system with a local credit union (where we literally have to print out forms and bring it to them), so being able to switch to a fully programmatic system is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER41> Just got my beta invite too. Got frustrated at the lack of an easy ACH payments platform long ago though and went ahead and made my own. Launched [http://paynote.io](http://paynote.io) on January 1st of this year.

<comment><USER42> This looks very interesting. Tell me more! How are you offsetting the cost of fraud when payments by fraudsters will cost them nothing?

<comment><USER41> Well it's not for ecommerce for one thing. So fraud will be a lot less just in terms of use case here. This is individuals and companies are paying invoices for services rendered. There's not an area where a fraudster would gain a lot from a fraudulent payment. The ACH Payment system I'm using is also FDIC insured up to 250k.

<comment><USER43> Is this for real? I just started a consulting business and have been searching for a good, inexpensive way to receive relatively large payments on my invoices. How are you going to make money? Is this good up to $50K?

EDIT: I just tried to sign up, and this seems _really_ scammy. You need a photo ID uploaded, along with my bank account details? How do I have any assurance you're not going to drain my bank account?

<comment><USER41> Interesting you find that scammy. It is for real though. I'm a consultant and it's been a real pain trying to collect large payments without getting killed on fees. The information is required by law by the patriot act for any bank transfers done over the internet. I can't get around it. It's required by law and by my ACH provider.

<comment><USER43> I hear you. I'm not saying it _is_ scammy, just saying my scam-radar pinged pretty loudly.

I'm all for ease-of use, but the flow went:

* Ah, a new service I could use!

* Sign up, cool, that was easy. Just needed my email.

* Verified my email with the 6 digit code, that's cool, sorta like Square.

* Sign in... Verify identity... OK, that makes sense. Hang on a tick, you want a copy of my ID? That's the first thing I'm asked for? Who's asking?

It's the who's asking bit that made me stop in my tracks.

I'm in the same boat and have eaten the high fees in order to get paid quickly when I was first starting out. It's a great service, if it's for real...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Stripe should start supporting the rest of the world. I'd love to use their services.

<comment><USER45> GoCardless is another ycombinator business providing a very similar platform for the whole of the UK & Europe. [https://gocardless.com/](https://gocardless.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> @pc - curious if you have plans to integrate ACH into your Checkout product. Seems like an incredibly difficult UX problem, but I'm sure your folks are up to the challenge :)

<comment><USER21> No immediate plans. ACH is _mostly_ popular for B2B use-cases whereas Checkout is optimized for "lightweight" transactions. You can obviously imagine cases where an integration would be useful but we decided not to hold up the launch in order to build that. We'll calibrate based on feedback going forward.

<comment><USER14> @pc How do you feel about the assumed fraud risk you are taking on with this? I'd love to have a conversation with you about it (in private). You can email me at rwmurray (@) vt.edu. I know you all have quite a few vulnerabilities in your system and can't ever find a way to share them.

<comment><USER21> You should definitely email the fraud team! Try firstname.lastname@example.com. (Feel free to CC me; email@example.com.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Did micropayments suddenly become possible for the first time? Would this be a great service to charge 1000 users $0.10 each? Or for that matter, for selling ebooks?

<comment><USER48> I think it would need to support payments in the opposite direction too -- deposits into someone's account. I'd love to see this!

<comment><USER49> Stripe Connect allows sending money to other peoples account

<comment><USER50> Other people's Stripe accounts yes, but not just arbitrary accounts.

<comment><USER49> With Managed Accounts you can create accounts for other people via the API that besides for a line in your terms of service they don't need to be aware of Stripe for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Just an FYI to everyone accepting payments: Fighting chargebacks for ACH payments is a lot harder than just calling up a cardholder's bank. With Stripe now making ACH payments easier, I suspect the card shops " " will see a rise in routing/account numbers for sale.

And as always, just a friendly reminder Stripe's "fraud protection" is beyond trivial to get circumvent, so don't think they're doing you a favor.

</comment><comment><USER52> From what I gather from the comments, you as customer have to log in into your bank's online banking portal to initiate the transfers.

Don't you US guys have an equivalent to SEPA direct debits where I just give the IBAN bank account number and the merchant will automatically deduct the money from my account?

If so, then no wonder why US people are so dependent on credit cards...

</comment><comment><USER53> This is great.

Next up: I'd love to see true Debit card transactions (i.e. With Pin) at Debit prices (perhaps 10-30c regardless of transaction size). That could really enable a ton of smaller items to be sold to a very large audience.

</comment><comment><USER54> So is it possible for simple ACH->ACH deposits? I'm looking to take out of my bank account and put into another (royalty payments for the curious). Ideally without having to hold a Stripe balance, just simple xfer.

<comment><USER49> You could take a look at combining ACH and Stripe Connect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> So with ACH I can directly bill my customers' account. ACH lets me to bill them for multiple or single payment. So, with these I can do person to person(p2p), business to business (b2b), and business to consumers(b2c)

That is cool.

</comment><comment><USER56> Somewhat offtopic- is there a way to use Stripe to hold payment in escrow or to authorize a payment more than 7 days in advance? I really like Stripe, though I am not sure it can do what I need.

<comment><USER49> Using Stripe Connect and Managed Accounts you can hold funds for 30 days. Its not legally escrow though (escrow tends to have a specific legal definition and set of rules).

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Praise Jesus I've been waiting for this.

</comment><comment><USER58> We've been using the beta for about 6 months and find it to be incredibly reliable. Thanks Stripe people.

</comment><comment><USER59> Is there an ETA on availability in Canada?

<comment><USER41> Definitely working on international. You will be able to accept payments (not send) this week in the form of a paper check mailed to you. So when you claim, just check the box for mail me a paper check and you'll get one in the mail once the payment clears.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I wonder if this means Interac Online will come soon :O that's a very big deal for the Canadian market.

<comment><USER5> Hopefully. I've had to integrate with that in the past and it was not a fun project.

I faintly remember them passing back html to inject to the user that contained iframes and a bunch of other junk javascript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> So does the ACH do settlement rather than clearing as the name suggests?

</comment><comment><USER62> Sooooo as someone who used to live in the UK, should GoCardless tremble ?

</comment><comment><USER63> n00b alert: Can someone ELI5 differences between the solutions/products offered by Stripe and other payment related companies like Square, Braintree?

</comment><comment><USER64> This opens up so much</comment>


Why you've never really heard the "Moonlight" Sonata - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2245891/pagenum/all/ <comment><USER2> The "authenticity" problem has haunted music since the era of recorded music began. The public asks for a "real" sound, and yet simultaneously, our recording practices indicate that we don't actually want "real" recordings - we want larger than life recordings with "punchy" sound, with all the flaws processed and spliced out, and mixed in a way so that it translates down to the humblest radios and up to the most extravagant audiophile system, and can be played in both noisy crowds and quiet living rooms.

This tends to affect musicians as well - the idea that only a brand name piece of gear can give you the authentic sound you're looking for and perhaps heard on some recording from the 60s or 70s, which itself was treated with the specific recording processes of that era.

But the truth of it is found right in the article - even the famous composers were simply trying to use the particular pianos they had at the time as effectively as possible. When they changed equipment, their sound changed as well.

<comment><USER3> David Byrne had a recent piece about writing music to be heard in particular environments, which seems related: [http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2010/02/021410-valentines- day....](http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2010/02/021410-valentines-day.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. The sound of the Katholnig really adds another dimension.

I don't usually bother about 'original instruments' much, but here's an undeniable example of how much 'modern' can mask intent.</comment>


How the Virus Got Out - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/22/world/coronavirus-spread.html <comment><USER2> This is excellent journalism.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very nice. But I fear it will add fuel to Trump's "china virus" blame strategy, with negative long term consequences.

It's too bad there isn't more analysis, like could it have been stopped. Obviously it can't be stopped at 4 cases (you don't yet understand what you are looking at). And China's delayed action made it too late to contain it to Wuhan. But could they even have contained it? When there are few cases, lockdown seems overkill and people just don't believe it. Even today, with all we know, people are frolicking at beaches and clubs and bars, and our leaders are saying one thing (stay home) and doing another (visibly going out for social gatherings). So, even had China instituted lockdowns early, likely there would have been more violation. And once it escaped Wuhan, every other city would have had to react perfectly.</comment>


You broke the internet. We'll make ourselves a GNU one - <AUTHOR> http://youbroketheinternet.org/ <comment><USER2> The security and privacy issues in current internet infrastructure are of course very serious, and a meaningful solution to them will probably need to be "full stack," but this project doesn't look like the solution we need. It doesn't seem like any serious thought has been put into how all these technologies will create an actual protocol stack; its just a list of a bunch of projects GNU people like.

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly, GNU might have the world's worst marketing:product quality ratio.

I empathize with their goals, but the jargon limits this to an audience consisting entirely of the choir, and the tone is so preachy that not even the choir will want to listen.

<comment> vezzy-fnord I think it's always been this way. GNU is mostly known for its userspace base system. They have a few higher level applications like MediaGoblin, Health and Octave, but those are outliers. Then GNOME is practically a separate project these days, despite ostensibly being part of GNU.

It's the FSF that reaches the wider audiences through their guerrilla tactics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Large amounts of text in images breaks the Internet for people with screen readers too.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure what point they are trying to get across, but that page is just horrible to look at.

<comment><USER6> Just follow the project map, it's so simple.

<comment><USER7> BRB, checking Jackson Pollock's consulting rates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That is just an awful page and there really, really is no excuse for the sheer terrible.

The idea is nice but the delivery is so bad that I think you should go back to the drawing board. If you communicate this poorly it'll never see real adoption.

No offense but you've made life difficult for:

1) Screen readers. 2) Colorblind folks. 3) Anyone with poor eyesight, really, by basically making the font a different shade of the same color on the background.

Please fix the site before you try to publicize this more. :/

</comment><comment><USER9> "Theory and practice of a completely encrypted and obfuscated new Internet stack..."

OK.

"... enabling us to unfold a carefree digital living."

With completely untraceable digital harassers. Lovely.

The thing is, the problem they're trying to solve is real. Governments aren't angels; they're composed of human beings who are selfish, manipulative, and power hungry, and who are far too often willing to step beyond the rule of law because "the situation demanded it" (or because they really wanted to). But the rest of the problem is, the people aren't angels either, and if you give them a completely anonymous internet, they won't just use it against governments that overstep their bounds. They'll use it against each other, too, in some spectacularly nasty ways.

</comment><comment><USER10> Kind of hard to figure out what this was all about right away

</comment><comment><USER11> That web site has the worst of both worlds. It has "modern" minimalist design optimized for cell phones, with lots of colored blank space, low contrast between text and background, and few links. Then the content is GNU-quality, strong on code and mechanism and weak on design intent.

The site seems to be a plug for this video:

[https://gnunet.org/ghm2014knock](https://gnunet.org/ghm2014knock)

This proposes a port-knocking scheme to deter port scanning. 20 minutes of sickly yellow on purple PowerPoint. That's an idea of limited value; port- knocking is security by obscurity. Any widespread use of port-knocking implies it will be known to attackers.

They have a legislative program. It's here:

[http://youbroketheinternet.org/legislation/](http://youbroketheinternet.org/legislation/)

1999 called. It wants the BLINK tag back.

The legislative proposal is to require end to end cell phone encryption plus onion routing for all phones. Maybe for other devices; there are sections in the document labelled "Fixme" on that. Specific encryption standards are specified; unclear if those are good choices or not. The overhead and lag for onion routing for voice would be high.

It's worth having this out there, but it's not a plan, it's a collection of stuff in search of a plan.

</comment><comment><USER12> I mean, was it ever not broken? The people who "broke" it were the designers, assuming we're following your definition of "does not provide strong guarantees about privacy" is broken.

</comment><comment><USER13> How is XMPP breaking the internet? It's an open protocol, with free and open implementations.

<comment><USER14> There's a ridiculous number of open protocols and technologies shown in red, as if they're something terrible:

• "Web Browser / WebRTC / AJAX"

• "NNTP / IRC" (completely unrelated, but shown together)

• "X.509 / DNS & DANE / SMTP & XMPP / Federation" (again, all mostly unrelated technologies)

Bonus points to "Faceboogle". _Really_?

<comment><USER13> I've always preferred twitterbook, e.g. "I posted on the twitterbooks when I was down in portland, but not one responded"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There must be some mistake. The project map mentions "Microsoft", not "Micro$oft". Or perhaps they thought "Faceboogle" was so clever they didn't need to be childish with other names?

</comment><comment><USER16> The name "GNU" and its abhorrent pronunciation has been such a branding failure on the part of the free software movent.

Yet, the creators continue to wonder why those outside the tech world approach these issues with a high level of apathy.

A movement filled with in-jokes and "geeky humor" will never gain the support from the general public desperately needed for real change.

<comment><USER17> GNU and the GPL entirely changed the face of computing. Your branding expertise is untested.

<comment><USER18> 20 years ago. Still waiting on HURD by the way and when was the last time anyone outside of the hard core techs referred to Linux as GNU\Linux

<comment><USER17> The point is that GNU has been wildly successful and has advanced technology on a species-wide basis. I'm not sure what more you think it owes you.

<comment><USER16> Yes, but the point actually being made is that the name GNU (GNU's Not Unix) is esoteric && dated. Notwithstanding the org's prior accomplishments of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For me, I wouldn't say the Internet is broken. It just could be better.

</comment><comment><USER20> If something was broken, it was the designer of this page.

</comment><comment><USER21> As a colorblind user who also wears glasses, I found this site very difficult to read. If you want your message to be accessible to all, please consider using larger text, not putting text in images, and using a text color that has significant contrast from the background.

</comment><comment><USER22> I didn't know Walter White was GNU!</comment>


Market Your Software With Rob Walling - <AUTHOR> http://foolishadventure.com/audio/how-to-market-your-software-with-rob-walling-fa128/

<comment><USER2> Check out the podcast Rob co-hosts if you like it, always lots of practical advice. <http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/>

<comment><USER3> I agree with you, Startups for the Rest of Us is one of my favourite podcast, not too long (30-40min) but every week (or so) is full of great advices

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting, I'll definitiely look into more of these podcasts, but I don't agree with Rob on one thing - that downloadable desktop software is going away. Sure, web apps are easier to deliver and support, and there are many cases where it's a completely sufficient solution, but there are also cases where it just won't work. Filesystem access, OS integration, performance, reliability and a lot of other, smaller things makes writing a complex software really hard using web technologies, especially from the user experience perspective. The biggest issue in my opinion however is that web apps relies completely on internet connection, both to work with and to access your data. Nowadays the network infrastructure is rather stable, but it surely isn't as reliable as having the software and data locally (and making backups of course). We already have a lot of web based IDEs, graphic editors, office suites and so on, yet I don't know a single person who uses them for serious stuff.

<comment><USER5> >>I don't agree with Rob on one thing - that downloadable desktop software is going away

You're right, "going away" is a strong way to put it, but in the context of "I want to build an app that has a viable market," unless you really know what you are doing, stick to web or mobile.

Desktop apps are, with a few exceptions that you listed, "going away" as a viable market for bootstrapped entrepreneurs. When in doubt, go web or mobile.

Re: internet connectivity: At this point I am never without an internet connection when I want one, and looking ahead just a few years, the world will be blanketed with it much like you can now access AC power in the vast majority of places you can go. So thinking ahead just a couple years you can imagine how this will continue the trend of apps moving away from the desktop.

<comment><USER6> Agreed - desktop apps are going away for the vast majority of people. Non technical people don't like or understand how to install software (or are afraid to do so because of viruses). Eight out of 10 times, I prefer web based software. Now that we're all connected 99.6% of the time, web based software is feasible. I actually relish those rare moments without a connection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you listen to the conversation 35 mins (I've done so 3x times), it's very insightful.

This is the kind of stuff that a growth hacker really gets. The way I see it, in the B2B market, outside of Hubspot, very few companies are doing this as a solid lead generation and lead conversion strategy.

</comment><comment><USER7> People are people but they are not always sitting in my car. How do I claim My LLC was actually with me?

<comment><USER8> Sorry, but that makes no sense...

<comment><USER7> Because its important that you are actually sitting there! Which incidentally was similar to the argument given.</comment></comment></comment>


How I built a startup while working full-time in Finance - <AUTHOR> http://andypickens.tumblr.com/post/19345391305/how-i-built-a-startup-while-working-full-time-in <comment><USER2> Congrats on launching! I can sort of relate with trying to pull off ideas on the side in a field completely unrelated to computer science as someone who wasn't bred from a young age to program. It's definitely hard, and I commend you for putting in the hours and the effort.

As for the product: It's a neat idea. I think it'd be cool if you actually gave people on Facebook and promoters in general a small cut of some sort of revenue. It'd give users two incentives, both monetary and social (being known for discovering great undercover bands). Have users compete to be the best 'agents'.

Don't mind the haters – it's the growing trend 'round here on HN. If you're not a CS guy, you don't deserve much, basically. That's even more so for people working in business. But you've done far more than the people here can claim to have done.

Best of luck!

Edit: What made you settle for that one idea? Was it the only one you had, or did you choose it from a list of others you were entertaining? I imagine working in an industry like Finance you haven't got much time to play around with ideas left-and-right, so there's a bit more calculation in picking an idea to move forward with.

</comment><comment><USER3> This doesn't really address any practical issues you faced in holding down a full-time job whilst also building the startup.

Based on the title, I was expecting more. Something like how you managed your time?

That said, congrats on launching.

<comment><AUTHOR> I worked most nights during the week for a 1-2hrs and every weekend, sometimes spending full days working on the weekends. I found the time when I could and delegated work to my cofounders who did the same. It was just a lot of hard work and extra hours. I sacrificed some social life but still managed to enjoy New York hugely over the past year.

<comment><USER4> I think people underestimate how much you can get done if you commit to at least 1-2 hours during the week EVERY DAY, and at least another 12-16 hours on the weekend. Working during the week is critical, even if it's difficult, simply because it keeps the momentum going and motivation fresh (in my experience of trying it every other way). It's also a deceptive 30-80% additional capacity than what you have merely working weekends.

Oh and paying attention to what you're doing and how long it took, and making sure not to waste unnecessary time on nice-to-haves or unnecessary research rather than critical functionality. This is particularly important if you're working alone; I find reviewing my source control checkins and my PivotalTracker progress very helpful in this respect.

Then again I ended a great relationship for work so perhaps I'm not the best exemplar of priorities.

<comment><USER5> Sounds good in practice, but I have a real hard time building anything in 1 hour increments. I need a good 3-4 hours scheduled to make solid progress on any of my side projects. I have a feeling others may have the same problem... and PG described this pretty well in his "makers schedule" essay.

<comment><USER4> I used to believe that too but while 5 blocks of 1 hour each aren't as efficient as 1 block of 5 hours, it's still better than 0 hours.

Today I've managed to get Hadoop set up in pseudo-distributed mode in 1.5 hours on a fresh VM I just installed, while reading a tutorial in the background waiting for stuff to download and install. Tomorrow I'll think more about how I want to convert my crawler prototype from C# over to Ruby on the cluster and read a bit more about how this all works while I wait for code to compile or packages to run at the day job.

Even the 15min I spend eating while at the client are used to think, read and plan my next step or how I will implement something. Same for the drive to/from work. Yup I talk to myself. There's a lot of time in the day when you're supposedly busy that you can get constructive work done.

In the evening I'll start working on getting my first test job to run. At the end of every day it looks like I've made little progress, but at the end of the week I'm certain to be happy with my progress (something I learned from David Burns' "Feeling Good" is to actually test your hypotheses; if you _feel_ you didn't accomplish much, actually _test_ it by listing what you did and you'll be probably be pleasantly surprised).

<comment><USER5> Thanks, I appreciate the examples. I think a lot of it comes down to organization -- with some planning I certainly could find smaller items that fit into 1 hour blocks (configuration, writing tests, documentation, etc). Depends on the nature of the project though.

Good point on capturing and reviewing progress. I'm always trying to get better at that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am surprised that an ex-finance guy would start this type of company. The music industry is a startup death trap with more than 99% of startups failing. Of all the possible industries to make money, why would someone voluntarily join an industry with declining revenue, nasty lawyers, and a million other competitors?

<comment><USER7> While I agree with the points you make regarding the industry The OP answers your question in his post - albeit without directly addressing any of your negative points about the industry.

 _For whatever reason, this video incited a thought about the power of free music and the power of fans as promoters of the music they love. This concept consumed me._

And...

 _If you are ever consumed by an idea, focus on that idea and see where it takes you. Your obsession with it likely means that it embodies your passions and values._

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me of a startup mantra from the 90s: Eat like a fly, poop like an elephant.

So far there is nothing. A website with a music player and a share-on-facebook button. But the blog post sounds like Andy already turned this thing into a billion dollar company and now bows down to the mere mortals to share the wisdom he gathered. On his heroic journy to fame and riches.

<comment><USER9> I didn't catch that but you are absolutely right.

I have a feeling this project is going to turn out just like those ones from the 90's did too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The most important part of the article:

"If you are ever consumed by an idea, focus on that idea and see where it takes you. Your obsession with it likely means that it embodies your passions and values."

<comment><USER6> Obsession is a dangerous thing. It clouds your judgment and ability to think rationally. Sure, it provides the energy to work all day on Saturday and Sunday, but it also causes you to quit a high paying job to work on a webpage with a play button and a link to share on Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> it's hard to make money on obscure music.

one of the seo masterminds of our time tried to build a site that featured new bands. the backlinks were a work of art.

i guess it ranked well for a bunch of bands nobody had ever heard of but that doesn't help you when people are searching for "hootie and the blowfish"

<comment><USER12> What would I search for if I wanted to know more about this story?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Congrats on the launch! And thanks for sharing your experience with us. I'm at the start of a very similar process. I've been sitting on an idea over the past year and had a false start with a co-founder. I'm now pushing on on my own, so you've given me some great ideas on the various stages. Thanks for the inspiration!! Good luck!!

<comment><USER14> Fourmii - I'm about a two months away from launching my site after having not one, but two false starts with co-founders that made me decide to go at it alone as well. In hindsight I wish I had a co-founder or at least a mentor who's built and launched a site before. Most of my decisions were off and/or not immediately necessary for the launch. Even choices that I thought were brilliant turned out not as expected. None of this has to do with the product itself, but just getting from development to launch. good luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the most important issue with building a company as you work full time is the need for absolute leanness.

Out of necessity you have far fewer hours than you'd like to work on a project, and this really forces you to focus on whether each thing you do takes you closer to being able to launch.

</comment><comment><USER16> Seems to me like you can win by default for people like me.

Just want to click a website and start playing music that's decent in one click, I can't be stuffed researching or downloading albums. In europe all the sites I liked in the USA have we are coming soon banners, aka massive opportunity to win by default at the moment in terms of traffic (although to be honest I have no idea how you would get me to buy something, guilt me into supporting artists by showing them pictures of their kids maybe).

Minus points:

Keeps playing the same songs, I don't really even notice because I am music retarded, but my gf will kill me if I put your website back up.

Tried to login with facebook to see if that would play me some different ones, says it wants permission to post to my wall. No way in hell am I giving you that.

</comment><comment><USER17> How much work did the technical co-founder do compared to you and how much % did he get?

<comment><AUTHOR> he got between 10-20% equity and we were doing a comparable amount of work (10-20hr per week) up until I quit my job. now I'm putting in more hours.

<comment><USER18> Hmm, well I guess you were lucky to have found someone competent who took that offer. I'm not sure if I would be willing to work equal hours for 4 times less equity.

<comment><USER19> I'm assuming the Biz dev cofounder would have taken a similar amount. Which should make the equation a little better. However, I agree - he got a good deal with the cofounders (not sure if that is necessarily a good thing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Very interesting, thanks for sharing. Although I think you should've delved into the details of working on your own project after coming home from a stressful job - it definitely isn't easy - even if you have the drive and are excited, your brain is tired and it's just super hard to work at your full capacity.

Hope everything works out though, good luck!

</comment><comment><USER21> First off, congrats on the launching the site! It looks great. I played with it but I am having a hard time trying to figure out the business model. Is the key revenue stream advertising?

When I look at last.fm, it also sells other music related items such as ringtones, and also advertises. I can't understand last.fm as well.

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting post indeed. However, I was expecting you to quit your day job once this was able to pay for itself and the salary of three people. I did not expect to see you quit it to launch this.

Am I missing something? What's your monetization plan? How long before you're profitable?

</comment><comment><USER23> I wish this article included a rough range of the monetary spend since it looks like most of the work was "outsourced" to others. Unless it was all equities?

It would be less impressive if the money amounted to a huge sum! Just wondering...

</comment><comment><USER24> Did you have a non-compete agreement with the firm you worked for? I would have thought working in financial services your employer would technically have first dibs on anything of value you create.

</comment><comment><USER25> Congrats on getting your product out there!

>Surround yourself with smart people always. I've been struggling with this one for a while. I've cut time drains and people that keep me down, how to go the next step?

</comment><comment><USER26> Building a product is obviously extremely important, but without the bzdev skills and ability to launch and scale a business you need a well rounded team. Not just an all start programmer.

</comment><comment><USER27> Congratulations. Very nice post.

It could be cool if you could integrate something like promoters got points for dj'ing the song in some club or something.

</comment><comment><USER19> How did you manage the legal issues surrounding IP ownership while working at a full time job? Were your employers aware of your startup?

<comment><USER28> Not all employers care about all IP ownership. They just want stuff done on their time and stuff relevant to their business to be theirs.

I also built a project that became a startup while I was at a wallst bank. Although it didn't become a company till after I left.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> we all too often beat up on founders that stay at their jobs before committing full time to a startup. staying at your job isn't always a bad idea at first. taking the risk out of the startup lifestyle suggests this guy will do the same with investors' money when it comes to the life of his new company.

</comment><comment><USER30> Congrats to you and Moses :P!

</comment><comment><USER31> > I obviously needed to find someone technical to build the website, whether a > freelancer or a cofounder.

Two jokers drop out of Goldman Sachs after a very short employment stint and hire some kid to build them a Facebook-based link-sharing game that targets emerging artists who have no money on the most garish website I've seen in quite some time and all he gets credited with is Lead Engineer. Not even Mr. Lead Engineer.

If non of the above doesn't embarrass you from turning down below-market deals with non-technical, inexperienced dreamers than nothing will. You need to recognize that your skill set is a finite commodity and the more time you spend on loser projects like these, the less in-demand you become. On the other hand, everyone knows that you'll do almost anything for cheap and you'll end up as the "coder dude" while the co-founders debate the merits of shitty internet-generated logotypes and branding as they plan their trips to SXSW.

tl;dr: Facebook-based link-sharing games are loser projects you need to avoid.

<comment><USER2> You have basically speculated the intentions of three people, the relationships they have with one another, and the outcome of their company all from this one line. Pretty impressive. It sounds like you've watched The Social Network one too many times. Constructive criticism would be of much more value.

Further, it seems you are completely ignorant to the contributions that skilled businesspeople can make to a startup, and instead you've opted to succumbing to the played-out stereotype of all finance guys preying on the young, nubile, innocent programmer who just wants to build things and do good for the world.

<comment><USER31> > you are completely ignorant to the contributions that skilled businesspeople > can make to a startup

In this case, can you please list the contributions that you think were made by the non-technical, strategic members of this team, and why you think they should share in 80% to 90% of the company vs. the 10% to 20% that our esteemed colleague who actually built the feature did?

And I call it a feature because a one-page that tracks your likes and posts them to your timeline making very basic use of Facebook's API is a feature, not a startup and it certainly isn't a going business concern that may turn a profit large enough to grow beyond its current MVP.

Bandpage.com very well may be a product, but what we have here is a very basic implementation of the API and nothing else aside from a horribly-conceived design. I won't even mention the uselessness of the so-called awards or even ask what prompted the use of Disqus for a Facebook app. I guess those were all consuming business decisions that took a year to hash out.

tl;dr: Exactly what value did the layperson add to this thing?

<comment><USER32> > tl;dr: Exactly what value did the layperson add to this thing?

They made it happen. The site would simply not exist were it not for the dream/passion/drive/whim/fantasy of the OP. In a more deserving context, the following story could be referenced :

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus>

That said, I'm not going to defend the merits of the site itself. It looks awful, adds seemingly no value and isn't something I would think of actually using.

However, we should not trivialize the act of bringing ideas to fruition. That's what it's all about, after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I find this post strange: there is no demonstrated success aside from having the courage to quit a job to pursue a start-up (which is commendable but very different from achieving success), yet the author appears to be giving advice. This feels like a captain starting a voyage who, a few days after leaving shore, sets himself up as an experienced person. This seems more useful from a historical point of view than from a practical point of view.

Max Levchin compiled a very nice list of pointers here: <http://www.quora.com/Max-Levchin/answers>

</comment><comment><USER34> 60-65 hrs a week isn't so many :)</comment>


Find salaries paid at companies using foreign worker data - <AUTHOR> http://www.salar.ly <comment><USER2> I love these things. Transparency in salary information gives the employees more power. I know the site is down at the moment but it's worth it to bookmark and come back later. Make sure you set the search fields to 2013 or 2012 to 2013 to remove stale salaries. You don't want to negotiate using data from 2009. ;)

Here is comparing google to microsoft to amazon in Seattle. The gaps are pretty wide even for college hire SDE salaries. Go demand a pay raise today!

[http://www.salar.ly/salaries/?title=&company=amazon&location...](http://www.salar.ly/salaries/?title=&company=amazon&location=seattle,%20WA&start_year=2012&end_year=2013&page=8)

[http://www.salar.ly/salaries/?title=&company=google&location...](http://www.salar.ly/salaries/?title=&company=google&location=Kirkland%2C+WA&start_year=2012&end_year=2013)

[http://www.salar.ly/salaries/?title=&company=microsoft&locat...](http://www.salar.ly/salaries/?title=&company=microsoft&location=redmond,%20wa&start_year=2012&end_year=2013&page=24)

Site is down by they are looking at it: [https://twitter.com/roguelynn/status/507231579752902656](https://twitter.com/roguelynn/status/507231579752902656)

<comment><USER3> Let's say you're being underpaid; what is the right strategy to take?

I don't want to poison the working relationship with people above me.

<comment><USER4> You are expected to leave the company. Raises are kept far, far below the rate at which employees actually accrue value in order to ensure that employees do not stay at a company for longer than 4 or 5 years. After 4 or 5 years, the gap between what you would make anywhere else and what you can make where you already are is enormous.

There is a quote from hundreds of years ago which applies. "Make game of that which makes as much of thee." They fully intend to game you and exploit your desire for stability and predictability in your life. Play them back.

<comment><USER5> I believe this to be true. However, in some cases you can get a competing offer and have your current employer match it. My experience is that suggesting you are underpaid without a competing offer doesn't get you very far. Most employers will pay you as little as possible given the market and in the tech market you can jump ship.

<comment><USER6> I strongly disagree with this. It may be true at many companies, but not anywhere I would ever work (esp. as a manager).

Requiring people to have a competitive offer in-hand basically says, "if you want a raise, go interview somewhere else." That's toxic and only effective for the people who game the system.

Responsible employers owe their employees a fair (according to market, their peers, and their contributions) wage, not the minimum they can possibly get away with paying. It might save you a few bucks in the near term to play stupid games with people's comp, but the attrition will kill you in the long run.

<comment><USER5> "Requiring people to have a competitive offer in-hand basically says, "if you want a raise, go interview somewhere else." That's toxic and only effective for the people who game the system."

I agree with you on this. However, that's just how it works at all of the places I have worked for. Except for one. The startup I was at before we were acquired by a large tech company. However, being a startup we were already strapped for cash and were not being paid market rates but had some equity. That turned out to be decent when we cashed in but not enough for most of us to cover the salary difference.

I fully agree that employers should be proactive to ensure that good employees are happy and want to stay with the company. It should be mutually beneficial but I have yet to find a place like that. In the mega corps this just can't happen because of red tape. If you don't ask you will just get the standard 2% or whatever it is each year. Many times if you do ask the manager can't do anything about it anyway. I've brought it up that my hourly rate is 1/8 the rate I bill out at and am told that's just how it works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You call tell how much the H-1B system is being gamed by the Indian in-source companies. They basically never hire software engineers but only "computer programmers" and the ubiquitous "analyst."

Look at this (Salaries in New Jersey? $45,000 for systems analysts?) [http://www.h1bme.com/?employer=COGNIZANT+TECHNOLOGY+SOLUTION...](http://www.h1bme.com/?employer=COGNIZANT+TECHNOLOGY+SOLUTIONS+U.S.+CORPORATION&jobtitle=&perpage=50)

Systems Architects $73k and "programmers" $63k. Not a single software engineer or developer! [http://www.h1bme.com/?employer=TATA+CONSULTANCY+SERVICES+LIM...](http://www.h1bme.com/?employer=TATA+CONSULTANCY+SERVICES+LIMITED&jobtitle=&perpage=50)

</comment><comment><USER5> Can anyone post a link to the original data source? I'd like to verify this is in fact DOL data. It's much easier to go to an employer with data from an official government source than it is from some site, even if that site claims it got it's data from the source.

<comment><USER5> The PERM_FY* excel files seem to include this data: [https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_...](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov&as_occt=any&safe=images&tbs=&as_filetype=xls&as_rights=#as_qdr=all&hl=en&q=PERM+site:foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov+filetype:xlsx)

<comment><USER8> Note that (if I'm not mistaken), PERM is the program for green card applicants. I would imagine that GC applicants are on average more senior and better paid than H1Bs applicants.

To answer your question below, you can get the H1B data through [http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm](http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm) -> disclosure -> LCA.

<comment><USER5> How did you find the h1b quarterly data you posted below?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I use [http://visadoor.com](http://visadoor.com) for the same info, and I believe from the same official source:

[http://visadoor.com/perm](http://visadoor.com/perm) (Daily PERM results)

[http://visadoor.com/h1bvisa-database](http://visadoor.com/h1bvisa-database) (H1B )

[http://visadoor.com/greencards-database](http://visadoor.com/greencards- database) (PERM, more detailed info)

<comment><USER10> _this web site ([http://visadoor.com/](http://visadoor.com/) ) has been blocked because it has been determined by Web Reputation Filters to be a security threat to your computer or the corporate network._

Indeed!

<comment><USER11> Cisco's firewall blocks it too. Funny stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Server Error (500) in any search

<comment><USER2> [https://twitter.com/roguelynn/status/507231579752902656](https://twitter.com/roguelynn/status/507231579752902656)

They are fixing it!

<comment><USER13> Thank you for the note. Whenever salar.ly is linked from somewhere popular I have to spin up more Heroku instances.

<comment><USER14> Can't heroku do that automatically and scale to meet demand? I thought that was one of the selling points of "the cloud"?

<comment><USER13> Possibly, but not on the free tier. Anyway, our current plan can only handle 20 concurrent connections to Postgres and I am not planning to pay more to satisfy spikes.

<comment><USER15> Can you clarify on why not? If you get interest and a big news hit, isn't it important to you to capitalize on that as much as possible and leave a good impression so people come back to use your service?

If you don't have the funds that's one thing and I get it, but seems like spikes are exactly the kind of thing worth spending on.

<comment><USER13> The website a weekend project, not something I care for whether people use it. On average it has five to ten visitors a day unless linked to from somewhere big which only happens like twice a year.

<comment><USER2> This site is awesome. Can you please put up a paypal link? I want to give you money regardless of what you do with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does this include bonuses? Many companies (mine included) pay 40%+ extra in bonuses to bring people to the market level.

(site is also down so I can't see)

<comment><USER17> If it takes bonuses to get you to market rates, then you're still underpaid.

<comment><USER18> This is not true. You are only underpaid if you compensation is below market rate compensation. If I got paid $1 plus a $1 million bonus I would not be underpaid.

You should consider how much risk you are willing to take and how likely it is that you will get a smaller (or larger) than expected bonus.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure that your argument is a false dichotomy, but it smells of logical fallacy to me.

Using the pathological case to prove your point rather than a more likely case is disingenuous at best.

I'm talking about people trying to make an honest living, and having to deal with nests of vipers while trying get reasonably compensated.

If market is 104k, don't offer me 52k salary + 52k bonus, because I have to say I make 52, not 104 - well below market.

To me it sounds like a way to artificially deflate salaries (not specifically compensation. Your SO might want to know how much you expect to make all year, but for budgeting purposes, there's a big difference in budgeting for a 1k per week cash flow and a 2k per week cash flow.

<comment><USER18> Disproof by counter example is not disingenuous. I pointed out that what vampirechicken wrote was clearly wrong then tried to get at the heart of the issue. I did not say to count each dollar of maximum bonus (or even expected bonus) as the same value as a dollar of salary, in fact I said the opposite. The value of a bonus is the expected value minus the cost of volatility. You correctly point that you should also subtract the cost of delay.

When you are comparing your current compensation package to the industry standard the better one is the one that is worth more to you. You might put an unusually high or low value on risk or the cost of delaying compensation till the end of the year. You might value the free lunches or health insurance more or less than the average worker. Since you are the one receiving the compensation package what matters is what it is worth to you.

The bottom line is that market rate is total compensation, not just salary. If a company offers you a 'market rate' salary with no bonus and no benefits then that offer is bellow market rate. If an offer has lower salary, but great benefits and a huge bonus then (if you will actually get the bonus) that offer is above market rate.

<comment><USER17> Since most of the online definitions of bonus that I've found are with my own in that they include the idea of a bonus being above and beyond what is expected compensation, then I'm going to chalk this up to our having differing connotations of bonus.

In my case, a bonus is extra pay, usually tied to performance (individual or corporate), while yours appears to be 'another category of compensation for work done.'

<comment><USER18> I think we are using the same definition: an amount of money added to wages on a seasonal basis, especially as a reward for good performance. (definition according to google)

Being "extra" does not make it somehow not compensation.

<comment><USER17> But it makes it not salary, and since there is not market rate for bonuses, since they often depend on profitability or percent to yearly sales numbers, the number that truly matters is salary. It's the number that potential employers will ask you for, or offer you and is typically the only individual component of your compensation package.

<comment><USER18> There is of course a market rate for total compensation much more so that there is more just salary. When companies compete for you, they do so by offering more than just salary. You can tell potential employers whichever number you want. If want to tell them your previous compensation that would be reasonable.

Money is fungible.

<comment><USER17> > Money is fungible Indeed it is. Thanks for the dialog. I've enjoyed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Salary is very misleading. Total compensation is ultimately what matters.

</comment><comment><USER20> i also like [http://h1bwage.com/](http://h1bwage.com/) for this purpose

<comment><USER5> Is that data also pulled from the DOL? If it is accurate then my employer seems to be a liar.

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure about the data source, but my query on my situation seems to be accurate (base salary was roughly matching).

<comment><USER5> As a citizen the salaries are almost double my rate for same position/same company.

<comment><USER21> Is it a large or small company? How long have you been there? Are you looking only at the base salary part? (e.g. for the reference my total compensation is almost double than my base salary)...

<comment><USER5> I've decided that due to company policies I shouldn't really say much more.

<comment><USER22> It is illegal for companies to retaliate for your discussing your salary (though probably not for calling them a "liar"). Look up the National Labor Relations Act.

That being said, you can be fired for things that you're legally allowed to discuss, and then it becomes an issue of whether you're willing to pay lawyer's fees to sue. Which is not usually a great situation to be in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Note that this excludes bonuses so is not helpful for positions where performance pay is a large part of compensation.

</comment><comment><USER24> is there a similar web service for Canadian results, or even the raw data from the Government?

</comment><comment><USER25> Is there something similar for non-H1B data? I've previously used salary.com, glassdoor.com and search results on indeed.com to try and compare local salaries, and the variation can be as much as $15k on either end (low-|high-)

</comment><comment><USER26> Very interesting, I'm waiting that it comes up again.. in the meanwhile, don't you think that every input fields in the "Find salaries" page should be a dropdown menu?

<comment><USER13> When the DB is up, you'll see recommendations while typing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> They seem to be making 500 (server error).

</comment><comment><USER28> Put in Pangea, Chicago, 2009-2013, got server error, running Google Chrome on Macbook Air 2013 Snow Leopard.

</comment><comment><USER29> Some info gleaned from these site:

At Apple, one VP of SW has a salary of approx $400K.

</comment><comment><USER30> I was so hoping for auto completion!

<comment><USER31> It has but not working at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I got a 500 - Server error.

</comment><comment><USER33> This site is getting CRUSHED...

</comment><comment><USER34> Server Error 500... boo

</comment><comment><USER35> Server Error 500. Sigh. Yawn.

</comment><comment><USER36> Title is not accurate. This site is actually a great server-error generator, but no sign of any salary data.

</comment><comment><USER37> Lynn, FYI - these numbers reported to the DoL are not necessarily accurate and thus should only be used as a ballpark estimate. They are likely to be overestimates of actual numbers.

Having seen H1B document submitted to the DoL, I know that firms misrepresent these numbers. An H1B is granted to immigrants for positions that ostensibly couldn't be filled by US citizens, this is rarely the case. Firms have to show that a job application was life for a certain amount of time and they were unable to fill it.

Finally they need to claim that because the position is so hard to fill, they are willing to pay above prevailing wage. See H1B LCA. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Labor_Condition_Appli...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Labor_Condition_Application)

They however do not need to prove that the claimed wage is what is actually being paid. These numbers are thus overestimates and I would guess >10% off the mark.

That said, it is obviously illegal to misrepresent these numbers and some firms are more scrupulous than others.

<comment><USER38> As an H1B employee, I can assure you that the amount on my LCA was the same as I was paid. That said, it is important that people understand what these figures are - they are not actual technically salaries.

<comment><USER5> "That said, it is important that people understand what these figures are - they are not actual technically salaries."

Can you explain?

<comment><USER38> The Wikipedia article probably does a better job than I do, but the LCA is a company submitting what they plan to pay an employee when they hire them. As far as I am aware, if I get a pay rise the company does not need to resubmit an LCA.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why should not HN use Discource - <AUTHOR>

Thoughts why HN should not use Discourse discussion software (https://github.com/discourse/discourse) <comment><USER2> Changing algorithms for items, easy scraping of information (don't wurry, they won't block people from scraping, just block people from scraping to much at a time)</comment>