I would suggest that anyone who wants to run a business approach this and other issues with a mindset of "This is a problem which I can trivially solve." rather

I would suggest that anyone who wants to run a business approach this and other issues with a mindset of "This is a problem which I can trivially solve." rather than "This is a problem which would be trivially solved for me if I were member of a special elect, but given that I'm not, boo hoo." Chase bank didn't give me a $25k credit line because they're uber impressed with my HN karma. That's basically their get-you-in-the-door offer if you have good credit. Amex has floors of people who do underwriting and convincing them to let you give them money is by far not the hardest sale required of a startup founder. (An early tactic to try: "Would you accept written confirmation from our accountant that we added $100k in accounts receivable in the last 24 hours and will probably add $100k in AR in the next 24 hours if we can get a credit limit increase from you? I can have him fax it to you on letterhead. This is time-sensitive and while I'd greatly prefer to work with Amex you are not the only bank with a fax machine.") Stripe is full of friendly and accessible people, and should you be cursed with $100k of transactions on launch day (oh noes!), you have options including "Use the HN search function to find the CEO's email address and ask him for help, which he'll happily give you, because it makes his company very happy when non-fraudulent operations rack up $100k of transactions in a day. If he had a magic wand that could conjure up businesses like that he'd do virtually nothing other than wave it."