I have a side-project that makes getting a Solo 401k much easier. If anyones interested, PM me and I'll give you an at-cost price. I just want beta users at the moment. All plans are IRS approved, btw.
The article is just general YC advices. I was hoping to read more about visa issues, funding issues as international founder, building teams in US and Norway etc.
Great points, I might write a follow-up with that, as that is something we certainly experienced, certainly after YC.
I'll take the gist here.
On visa.
YC introduces you to a great lawyer, who has an incredibly success rate. It costs 10kusd for one, and you get 50 % discount for 2nd person. The two most relevant visas is the investor visa and the O1 (extraordinary ability), as they are the ones without quote on them. We got the O1. It lasts 3 years, but is moderately simple to prolong.
The process takes some time, but isn't that much work, beyond gathering newspapers articles about yourself (you can translate with google translate). Would recommend starting perhaps halfway into YC if you intend to do this.
For a while just travelling on estra works well though.
Building teams in US and Norway
Our company was already setup to work remotely, since it's basically our product. That said our employees were/are in Norway, and are only travelling here on Esta. The benefit of any non-SF location is of course lower cost, especially of the most talented developers. And the con is that they are outside the Bay area culture, which is much more at the forefront of any topic. This tacit knowledge is hard to share, and is a legitimate benefit to having your team here.
That being said, using tools like Slack, zoom and uberconference, as well as having getaways, makes multi-location teams totally doable, at least for a period.
Actually industrial design doesn't mean the design will work for mass production. Usually they should think about the manufacturing part as well. That step is called Design for Manufacturing (DFM). Usually the mechanical engineer works on the DFM part.
Due to the map issues. Uber drivers always call you to ask where you are. Which is a huge issue if you don't speak Chinese. Uber is powered by Baidu map data in China.
