[HN Gopher] How and why I built Japan Dev
___________________________________________________________________
How and why I built Japan Dev
Author : davgoldin
Score : 399 points
Date : 2022-08-16 06:19 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (japan-dev.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (japan-dev.com)
| totetsu wrote:
| People interested in this article might also like this list of
| salary figures for japan. https://opensalary.jp/en/
| Panther34543 wrote:
| Considering cost of living, what salary would someone need to
| maintain a similar lifestyle as a senior engineer making
| ~$170-230k while living in a major U.S. city?
|
| Some of the jobs on that site have salary ranges below 9 million
| Yen, which seems to equate to about $67k. Given that consumer
| goods are generally pricier in Japan, and that cost of living is
| generally quite high in Japan, that salary seems quite low.
| etdev wrote:
| Cost-of-living comparisons get complex, but I can give you my
| personal opinion.
|
| Let's assume SF vs Tokyo.
|
| To live the same lifestyle and have the same amount of
| disposable income as someone earning $170-230k in SF, you'd
| need to earn Y=12-18M or so in Tokyo.
|
| You can live in a nice apartment in the center of Tokyo and
| still save a lot of money as a single person earning Y=12M a
| year.
|
| Also the yen is super weak against the dollar right now
| (historically so). So converting to dollars doesn't give an
| accurate value imo. As long as you earn and spend yen, what
| matters is purchasing power parity. Not the exchange rate.
|
| To me, living in Japan, Y=9M still "feels" roughly like $90k
| despite the exchange rate.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Can you expand on the last sentence?
|
| According to https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
| living/country_result.jsp?cou..., cost of living in Japan is a
| good bit lower than the US, and I would consider 67k as a
| decent wage when in medium COL cities(pandemic times have
| changes this a bit obviously, but I was able to live quite
| comfortably at 55k in a MCOL city in 2017).
| ricktdotorg wrote:
| my wife's parents live in Sangenjaya (Setagaya), i've had an
| eye on apartment rentals in that area for about 5 years, with a
| view to a perhaps/potential move over there. the prices (yen-
| usd translated) honestly look like ballpark NYC (Manhattan, not
| BK or Q etc) apartments from when i lived there 1997-2004. the
| prices _are_ cheaper than NYC /SF/SEA/LA, but of course as you
| point out, the salaries are lower. i've not "lived" those
| expenses month-over-month as a local would do, but my gut
| feeling after several months "living" there [spread over a few
| years] in a local apartment is that food/eating costs are
| lower, but overall, other costs (perhaps not including than
| commuter travel) are higher. somehow, i think it balances out.
|
| edit for clarity
| kairozu wrote:
| My company recently started using this site and I've been pleased
| so far with the applicants for the positions I screen for.
| etdev wrote:
| Great, really glad to hear that!
| AmazingTurtle wrote:
| "We're sorry but Japan Dev doesn't work properly without
| JavaScript enabled. Please enable it to continue."
|
| Nope. You want people to read your stuff? Don't force javascript
| onto them.
| mehphp wrote:
| Good luck with that.
| _se wrote:
| Most people don't care at all.
| trhoad wrote:
| > So we share your jobs on our site. A candidate applies. You
| interview them and decide to hire them. You notify us you hired
| them. We send you an invoice. You pay us a fee.
|
| I'm absolutely stunned that this works.
|
| > For one thing, our contract imposes a late fee for failing to
| notify us of a successful hire. And the fee increases every month
| that they don't tell us. This is a pretty good deterrent.
|
| Is it? It sounds like a pretty good deterrent to being honest...!
|
| Anyway, I can't argue with the figures, if true.
| Aeolun wrote:
| By the time you get anyone to post on your website you've
| already interacted enough with the people in the company to
| make them want to pay you.
|
| Presumably they charge much less (10% yearly salary) than a
| normal recruiter would.
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| Japan is a high-trust society. I recently made a booking at a
| rather expensive inn (ryokan), whose T&C says there are high
| cancellation fees if you don't show up, but was not required to
| hand over credit card details or anything else than could
| enforce this.
| polote wrote:
| That's how any recruiting agency works no ? At least in France
| it works the same way
| julienfr112 wrote:
| in Japan only
| j0hnyl wrote:
| I think maybe it works due to cultural reasons - Japanese seem
| quite honest.
| jiggywiggy wrote:
| It works if you have an ongoing relationship with your clients
| jsty wrote:
| Not sure how prevalent LinkedIn or a similar service is in
| Japan, but I'd imagine it'd be pretty easy to track how many
| clicks a customer was getting and investigating any that had
| anomalously high click / hire ratios.
| etdev wrote:
| Yep this is a major part of my strategy (Hi, I'm the guy who
| built the site).
|
| Like I mention in the post, I have emails, names and URLs for
| everyone who applies.
|
| I also know how many applicants it normally takes to get 1
| placement. So I can easily check which jobs are getting a
| suspiciously high number of applicants with no successful
| placements.
|
| And I can reach out to all those applicants with the gift
| card offer, or take other measures to gather data about them
| and cross-check it with the company name etc.
|
| This plus the late fee plus the fact that I'm in Japan makes
| the business model viable.
| Adrig wrote:
| I heard a similar story from a guy who put in relation brands
| with professionals of the event industry. According to him, not
| having to put in place and enforce a strict control gave him a
| lot of bandwidth to work on more impactful parts of his
| projects. Surprisingly, he made good bucks with this
| approach... I guess even businesses can be more honest than
| expected.
| bfuller wrote:
| Business can totally be done in a fair and ethical way,
| that's just not western culture. Here you get promoted for
| stomping on someones neck with your boot
| neilv wrote:
| The other day, a career site offered me some amount of money if
| I told them when I found a job with a company there. (It
| might've been angel.co, and $150, not certain.)
|
| I guessed that they got paid at least partly as a function of
| hires, and this incentived disclosure from hirees was a way of
| keeping its customer companies honest.
| rtpg wrote:
| I think a huge reason this works is that this site is
| essentially focused on a small niche: (mostly) Tokyo-based,
| (mostly) English-heavy IT companies.
|
| Everyone knows each other, it's a high trust environment
| anyways, and it's hard to recruit in the first place!
|
| And like the article says, recruiting in Tokyo is kind of
| insanely expensive, mainly cuz it's scaled to salary and a big
| chunk.
|
| But I think the fact that this is... I mean it's a lifestyle
| business? I don't believe this is gunning for Indeed... it
| makes it easier
| stewx wrote:
| As of 2019, Tokyo was far cheaper in terms of monthly rent
| than some major American cities.
|
| Rent in Tokyo for a 2BR apartment: $1,903/mo
|
| Rent in NYC for a 2BR apartment: $2,909/mo
|
| Rent in San Francisco for a 2BR apartment: $3,631/mo
|
| Src: Deutsche Bank https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-
| PROD/PROD000000000049...
| adventured wrote:
| Tokyo is routinely ranked among the ~5-10 most expensive
| cities in the world to live in:
|
| https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/world-most-expensive-
| citi...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonytellez/2022/06/29/these
| -...
| anonymoushn wrote:
| Tokyo is substantially cheaper to live in than most
| cities tech workers would live in in the US.
| rtpg wrote:
| Yeah that's just a lie. Those measurements tend to
| consider purchase cost at a fixed square meter, and
| doesn't consider changes in lifestyles as well. Every
| expat in Tokyo from another big city could confirm this
| hardolaf wrote:
| That's only because all of those comparisons assume cars
| are free and not part of your living expenses. People in
| the USA often save money moving to Chicago and NYC
| because they can get rid of their cars. So yes, the rent
| is expensive and buying is expensive... but is it really?
|
| The average difference in cost between buying in Chicago
| versus buying in the suburbs of Chicago is the price of
| two median cars (~$60K difference total). Over a 30 year
| mortgage, in the suburbs, you'd probably buy 2-3 cars per
| adult. If living in the city let's you go to down to 0.5
| cars per adult or even 0 cars per adult, then you've
| broke even or saved money. Heck, even just having a
| reasonably priced car in the city, driving less, and
| having leisure use insurance on your vehicle because you
| don't commute via car can result in thousands per year in
| savings even after you pay for parking.
| Morgawr wrote:
| Let me tell you, I can guarantee you, that's bollocks.
| rtpg wrote:
| i was talking about recruiting costs. I know Tokyo is
| cheap(er than many places)
| Morgawr wrote:
| > Rent in Tokyo for a 2BR apartment: $1,903/mo
|
| NOTE: I wouldn't trust most sources of this kind of data
| you see online (I can't open your link so I can't verify
| it) because you simply cannot compare rent prices like that
| "across cultures".
|
| And I don't mean just "Japanese apartments are small" (this
| is mostly a myth, although they are smaller on average), I
| simply mean that it's pretty much impossible to define what
| "city center" is in Tokyo, and having a good public
| transportation system and multiple city centers (Tokyo is
| 23 cities, and more) means that it's kinda hard to find a
| uniform measure that is comparable to most other cities in
| the world.
|
| Tokyo is incredibly cheap for such a _massive_ world
| capital /megalopolis. I can't stress this enough, as
| someone who's moved to Tokyo from one of the most expensive
| (yet incredibly small) capitals of Europe as far as rent
| goes (Dublin). It was amazing to see the contrast.
|
| $1900/mo in Tokyo for 2 bedroom apartment (I assume it'd be
| a so-called 2LDK) is actually quite overpriced if you know
| which neighborhoods to look at (and yes, you can still
| consider them "city center"). I live 20 minutes away from
| Shinjuku, 30 minutes away from Shibuya, 10 minutes away
| from Ikebukuro (all three massive city centers) and I pay
| the equivalent of $1300/mo for a 3LDK apartment (3 bedroom,
| one living/dining room, one kitchen).
|
| Obviously, if you want to be fancy and live in cool or
| pricy neighborhoods like Ebisu or Daikanyama or most of
| Setagaya-ku you're gonna pay much more, still... Definitely
| waaaay less than other places like San Francisco or New
| York.
| stewx wrote:
| > I wouldn't trust most sources of this kind of data you
| see online
|
| Same. But this is published by a large global financial
| institution, not a crowd-sourced low-quality web site.
| Morgawr wrote:
| The problem isn't _the data_ itself. The problem is how
| the data is interpreted, unfortunately. Lifestyles don 't
| map properly between cities, countries, and cultures. In
| the US you need a car in a lot of cities, you might
| want/expect a "suburban" lifestyle (large house, garden,
| etc). Healthcare might be an overlooked cost. Taxes and
| social contributions (pension, etc) might affect all
| these numbers. It's incredibly easy to just look at the
| raw data and go "X is more expensive than Y" but in
| reality the situation is _much_ more nuanced than that.
|
| Also, as I said, Tokyo really isn't one city, it's a huge
| gigantic collection of multiple cities with an incredible
| public transport system that really doesn't make you feel
| like you're not living in a "city center" even if you
| aren't in one. I can step out of my house and be in a
| "downtown" area in less than 10 minutes by just taking
| one train and there is one train every 2-3 minutes.
|
| If anything, I found https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
| living/ usually has a much more nuanced breakdown of
| actual living expenses across cities, although their rent
| metrics also are quite incorrect because the way rent and
| housing space is measured in Japan doesn't quite fit a
| western standard unit of measure.
| mcqueenjordan wrote:
| I'll preface this with: A lot of what you're saying
| resonates a lot.
|
| That being said, I think what you're saying about being
| unable to compare rent prices more or less boils down to
| "ceteris paribus". Of course, not all else is equal, but
| it's still relatively meaningful to compare rent
| statistics, especially considering that it tends to be a
| dominating cost term. And, directionally speaking, the
| figures they quoted ultimately led them to a conclusion
| that I believe is right.
| elktea wrote:
| keep reading, candidates get a little something if they tell
| the site they used it to get hired
| lozenge wrote:
| Would you rather - save the expense of the agency fee (3 months
| salary) but lose access to the job board which has already
| found you one good candidate, or pay it and stay on the job
| board?
|
| Keeping in mind that the employees are likely staying much
| longer than 2-3 years, because Japan.
| Varqu wrote:
| Plus burn the bridge completely in an industry where
| reputation is one of the key aspects?
|
| And on top of that risk a potential legal action?
| franciscop wrote:
| I was one of the "Quick aside since I get asked this all the
| time."[1]
|
| Being from Spain I'm 100% a lot of the companies here would try
| to cheat this, but he made some good points both in the tweet
| answers and article; it's better to pay early and low, than
| being caught very late and having to pay a huge amount (don't
| know _how much better_ though).
|
| If a company retires a job without paying, I'd def spend few
| minutes tracking possible candidates (those who clicked "Apply"
| and put their data, Linkedin/Twitter/etc, follow up emails to
| the candidates, as he said Amazon gift card, etc).
|
| Some might still fall through the cracks, but seems like if
| they get enough % of them that's probably good enough.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/_etdev/status/1552529476164419584
| themanmaran wrote:
| Having also run a hiring company, I was worried about
| companies ghosting us after making a hire. Turns out the vast
| majority of customers don't balk at recruiting fees.
|
| They see it two ways:
|
| 1) Easier to pay, than review the legal recourses of not
| paying
|
| 2) If they sourced one good candidate from your site, they
| may source another. So best not to get booted from the
| platform for delinquency.
| 6DM wrote:
| Companies pay recruiters an insane fee to hire us. $300 is a
| paltry sum and not worth fighting over. I doubt this is a big
| problem. It's not zero companies doing this, but I'd be
| surprised if it was 80% of the listings trying to avoid paying.
| lovetocode wrote:
| I really enjoyed reading this and I hate reading.
|
| How did you go from 12 months of no revenue to actually
| generating revenue? Did you provide your service for free w/o any
| payment options? I imagine job seekers were free to use the board
| but companies were required to pay to post on your board. Did it
| basically take 12 months to gain enough traction with job seekers
| to entice employers to post on your board instead of manually
| adding them for free yourself?
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| Thanks for helping surface these. The sad fact, though, is that
| Japanese IT salaries even at the "good" companies are still a
| fraction of the global market rate.
|
| I was recently approached for an engineering management role at
| the innovation wing of $JAPANESE_MEGACORP (and I see they're one
| of your customers!). Alas, the top of their range was around half
| of what I'm getting paid in Singapore, and that's before
| accounting for much higher taxes etc.
| kakujuyo wrote:
| hr has the authority to pay 30-35% yearly charge ?
| etdev wrote:
| Yeah they do.
|
| Established companies will have at least one senior HR person
| who can OK that level of spend.
|
| Small startups might need approval from from an exec like the
| CTO.
|
| 30-35% is pretty standard though so most companies will have a
| process for it.
| presence1 wrote:
| Site looks really good. What tech stack did you use?
| etdev wrote:
| Thanks a lot!
|
| Here's the basic stack:
|
| * Rails API
|
| * Vue SPA w/ ViteJS
|
| * MySQL
|
| * K8s on Digital Ocean
|
| * Cloudflare worker + caching
|
| * Bento for emails
|
| * Algolia for search / filters
|
| I wouldn't recommend using a client-side rendered application
| for a project like this though... that was a mistake. Tons of
| headaches with SEO, social media sharing etc.
| conanbatt wrote:
| This is so complex! Wouldn't just vercel next.js + prisma be
| simpler?
| etdev wrote:
| Yeah definitely.
|
| I just used the stack I was used to, didn't really turn out
| to be the best stack for the job...
|
| Kubernetes is completely unnecessary, although I do enjoy
| using it.
|
| Having a separate API is kinda nice. I could easily spin up
| a different front-end like an iOS app and share the same
| API. And I can write all the server code in Ruby instead of
| JS, which I prefer to do.
|
| But yeah overall, way over-engineered.
| djitz wrote:
| I created a physician employment company which operates on the
| same model. I think Japanese culture has been the unsung hero
| here, when considering the OP company relies on an honor code of
| sorts.
| [deleted]
| flerchin wrote:
| This seems to have been a real passion project, and seems to
| nearly be retirement money if the growth continues for just a few
| more years. Have you considered what an exit would look like?
|
| Such a lovely write-up. Congratulations.
| etdev wrote:
| Thanks a lot!
|
| I'm not really thinking too deeply about exiting yet. But I
| guess if I wanted to work on other things, the main options
| would be:
|
| (1) Automate + delegate as much of the work as possible to
| decrease my time commitment and gain some freedom
|
| (2) Try to sell the business
|
| But for now I'm just focused on improving + growing the
| business!
| sparsely wrote:
| > But as a foreigner, most of the companies weren't a good fit.
| Some were too domestic. A lot didn't have any other westerners
| working there.
|
| This is a great way to think about how important an inclusive
| company culture is to you - do you want your org to be thought of
| by non-natives like many HN posters would think of an old school
| Japanese one? In what ways is it unattractive to non-natives and
| do you actually value those characteristics?
| atwood22 wrote:
| Congrats on the traction. Somewhat unrelated, but it seems a lot
| of bootstrapped success stories are job boards.
| kubb wrote:
| We (developers) are the product.
| etdev wrote:
| Thanks! Yeah, the space has gotten pretty crowded but it can
| still work really well if you niche down imo.
|
| And I niched down hard.
| namdnay wrote:
| when there's a gold rush, there are a lot of successful
| hardware stores :)
| Varqu wrote:
| Yes, it's probably because this is a proven business model and
| if you niche-down enough, you will be able to serve the
| audience better than the bigger competitors.
|
| The biggest problem though is still bootstrapping the demand
| side (job seekers) of the platform (supply side is fairly easy,
| as you can even handpick the initial jobs).
|
| We (https://swissdevjobs.ch & https://devitjobs.uk) started
| with articles how to migrate from other countries to find a job
| in Switzerland / UK and at some point the organic traffic
| picked up (but it also took years, as in the case of japan-
| dev).
| vsareto wrote:
| I guess an aggregator of these sites would be pretty handy.
| Especially if it had a narrative feature to ask what the user
| wanted to do, then pointed you to the niche job site.
| exnz wrote:
| https://japan-dev.com/companies/indeed
| Rackedup wrote:
| japan-dev.com requires javascript to show any text... I guess it
| makes sense since they want to show us that popup...
| etdev wrote:
| The site is a Vue.js single page application.
|
| That's just the front-end stack I knew the best -- I realize
| it's terrible for those who don't want to run javascript.
| Sorry!
| adventured wrote:
| If you don't mind answering, what service are you using to
| manage the weekly job alerts email (if you're not self-
| hosting that)?
| etdev wrote:
| Sure! I started out on MailChimp, but recently switched to
| Bento (https://bentonow.com/)
|
| I really like it.
| Pete-Codes wrote:
| Awesome job! Job boards are incredibly hard (I should know, I've
| made a couple)
|
| Interesting business model too - either it makes nothing or big
| amounts of money when you get a referral
| godmode2019 wrote:
| Nice work! I honesty never would have considered a job board to
| be able to bring such a large amount. Especially in just a few
| years.
|
| Good job.
|
| I don't think you mentioned how many employees you have? Not very
| many I assume if your headquarters is your apartment. Good work
| keeping overheads low
| why_only_15 wrote:
| I think he mentioned it was just him and his wife.
| RedditKon wrote:
| What % of first year salary do you charge on average?
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| So to summarise: A dev turned dev recruiter who can write good
| content (capable of going viral) and who works with only the best
| companies.
|
| You developed a simple product (extremely well tested business
| model and done 1000 times), used your reach and writing skills to
| kickstart the supply / demand and profited.
|
| A mundane idea but executed brilliantly. Well done and
| congratulations.
| alberth wrote:
| Off topic: if you're a private business owner - why share your
| revenues?
|
| It seems like more negative than good can come from it.
|
| (A) if you're in enterprise software - potential customers might
| be scared away by how "little" your revenues are
|
| (b) you're inadvertently begging for new competition when another
| solo developer thinks I can do better and cheaper.
|
| Etc.
| janmo wrote:
| Makes for a good click bait title ;)
| chadash wrote:
| Well, it sure got me interested in hearing more about the
| story. As far as competition, as the article makes clear, it
| wouldn't be that easy to compete. You'd need to be located in
| Japan, read English (or you are unlikely to have read this
| article in the first place), and then go through all the
| hurdles that they went through.
| risyachka wrote:
| Option B really never works.
|
| Those who have a relevant set of skills (and it is a lot of
| skills from different disciplines required to run a business) -
| can easily estimate how much you can earn from website like
| this, so if they didn't do it before - they won't start now.
|
| Those who didn't know how much businesses like this makes -
| lack a ton of other skills to compete. And you can't cheat a
| ton of time and money investment. If they didn't start a
| business like this, 99,99% they won't. And if they will, there
| must be a ton of stars aligned to make it into any viable
| competition.
| blueflow wrote:
| I think its for Self-Promotion.
| simonswords82 wrote:
| 100% this - it allows the author to get away with posting
| what is otherwise a total fluff piece promoting their
| website.
|
| Without hard data, interesting anecdotes and other facts the
| post won't gain as much traction on sites like HN/Twitter
| etc.
| keepquestioning wrote:
| yakubin wrote:
| I'm getting a blank page. Looking at the source, there is no
| static content on it, only JS. I have JS turned on, but it seems
| CORS is blocking loading of JS. Cross-Origin
| Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the
| remote resource at https://static.cloudflareinsights.com/beacon.m
| in.js/v652eace1692a40cfa3763df669d7439c1639079717194. (Reason:
| CORS request did not succeed). None of the "sha512" hashes
| in the integrity attribute match the content of the subresource.
|
| Edit: works in Chromium, but not in Firefox.
| atraac wrote:
| It works in Firefox for me
| [deleted]
| etdev wrote:
| Weird...
|
| I did recently switch to hosting through a Cloudflare Worker,
| so maybe it's a caching issue. Is it possible you've viewed the
| site before? If so maybe you have an old version of the
| index.html file in your browser cache that's linking to the
| wrong assets.
|
| Either way thanks for reporting -- I'll look into it!
| yakubin wrote:
| I've tracked down the root cause: I needed to disable two
| uBlock Filters in order to successfully load the page:
| Fanboy's Annoyance and Fanboy's Social. It seems that they
| block some JS related to social buttons (https://japan-
| dev.com/assets/socialButton.9ddbb1cc.js) and that makes the
| rest of JS responsible for the rest of the page to not
| execute (due to a failed request).
|
| Sorry for the false flag.
| emptyparadise wrote:
| Doesn't load in Safari for me with ad blockers.
| etdev wrote:
| Interesting, can you let me know which ad blocker so I
| can try to reproduce?
| emptyparadise wrote:
| I think it's the same social media filters that did it.
| For reference, I'm using AdGuard on iOS and have the
| social media button filters on.
| etdev wrote:
| Oh wow thanks for checking, that's helpful to know.
|
| I should probably restructure things so that one component
| failing doesn't bring down the whole site if I can...
| jmnicolas wrote:
| I'm on Windows, blank page with Firefox and uBlock
| origin. Works fine on Ms Edge (no ad blocker).
| 3np wrote:
| Yes, you definitely should. Adblockers is just one reason
| why networks requests don't always go through
| successfully expected.
|
| I also get a sha512 mismatch on the CF script.
|
| (Degrading gracefully so content is readable even without
| client-side JS is an even better idea but that obv takes
| more effort to sort out on an existing SPA)
|
| Looking forward to reading your article but my reverse-
| engineering stops here for now (:
| webmobdev wrote:
| Yeah, I still get a blank page. (I hope you don't expect
| us to disable uBlock Origin to see some social media
| buttons because that's never happening!).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| upupandup wrote:
| Japan has the highest income tax bracket, horrible working
| culture (confucian hierarchy, ijime, overtime expected to be
| norm), no mental health support and to top it off a non-
| competitive corporate taxation.
|
| All of my native Japanese engineers who can speak modicum of
| English is leaving it to work abroad. I know many startups and
| companies have pulled out due to the inflexibility of the
| government (you need to be profitable with your highly failure
| prone venture by year 2 or you are booted from the country).
|
| I don't know why any sane person would want to work and pay taxes
| there. Hell, even Japanese don't want it. Japan had 30+ years to
| recover from its economic slump and I don't see it improving
| anytime soon.
|
| On the other hand, great place to visit, and on a different type
| of civilized citizens that you is tough to find in most Western
| countries these days.
| [deleted]
| kartikkumar wrote:
| It's kinda funny how strategy and tactics can cross over between
| totally unrelated businesses.
|
| We've taken a pretty similar approach to keeping companies
| honest. What we realized was that in niche markets, trust drives
| transactions and people are often aware that burning
| relationships for short-term gain has a drastic impact on
| lifetime value, especially if there are strong network effects.
|
| Fortunately, we've only had to threaten to use the contractual
| stick a handful of times, and in each case, the mere appearance
| of the stick in the conversation served to recalibrate things,
| bringing the dialogue back to the fair center.
|
| The cold start problem is real and one that really took us a lot
| of time and effort. The time spent to understand the mechanics of
| our marketplace manually paid itself back later on, when we
| realized that it helped us understand churn, and specifically how
| to mitigate it.
|
| Enjoy the read!
| [deleted]
| coldtrait wrote:
| Website does not load.
| etdev wrote:
| Is it possible you have Javascript disabled?
|
| Unfortunately it's an SPA so it requires JS. I regret this
| decision...
|
| If not then it might be due to an ad blocker issue
| (specifically triggered by social share buttons) I just
| discovered from this thread and need to look into.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Loads just fine. Probably something on your end.
| Grimburger wrote:
| This was incredibly well-written and an enjoyable story.
| Congratulations on pushing through and getting traction.
|
| Something that resonated:
|
| > We had to put 5 million JPY (~$45k at the time) in our business
| bank account and leave it there. For... some reason.
|
| Living in Asia I've come across this bizarre government obsession
| with "money in the bank" when dealing with them:
|
| "You need $15k in a bank account to apply"
|
| "Ok well I have 20x that in an index ETF and it's been sitting
| there for a decade is that fine?"
|
| "No you need to put that much in a bank account and leave it
| there for 6 months to qualify"
|
| "What happens after the six months? I can simply take it out
| again?"
|
| "Yes, that is acceptable"
|
| [Confused Face]
|
| No one seems to know why the rules exist, but everyone is certain
| there's a good reason for it.
| gjulianm wrote:
| That's weird. I've heard of requirements that business need to
| have a certain amount in cash reserves, just to guarantee that
| they can pay severance packages and other guarantees, to stop
| the owners from declaring bankruptcy too late. But asking for
| that and then letting them remove it from the account is just
| weird.
| bl0rg wrote:
| Maybe it's a 6 month long test to prove that you can handle
| your finances without that bit of extra money? That said it
| sounds like a really stupid test.
| bfuller wrote:
| Well yeah, its to see who has to dip into their money that
| is supposed to be locked in. If I was in the business of
| usury I wouldn't want to lend to people who couldn't keep
| the collateral locked up for 6 months.
| foepys wrote:
| In Germany there is a similar thing where you need to deposit
| at least 25,000 EUR as collateral to be able to create a GmbH
| (similar to an LLC). This is meant to pay for debts in case the
| GmbH goes bankrupt.
|
| But the government recognized that this was a problem so the
| "UG (haftungsbeschrankt)" was made possible where you are only
| required to deposit 1 EUR initially and than can deposit more
| each year until you can convert to a GmbH. The UG obviously has
| to pay more interest on loans if it gets any at all but you are
| not required to be wealthy to be able to protect yourself from
| bankruptcy.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| For Polish sp. z o.o. - initial capital minimum is 5000 PLN.
| It used to be 50000 PLN before 2009.
| martopix wrote:
| Same in Italy
| WA wrote:
| > _This is meant to pay for debts in case the GmbH goes
| bankrupt._
|
| This is only partially correct. It is to ensure that you can
| pay your first bills without going bankrupt after the first
| week or so. You can actually use the money right away to pay
| for bills. Also, if you pay in cash, you only have to deposit
| 12,500EUR.
| physicsguy wrote:
| That's really interesting. Here in the UK you can set up a
| limited company (i.e. if the company goes out of business,
| you are not personally liable for any debts) in about a day
| and there's no collateral requirement at all.
| robin_reala wrote:
| If you're interested in doing this, here's the step by step
| guide:
|
| https://www.gov.uk/set-up-limited-company
|
| and here's the registration form:
|
| https://www.gov.uk/limited-company-formation/register-
| your-c...
|
| ("It costs PS12 and can be paid by debit or credit card.
| Your company is usually registered within 24 hours.")
| dzonga wrote:
| a lot of people overlook the UK - in terms of the
| simplicity of doing business. from favourable taxes etc.
| however the biggest con in the uk, is unmotivated people.
| post-it wrote:
| Unmotivated people are the easiest to motivate with
| money. Motivated people don't want to stop what they're
| doing to do your thing.
| bad_good_guy wrote:
| *chronically underpaid people
| bartlondon wrote:
| Why do you think people in the UK are unmotivated?
| tanto wrote:
| Funny thing is German even more: You can spend the 25k as
| soon as the company is established for Hardware.
| jand wrote:
| And: In order to keep the spirit of protecting the creditors
| of GmbH/UG - while having only to deposit 1 EUR to the UG
| (haftungsbeschrankt), the UG has to "warn" all potential
| business partners by carrying the "(haftungsbeschrankt)"
| (limited liability) suffix as part part of the company name
| in all written communication (roughly).
| nisegami wrote:
| Is that meaningfully different from the LLC suffix in the
| US?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I don't think that there is a difference in terms of
| liability: Both UG and GmbH are limited liability
| companies. However, my understanding is that an UG is
| obligated to retain a quarter of its annual profits as
| reserves until it has reached the capital requirements of
| a GmbH, at which point it can be converted.
|
| IMHO, UG are a fudge. They recognised that the barriers
| to GmbH formation are high but at the same time did not
| want to drop them so they created something new that
| allows people to start a company before being able to
| afford a GmbH.
|
| This contrasts to, for instance, the UK where limited
| companies (Ltd) are extremely easy and cheap to create
| and maintain (PS1 capital and about PS15 cost) so that
| there is no need for multiple types.
| carstenhag wrote:
| The 25k is not the problem, having to spend 3000EUR on
| setting up the GmbH is.
| shreddit wrote:
| Yes, because Germany already has a "LLC", its GmbH. but
| if you have less than 25k you have to call yourself "UG
| (haftungsbeschrankt)", which, in the end, has the same
| meaning, only spelled out...
|
| it's like a warning message or something
| justusw wrote:
| UG also stands for unlautere Geschafte, dishonest
| dealings ;)
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| Exactly, it's like the government decided to mark all
| low-/entry-level entrepreneurship as potentially
| fraudulent - or urge towards that 25K deposit.
|
| In practice it becomes an invisible glass ceiling, you
| just work/pay your way through it when it's time,
| otherwise keep playing in the shallow end for as long as
| you want.
|
| Win-win, surely, but patronizing nevertheless.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Aren't the 25k euros only capital requirements? (i.e. you
| have to bring them into the company as capital but then they
| don't have to remain in the company's bank account).
| bfuller wrote:
| isnt it pretty common for people to pay their expenses with
| their LLC bank # because it doesnt matter what you spend it
| on if x amount of dollars goes through the account it
| allows you privilege of credit
| konha wrote:
| Correct.
| radiospiel wrote:
| It is also not strictly "capital" requirement. You can
| bring in non-capital value (like buildings, machines, etc.)
| into the company, but AFAIK this is much harder and hardly
| worth the extra hassle.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| It is capital requirement, but it does not have to be
| cash. It is not unique and is allowed in many
| jurisdictions.
| arbaal wrote:
| You need to only deposit 12,500 EUR in the bank account of
| the GmbH you want to create as capital (Stammkapital). The
| founder (Gesellschafter) have then an obligation to pay the
| GmbH the other 12,500 EUR at a later date. The CEO
| (Geschaftsfuhrer) can request that the Gesellschafter pay the
| rest of the capital.
|
| The CEO can use the capital to establish the business. It can
| be used to pay wages, buy hardware etc.
|
| Of course there are obligations for the CEO to not let the
| GmbH go bancrupt.
| jamil7 wrote:
| I always thought it was the case that the UG was riskier from
| a liability perspective but quickly reading over it, it's not
| entirely clear that's the case.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It makes sense - like Apple's $99 / year developer fee - to
| keep people abusing the system out. If anyone can create a
| company for free or for a low admin fee, they will.
|
| ...who am I kidding, this happens everywhere all the time and
| 15K is a low amount to put in a bank account if it means
| someone can dodge taxes and responsibilities, lmao.
| lkois wrote:
| Probably to prove it's unencumbered, liquid collateral. Which
| makes sense if you disregard all the other ways to determine
| that
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Yeah line of credit would do the trick though. Then once you
| have cleared the hoop use it to invest!
| Waterluvian wrote:
| When I bought a house I had to prove the 20% down was not
| via debt like a line of credit. Perhaps they would require
| something similar.
| wenc wrote:
| IF you try to understand it from the regulators perspective, it
| totally makes sense. You see, the law is written for
| legibility, not for variation, and rightly so. $15k cash in the
| bank is easier to understand than $300k in ETFs. Your $300k ETF
| might be stable or it might fall below the value of $15k over 6
| months (not likely but government officials are not in the
| business of investigating the stability of individual ETFs). An
| old HN comment about makes this point about "legibility" well:
|
| "To the state, one of the most important goals is legibility.
| The state has an enormous burden of regulation in its various
| enterprises, and the less variance the easier the job. This
| certainly isn't ideal in many, many cases, but in this case a
| person who likely didn't make the standards quite rationally
| trusts a vetted standard over one small trivial test given to
| them by a company they're evaluating. FIPs standards are
| probably much more exhaustive than just a hashing performance
| test on one piece of hardware."
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25543818
| jackblemming wrote:
| This is exactly why we aim for consistent and standard code,
| even if n specific implementations or different patterns
| might be a better local fit.
| edge17 wrote:
| FIPs?
| nuclearnice3 wrote:
| 100% this happens.
|
| As an additional cross-cultural observation, 20-something
| western young men routinely insist on debating the merits of
| this policy with the impotent clerk processing their business.
| I've never seen the clerk unilaterally alter government policy,
| but the mutual exchange of Confused Face continues just the
| same.
| [deleted]
| SapporoChris wrote:
| They have a similar rule for "Specified visa: Designated
| activities (Long Stay for sightseeing and recreation)".
|
| "Documents such as a bankbook to prove that the applicant's
| savings is more than 30 million Japanese yen along with the
| records indicating the current balance as well as deposits and
| withdrawals for the past 6 months."
|
| https://www.mofa.go.jp/ca/fna/page22e_000738.html
|
| 30 million yen is currently 225k USD, but rates can change
| rapidly so you need significantly more just to be safe as the
| visa application process is long. In my experience, the "such
| as a bankbook" is strictly interpreted as a bank account, a
| stock portfolio isn't acceptable.
|
| Now the Visa is a 1 year visa, but it issued for six months and
| then renewed for six months. When renewing you must meet all
| the original requirements. So, you can withdraw the money after
| getting the visa, but you need to have it back in the account
| when renewing! The records for six months appear to indicate
| that you need the money in the account for six months, but I'm
| not certain if this is the case.
| Asooka wrote:
| Does that imply that living in Japan for 6 months costs 30
| million yen?
| fomine3 wrote:
| Govt want to check balance amount is constantly over(near)
| 3000 rather than temporary have. This visa is for richer
| people to stay.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| Agreed. I was specifically told there is no obligation to
| spend the money. The money just needs to be in the bank.
|
| There are also many other visas available, a two year
| student visa is probably one of the easiest to acquire,
| but it does require attending a certified school and the
| visa is invalidated should you stop attending school.
| TheTeriyakiDon wrote:
| Had this same issue in Malaysia. Was planning to relocate my
| business there but they wanted us to deposit $250k USD in a
| bank account for the first year of business. At least buy me
| dinner first.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Lots of countries have this in their visa requirements,
| intentionally to keep poor people away.
| glowingly wrote:
| I had to do this in order to get an apartment in the US, when I
| first moved here. Needed either proof of income or a large
| static amount of money in the bank. Static at time of snapshot,
| they didn't really care if it went away afterwards.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| That sounds like the kind of requirement that patio11 would
| know more of the rationale for, if rationale exists, and the
| workaround, if a workaround exists.
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