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Ask HN: How do we get something we can show on our YC application?
Hi guys. We're trying to start a company with an idea we think is promising, a developer-friendly payment gateway for Latin America. We already have 13 clients who have said, in a written document, they're willing to pay for our product. Our landing page was up for 3 weeks gathering emails with AdWords and we got around 380 applications.
The problem is that we require some "serious" capital to start and we can't bootstrap it. I say "serious" because we can't bootstrap it ourselves, and due to the nature of the product, we'd need to hire some extra developers, travel expenses to meet with banks all over the continent, etc. We don't see how we can create a functional demo of the app., and we don't think a bunch of static screen captures would be enticing to our users. What do you think we could do to get something resembling a demo or to something we can show in our YC application?
- fbuilesv 15y agoNeedless to say, if you're in Latin America and you can't find a payment gateway to cover your weekend project or your new startup, we'd love to talk to you. Feel free to write me at federico@mheroin.com
- earlyriser 15y agoWhy just Latin America. I'm in Canada and I'm tired of using Paypal as the most developer friendly gateway. WePay is only for USA, BrainTree also and Stripe is still in beta and will be focused on USA. If you could develop something like that for Canada I guess you will have hundreds of developers interested. Beside that you can exclude the complexity of taking many countries and banks.
- fbuilesv 15y agoInteresting. We want to go for LA first because: 1) we know the market 2) no real competitors (not even PayPal). But now that I hear this from someone else, it's something we'll keep in mind, thanks!
- callmeed 15y agoThis X 1000. When we decided to take NextProof from a US-only service to international, it was impossible to find a multi-currency merchant that allowed third-party payment aggregation. PayPal was out only choice that didn't require us keeping a physical office in Australia/Europe. If you can crack that for just a dozen or so Latin American markets + US/Canada, you'd be huge.
- ig1 15y agoHow much capital do you need (roughly) ? If you've got customers willing to pay for it why not get a loan/investment from them ?
- fbuilesv 15y agoWe were thinking of something between 30k and 60k. Most of our prospective clients are either startups or developers who make from $300-$4000 monthly on their webapps. We don't think they're the right audience to provide the initial funds :)
- ig1 15y agoHave you considered applying to Startup Chile ?
- fbuilesv 15y agoWe did, sadly their conditions on business travels and subcontracting are a bit more strict than what we're looking for. We left it as a last option and haven't discarded it yet, but right now we're looking for a bit more freedom.
- abbasmehdi 15y agoI'm not related to YC in any way, but why would they take you and tie you down in the Valley when you have so much running around left to do? On the other hand, they might call the banks for you and get you in where you couldn't have. But again you're focusing on Latin America, so I am not sure how much pull they have in that region. On one hand it seems like you have a very strong application, on the other hand I see them passing on you by saying "they need some more time out there in the wild, we will take them in the next cycle or the one after." However, they have stated in the past they don't care that much for ideas, they invest in people not any other thing, so I guess if you show to them that you're the right team for this project then they might talk to you. Either way, nothing is the end, except death or disease, and you seem to be onto something great, so use phones and emails when you can't travel, or just work locally. Grow organically by narrowing your scope and then fueling growth with the cash flows. Easier said than done, I know. Good luck my friends!
- fbuilesv 15y agoThanks for the kind words abbasmehdi! To move forward we need: 1) Money (to hire lawyers and to get access to the different banking systems). 2) Connections (to be heard within the big companies). We think an incubator can provide both of those. We have relevant experience in this specific business and we think we're pretty nice people so we hope that gets us noticed. Thanks again for the input, we really appreciate it :)