I looked into setting up a Delaware parent holding for my Startup Chile startup as I wanted to use Stripe.

What stopped me was the need for an American social security number.

To be clear: This is what the Stripe signup required, I can only assume they need it for all the merchant account magic they do.

How about an ITIN? Same length as an SSN, let's stripe find a blank credit history. I would ask the stripe guys about it.

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/international/article/0,...

Yep, you don't need to be a citizen or resident to do that. I have a Brazilian friend (Diego Gomes, founder at EverWrite) who went through the whole foreigner-incorporating-in-the-US-without-living-here thing and is posting details about it on their blog (the next post is exactly about ITIN and merchant accounts): http://myeverwrite.com/blog/.

Buddy up with someone from HN? I'm now curious as to the logistics of having someone in the US setting up an LLC (only takes a couple weeks at most) for overseas operations.

The person with the US SSN has to be listed as an owner of the company. So some (relatively large) degree of trust is involved...

Yes, and there is substantial risk for the American involved too. If listed as an owner, you're the one who gets served if the corporation gets sued in the US. So it's never as easy as "find an American and get paid", unfortunately.

I am looking forward to apply for startupchile, a little research on payment gateways has pointed me to dineromail.com, have you evaluated that option?.

I'm arriving end of this month for the Nov 3 batch, what I know so far of local options is that webpay.cl is the local PayPal which a lot of companies use.

Thanks for the tip.

It really depends on your investment strategy. That's the real problem with actually moving the company to the US. At the time this post was written we didn't have any investment, so it probably wouldn't have killed us to set up a Delaware C corp. But when you're pre-revenue (which we were), that's a big challenge in itself.

He can find a us lawyer on elance to set him up and advise him on all this. Get a us tax record etc. He will want to talk to a us tax specialist too. I know both if he wants referrals

Whatever you do, don't set up an LLC if you plan to take investment. Delaware C corp is what you need.