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Wow, it's a patio11 thread with only 8 comments. I'm close friends with a relative of yours who has worked for several major space companies, and we talk about

Wow, it's a patio11 thread with only 8 comments. I'm close friends with a relative of yours who has worked for several major space companies, and we talk about your writing pretty frequently. Your articles on salary negotiation, life in Japan, and how to build side projects have proven extremely consequential for both of us--thank you so much for putting your thoughts down as frequently as you do. Do you think dramatically increasing the speed and lowering the cost at which people can participate in financial transactions (as appears to be the mission of Stripe and the overall theme of your post) will have any effect on the current astronomical prices of small-scale international shipping? The costs involved in international financial transactions and international shipping for small customers seem to be closely coupled, but I'm not entirely sure how.

patio11 5y ago
Wow, small world. (Give M my regards?) Logistics like international shipping are both a financial infra problem and an infra infra problem. I do think that the cost of small-scale shipping is going to come down to approach the ratable cost of volume in a shipping container (which, as you are aware, it is orders of magnitude higher than now), which will likely come from improvements primarily on the infra infra side. Two companies to keep an eye on in this stack are Flexport and Shippo, among others.
- quacked 5y ago
  Will do, and thanks for the leads.
p_l 5y ago
Could you tell a bit more regarding international payments from where to where? From POV of EU citizen (though extra biased due to Poland just using IBAN numbers), international payments are pretty fast - personally the biggest issue is when I need to figure out IBAN/BIC codes because receiver doesn't know them. Payment for SWIFT transfer and currency exchange can be still annoying, which I mitigate by having currency accounts, but still not as big as it could be.

patio11 5y ago

Wow, small world. (Give M my regards?) Logistics like international shipping are both a financial infra problem and an infra infra problem. I do think that the cost of small-scale shipping is going to come down to approach the ratable cost of volume in a shipping container (which, as you are aware, it is orders of magnitude higher than now), which will likely come from improvements primarily on the infra infra side. Two companies to keep an eye on in this stack are Flexport and Shippo, among others.

quacked 5y ago
Will do, and thanks for the leads.

p_l 5y ago

Could you tell a bit more regarding international payments from where to where? From POV of EU citizen (though extra biased due to Poland just using IBAN numbers), international payments are pretty fast - personally the biggest issue is when I need to figure out IBAN/BIC codes because receiver doesn't know them. Payment for SWIFT transfer and currency exchange can be still annoying, which I mitigate by having currency accounts, but still not as big as it could be.