jhubert

I'm looking for someone, or a team, that is interested in taking over either of the projects. I can provide the existing technology, advice and put together transfer paperwork. I expect to maintain a portion of ownership, but am pretty flexible on everything else.

If you're interested, here are the two companies. They are both built on top of the latest Ruby on Rails and have extremely low operating costs. They have both made more money than I have spent on them.

SupporterWall.com - A web based fundraising tool that I launched two years ago. It has about 150 active walls and paying customers, but so much more potential.

OnceOvers.com - An advice service where you can have an expert review your work in a video / screencast. The experts set their price and provide the service.. the technology just powers the ordering and the delivery of the videos.

If you're interested in starting a conversation about either idea, you can find me here: http://about.me/jbaker

I wouldn't generally post something for sale on HN, but I have a collection of startup / tech / web related books that I've read over the last two years and I figure posting them here makes a lot more sense in case anyone wants some good tech books without going to Amazon. :)

"SuperFreakonomics", "Web Form Design", "Handcrafted CSS", "Ordering Disorder", "Don't Make Me Think", "Landing Page Optimization", "Grid Systems: Principles of Organizing Type", "The Ten-Day MBA 3rd Ed.", "Outliers: The Story of Success", "Designing the Obvious" and more...

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/bks/2357046321.html

My wife and I are about to take off on a trip around the world, and we're basically liquidating everything we don't need. Otherwise, I'd keep my books forever.

Thanks, and happy reading.

Jeremy

My business partner and I have a Delaware registered corporation. It is an internet based business that provides tools for fundraising. We are making money, and it's currently sitting in a Paypal account. We need to setup a bank account to get it out and to get a merchant account. Where and how do we do it?

a) I am in California. I can register as a foreign entity in California and pay the $800 / year filing fee + any business income taxes and then go through HSBC (which seems to have really good virtual banking rates.) California, however, doesn't seem that friendly to corporations and since I have no use for actually doing business in California, this seems like a high price to pay on a margin business.

b) My business partner lives in NYC. We could register there as a foreign entity and pay the $125 / year filing fee + applicable foreign entity fees and annual taxes. Then go through HSBC as well. This seems at least a little more reasonable.

c) ? I don't know. What are the other options? What have other people done? Anyone know of banks in Delaware that would deal with us?

Also, if we are registered as a foreign entity in California and we make money online, can California tax that income even if it's from all over the world?

This seems like such a simple thing, but it's very clearly not. I would love any input or advice the HN community has to offer.

Thanks so much, Jeremy

It turns out that our startup might actually be a good idea. We received a bunch of press without really meaning to, and 19 days after we had bought the domain, someone from France bought the .org and put up a holding page that used some of the same copy we had on our site.

I immediately started digging into the domain. I found and archived the person's name, home address, phone number, list of friends, other domains, and whatever else I could find from the internet. I also archived his twitter account and his version of our website for reference.

Flash forward 1 month; As we get ready for our launch, the person has updated his website and started tweeting about it. His updated version clearly shows that he is building a competing product.

Now, I'm all for competition. If they had chosen a different name for their site, I would be fine with it. However, to me, this just feels like they are being a bad internet citizen and it really bothers me.

So, please advise. Have you ever been in a situation like this? How have you dealt with it? Do you have any suggestions for how we should deal with it? Tips, thoughts, etc would be really appreciated.