CanadaKaz

I was a founder of a fintech startup (Kash) and I've worked with and around Stripe for about a decade now.

I think I know more fintech startup founders than the average person. I've literally never heard any of my founder friends saying anything about Stripe or Patrick or John acting improperly. They are among the highest integrity people I know.

This is one of the least helpful things people ever say. A family unit is a unit. Saying I'm putting my company above my marriage is like saying I'm putting my company above my health. This is just terrible; because if you are not healthy you can't run a company. In my case, my wife is as committed to the company as I am. There are days actually when she is more committed. She knows exactly when the stress points are and she knows exactly what is needed. I will come home some times and found that she had a few free hours and has dedicated them to the company.

We ended up splitting the team. We have an office in KW and an office in SF.

Sure! Send us an email through the site. I'll look for it.

Thanks!

In case anyone is looking for an example of an application and a video, here is my company's successful application and video from the S14 batch.

http://www.withkash.com/blog/2015/08/27/applying-to-yc-part-...

Thanks! That's part of our business that has evolved over time. Majority of our customers are not restaurants. In fact, we've learned the pain is massive even in e-commerce and for larger traditional retailers.

We totally used iPaulGraham for interview prep. It was great to get us in shape for the interview, but none of those q's came up in our interview.

Thanks! Not the worse though! I go by Kaz because when I was in Junior High, the basketball coach spelled my name as Kazday Nejootsian. So you know. Improvement over time!

Aaron is right. It's Nejatian. Hi Aaron!

There are many different explanations floating around. The one I like the most is that it is actually US and that U is placed on top of the S. That's why there are often two vertical lines.

I've never used these guys, but they are a big firm and if your equity is worth a lot you may want to consider them:

http://www.kattenlaw.com/employmentlaw

I can't recommend them other than to say that it is a fairly large firm and if I needed a first call, I'd probably call them.

If you want a smaller shop most bar associations have special practice groups. They have referall practices that are basically free or very cheap and can get you a basic lay of the land way better than anyone on here. Here is the one that I think is closest to you: http://www.meckbar.org/lawyerreferral/lawyerreferral.cfm

usual legalese: I am a lawyer, but I am not your lawyer. I'm no longer practicing. You need to get yourself a lawyer ASAP. Where are you located?

Amount depends on VC, Angel, or Incubator stream. (There are three streams.) The reason we did it this way is because we think gov't is bad at picking good start-ups and that VCs, Angels, and Incubators are better. The funding is minimal. (As low as $25K for angels for example.) We just want people saying "this person is good, let them in" have skin in the game.

Yeah. The wait sucks. I am with you. But the instances of marriage fraud used to be as high as 50% from some offices. Investigators were finding people selling books on how to dupe Canadians into marriage and ghost consultants selling whole fake marriage ceremonies.

In the past year, basically every single immigration program to Canada has changed. Here is the changes on the main economic class: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/media/releases/2012/...

Happy to answer questions here re this. I worked for the gov't on this file before starting my own company. The VC funds that sponsor are subject to internal and peer review audit.

Good luck!

I've been using ODesk for about a month to outsource some fairly basic HTML and SQL work. I have found that most (not all) of the developers fall into three categories. 1. There are agencies, usually in Eastern Europe for some reason, that seem to get the work done professionally but are not really much cheaper than just hiring someone into a company. 2. There are the run of the India/Bangladesh contractors, who I swear would be worth every penny if there could be an easy way to overcome the communication challenges (I've had to throw out lots of code and $). 3. The elusive great coders.

I have to admit I have not been able to find the third kind yet, but I read lots of comments on boards from people who swear they exist. I am getting to a point that I am considering hiring someone part time just to manage the second kind of coders. I figure if I can have a part time person who can adequate reduce the batch size then maybe communication challenges won't matter as much.

All of this to say: as a person paying ODesk coders, I think the problem you are pointing to is a two-way street. I would be willing to pay 100% premium over what I am paying if there was something like hiretheworld.com. I could post the wireframe of what I want, put a price on what I'm willing to pay for it. Have people build it and then pay for the code I choose to use. I know this is impractical for lots of reasons, but I don't see why with an adequately small batch it could not be done.

I know this is not helpful, but what I am saying I guess is if you build something like hiretheworld version of ODesk, you have at least one client.