Good.
I'm looking for a partner/co-founder OUTSIDE Iran who would: - Register a US/UK company (legally) - Open their own Stripe account (under their name/company) - I work as a remote contractor/technical co-founder (legal, like any distributed team)
This is the same model as any international startup with founders in different countries. I'm not hiding my location - I'm openly saying "I'm in Iran, need a partner elsewhere."
If this violates HN guidelines, mods can remove it. Not trying to do anything illegal.
> I'm looking for a partner/co-founder OUTSIDE Iran who would: - Register a US/UK company (legally) - Open their own Stripe account (under their name/company) - I work as a remote contractor/technical co-founder (legal, like any distributed team)
This is a clear and direct sanctions violation. What you are requesting is very illegal.
Even if this were legal it feels like a pitch for a scam…
Either this is a scam or an FBI honeypot.
You: Can bypass US Treasury sanctions and open a Stripe account
Please don't violate US Treasury dep sanctions just to be a founder for a business with 0 customer validation, you might as well be helping a Nigerian prince.
Seek counsel with a lawyer versed on this first, rather than the HN comments section or your own exuberance.
Yeah, the skills mismatch is real. I can build distributed systems with 4-server architecture, but I can't open a Stripe account.
That's literally the post. "I'm good at X, terrible at Y (geography), need someone who has Y."
If you know anyone who's great at sales but wishes they had a technical co-founder, send them my way :)
You should encourage any potential founder to talk with a lawyer, though, too!
Weird to just announce that publicly.
My calculus: Being transparent about my situation is better than hiding it. If they delete my account, at least I tried.
The alternative is pretending I'm somewhere else, which feels worse and creates legal risk for anyone who partners with me.
Open to suggestions on better approaches.
https://ps.neoclerks.com:8451/player.html?ss=f2ee51d8-2ea3-4...
scan the QR code with your phone, and your phone becomes the microphone. The avatar responds on screen.
Known limitation: Running on my GTX 1060 in Iran with 4G internet, so international latency might be rough. The code itself handles 100-300ms on proper infrastructure.
I get the scam concern given the circumstances. Happy to do a live Zoom walkthrough if you're seriously interested in verifying this is real.
I should have validated with 5-10 customers before building the full enterprise stack. The monitoring, analytics, multi-tenant architecture - all premature.
My reasoning (wrong in hindsight): I thought the barrier was "enterprise features" not "can anyone actually sell this." I'm a better builder than salesperson, and it shows.
If I could redo it: MVP in 3 months, get 10 paying customers, THEN build the infrastructure.
Lesson learned the expensive way.
"I tried the local Iranian market. I showed it to friends, family, and potential clients. Their response: "Nobody in Iran will pay $500/month for this. The Persian language quality isn't perfect. We'll use free ChatGPT instead.""
Which should of been free feed-back on the risk vs reward.
First, the sanctions on Iran are such that any partnership with an Iranian person for business reasons is effectively impossible in the West, without the resources of a multi-million or billion-dollar company to circumvent them. The author says "I am not looking for anyone to bypass sanctions" but that is very obviously exactly what they are asking for.
Second, circumventing sanctions is illegal, and people regularly go to prison or are given massive monetary fines for this. OP, I don't question your motives, but you need to understand that people have literally gone to prison and lost their whole livelihoods for doing exactly what you are asking.
Therefore, posting this on a Western platform (Github) and advertising it on a Western message board (HN) is unlikely to help. I don't think the author's intentions are poor; I think they may simply not understand the intensity of the legal regime that makes working with them impossible.
There is also the matter of Westerners' general opinions on Iran, which - general attitudes of multiculturalism and tolerance nonwithstanding - is typically quite negative. The sanctions didn't come from nowhere.
I would recommend the author look into partnerships with persons from countries that are more sympathetic to their situation. The ones with strong tech industries would be Russia, China, and India. Vietnam is another example of a country with some tech industry which also has mostly positive relationships with Western countries, these days. I realize this is not as attractive as the West, but there are good people even in places whose governments I may as a Westerner may not particularly like, and English is a lingua franca the world over. I'd strongly recommend those places as a starting point.
Let me clarify my understanding (and please correct me if I'm wrong):
My assumption was that a structure like this would be legal: - Partner in US/UK registers their own company - Opens Stripe under their company name - Hires me as a remote contractor (like any distributed team) - I hold equity as a foreign shareholder (which I thought was legal for non-US persons)
Is your point that even this structure violates sanctions because I'm Iranian? Or that the risk/complexity makes it impractical for anyone without massive legal resources?
I genuinely don't want anyone to break the law. If what I'm proposing is illegal even in the structure above, I need to understand that.
Re: Russia/China/India - that's solid advice I hadn't seriously considered. Russia and China have their own complexities, but India makes a lot of sense. Do you know if Indian tech companies face similar restrictions when working with Iranians, or is it more open?
I appreciate you taking the time to explain this clearly rather than just dismissing it. If the Western partnership path is genuinely impossible (not just hard), I need to know that.
That structure is explicitly illegal because you are an Iranian national. It does not matter whether you are a contractor: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/31/560.419
US business entities may not ever do business with Iran for any reason: https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2012/10/iran-...
See also: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/56536/can-a-us-compa...
> Is your point that even this structure violates sanctions because I'm Iranian?
Yes.
> Or that the risk/complexity makes it impractical for anyone without massive legal resources?
Companies on the scale of Toyota or Huawei try to circumvent these sanctions. They are regularly found out and caught and prosecuted:
> Do you know if Indian tech companies face similar restrictions when working with Iranians, or is it more open?
Sorry, I'm not Indian and have no knowledge of Indian laws. I would strongly advise you seek legal counsel from a person familiar with them, preferably a barrister/solicitor (in Indian terms).
> If the Western partnership path is genuinely impossible (not just hard), I need to know that.
For all intents and purposes, for you, it is. I'm sorry, genuinely, that our countries are in this position with regards to each other. It isn't your fault, but it is how it is.
Editing to add: the ONLY exception I can think of to this would be if you flee Iran, plead for and are granted asylum in the United States or a third country with better relationships to it. This is extraordinarily hard, and possibly a violation of Iranian law for me to even suggest to you.
Couldnt they just immigrate normally? I dont know how this all works, but there is a reasonably large size group of Iranian expats in my country (canada), many of them with jobs in the tech sector. I think they are just normal immigrants and not asylum seekers. I imagine its hard (especially with the current gov taking an anti-immigration tone), but probably a lot easier than getting asylum in usa.
Canada is a different matter and certainly, if the OP immigrated to Canada and was living there as an Iranian national with legal Canadian residency, the situation would be different.
Multiple commenters have explained that even the "contractor + equity" structure violates sanctions and is illegal. I genuinely didn't understand this - I thought it was a gray area. It's not.
I'm not asking anyone to break the law or take legal risk. That was naive on my part.
Based on helpful suggestions in this thread, I'm now focusing on: - India (no sanctions, large tech industry) - UAE/Dubai (open to Iranian nationals) - Turkey (regional tech hub) - Singapore (need to research legality)
If you're from one of these countries and interested in partnership, feel free to reach out: EchenDeligani@gmail.com
To everyone who took the time to explain sanctions compliance: thank you. This thread educated me on things I clearly didn't understand.
The technology still works. The market still exists. I just need to find it in the right geography.
You are asking technologists in an English speaking forum targeting the American centric world. You should be enquiring with friends in the nearby Islamic countries. None of the problems you have encountered are new or have no solutions for. As a suggestion, look up the payment providers used by Pornhub (they are blacklisted by Visa and Mastercard) and that is a good starting point for you. Also look at where a lot of crypto platforms incorporate. There is a whole world outside of the Delaware Corp + Stripe Atlas game, but you certainly won't learn that from silicon valley forums.
I strongly suggest you don't let desperation drive you into a poor deal or enter yourself into a disadvantageous partnership. Take some time off to clear your head, and talk to people. Don't let the whole "product led growth" US centric sales strategy cloud your business decisions. In the rest of the world, B2B is not limited to MasterCard/Visa and most of the notion/stripe style credit card driven SaaS don't necessarily exist in the same way. For your type of product, you should be charging more too.
Also most importantly, make sure your bank account is in the middle east and avoid dealing with USD under any circumstance. If you have a foreign bank account in a less friendly jurisdiction, an overzealous compliance department can easily shut down your entire business.
but relations are certainly warmer than with e. g. the US.
Iran is not beloved by much of the Arabic-speaking world for cultural reasons, shared religion nonwithstanding.
they already have some alignment on being anti-kurd
This structure clearly violates sanctions, yes.
The person opening the Stripe account in this case would be breaking the law and would be taking on the legal consequences of violating those sanctions.
Having another person act as a proxy for a business in a sanctioned country is unquestionably illegal, regardless of how you structure it. Equity agreements, remote contractor, handshake agreements, crypto payments, doesn't matter. Any arrangement like this is designed to avoid sanctions and violating sanctions is a big deal.
If so, the first step would be to find a competent attorney in Singapore to advise.
The US embassy, for example, maintains a list of English-speaking attorneys in Singapore who may have relevant experience: https://sg.usembassy.gov/list-of-attorneys/
[0] "Binance failed to file a SAR on transactions related to an individual designated by OFAC for support of a terrorist group. The individual was allowed to keep an account for several years in withdrawal-only status after designation and withdraw their balance" https://www.fincen.gov/system/files/enforcement_action/2023-...
[1] "The violations include failure to implement programs to prevent and report suspicious transactions with terrorists — including Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Al Qaeda, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) " https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1925
Legality set aside (I agree on your points on the repercussions), "the West" isn't that unified when it comes to middle east and other areas where the US meddled a lot. In particular, EU countries can have a way more nuanced view on it and be quite pissed at US' positions.
Which can make the author's perception of it more complex. They'll find people that are genuinely sympathetic, but still absolutely refusing to cross the bridge.
There's nothing.
> The product works. You just tested it.
I didn't, there's nothing to try.
The demo is a single-session system (designed for hotel lobby kiosks where one person uses it at a time). If someone else is talking to the avatar when you visit, you won't see a QR code.
Here's a direct link you can try: https://ps.neoclerks.com:8451/player.html?ss=f2ee51d8-2ea3-4...
If that's busy too, I'm happy to schedule a 15-min private demo. Email: EchenDeligani@gmail.com
This single-user limitation is product design (kiosk model) not technical - production handles 10-50 concurrent users per GPU. I should have explained this upfront and provided multiple demo instances for HN traffic.
My mistake - learning as I go here.
Is this botspam?
I'm reading the comments, figuring out what to say, then using AI to help phrase it properly. The thoughts are mine but the wording is AI-assisted.
Should've been upfront about this from the start. My bad.
The product is real (test it at neoclerks.com/en if you can access it), but I get if the AI responses kill the credibility.
Let's try a weird question: Can you reply in Persian which are your 2 favorite icecream flavors and why?
> Go ahead. Talk to the avatar for 2 minutes. Ask it anything in English. Watch how it responds in real-time with synchronized lip movements and natural conversation.
> I'll be here when you get back.
As far as I can tell, there is no live demo. There is a button to "book a private demo", but I can't find anything to try.
Second: Unfortunately, this is a request to partner with someone who will violate sanctions for this person. Anyone considering entertaining this offer should be very clear on that fact. Acting as a proxy to monetize a business in a sanctioned country is not a position you want to be in. You take the legal risk, the other party gets the proceeds (until sanctions catch up). Any investors looking at this arrangement would nope right out of the conversation as soon as any of this was discovered. Thoughts and feelings about sanctions aside, this is not a position you want to put yourself in.
If this is real then I feel sorry for the person, but given that this entire post is a direct ask for someone to violate international sanctions and the content of the website doesn't even match the description (no live demo) I think it's best to flag it. Would be sad if someone on HN felt guilty and got tricked into violating international sanctions over this post.
The demo is a single-session system (designed for hotel lobby kiosks where one person uses it at a time). If someone else is talking to the avatar when you visit, you won't see a QR code.
Here's a direct link you can try: https://ps.neoclerks.com:8451/player.html?ss=7591aecb-72d2-4...
If that's busy too, I'm happy to schedule a 15-min private demo. Email: EchenDeligani@gmail.com
This single-user limitation is product design (kiosk model) not technical - production handles 10-50 concurrent users per GPU. I should have explained this upfront and provided multiple demo instances for HN traffic.
My mistake - learning as I go here.
For an AI-centric product, this has my spidey senses tingling. Are you using AI to help with translations or something?
The urgency is the sob story: OP threw his life away to develop an AI avatar platform [1] and is supposedly in dire need urgent financial assistance. Better help him quick before you discover it’s a scam!
OP is almost certainly exaggerating the amount of effort put into this platform. It’s an AI wrapper. Period.
Scam.
[1] Who needs an AI avatar? It is not a bazillion dollar market like OP claims.
I see comments like "is this a request to bypass sanctions" OR "he's iranian"
Let's remind ourselves of the following:
- First understand that he didn't choose to be born and raised in Iran.
- Second people grow up have families become attached to where they're born it's not easy to just 'pick up and leave' moving to a new country is expensive and extremely difficult especially from countries like Iran.
- Third he's building something he believes in which is probably better than most people who live in privileged countries who sit around and do nothing.
To me this reads like a plea for help.
He's built something and showing it to the world, if someone likes it and wants to fund him / get him out of Iran, so he can pursue his dreams AND have the people who help him benefit along with him. I'm sure he'll be all for that.
Through no fault of his own, he's in a shitty situation. Failing to acknowledge that helps nobody.
Letting that empathy lead you into violating international sanctions to funnel money to a sanctioned country is decidedly not a good idea.
Requesting that other people sign up for Stripe accounts and send you the money in violation of sanctions is bad. The other person risks extreme legal consequences including prison sentences for deliberately and openly violating sanctions.
The comments are a warning to anyone who might feel compelled to do what is being asked, without realizing the specific request is a serious legal matter that can come with prison terms measured in decades.
> I see comments like "is this a request to bypass sanctions"
Did you read the Gist he posted? It was a direct request for someone to help him bypass sanctions.
IF he's out of Iran, works in a company with a founder or investor he's not violating any laws.
Immigrating to a new country isn't something you do on a whim. It takes a very long time (years) and it's not really cheap. It's not a solution to the OP's problem.
The OP wasn't asking for help leaving their country. They were making a specific ask to violate sanctions.
Yes there are obvious hurdles for people in “the west,” but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. I think the most obvious question is, would the OP relocate to another country if they were able to get a work visa? If yes, then sufficiently connected people, could absolutely make that happen. It would also immediately fix the issues around export sanctions. That’s in no way saying anyone could make it happen, but I have zero doubt that someone who could prowls HN.
There are many ways to having this occur legally, and I think it’s a bit unfair to immediately say this is completely and utterly illegal with no possible way to make it work. If anything, I’d expect the folks who prowl HN to be the exact kind of people to find a way to do it (without violating sanctions or facing jail time).
Addendum: I personally think this is cool, but I lack the resources to tackle the immediate problems or help bring it to market. I’d encourage the rest of you to offer meaningfully critiques or advice. Simply shouting “sanctions!” into the ether is neither of those. Those are a given and based on the replies from the OP thus far (which have all been downvoted to hell for no reason) they seem incredibly sincere. They’re just trying to figure out what they even can do and/or what possibilities even exist.
Good luck to the OP. This seems like a labor of love and I hope you find a way to make it work.
Because it's a request for someone to violate sanctions for them. They are specifically asking for someone to set up Stripe, take on the legal risk of violating international sanctions, and forward the money to them.
> Yes there are obvious hurdles for people in “the west,” but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
The "it" that is being requested is not about relocation, though. It's a direct ask to violate sanctions to sign up for services that must enforce sanctions.
Urgency, pleading for empathy, having the most destitute-sounding story of all time.
Did he really lose all his life savings to this project? How do we know that?
Additionally, there may be people from countries where this partnership would be, or could be, made legal— but the OP probably doesn’t know the name of the specific “Stripe” equivalent is… I certainly wouldn’t.
Imagine for a second if Civil, Mechanical, or Electrical engineers had this complete lack of responsibility, accountability, and liability in the work they do. The fact that people here are even offering serious advice that this guy stop what he's doing and seek legal help is going above and beyond
Good. That's the whole point of economic sanctions.
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=echend
This is an obvious scam, I don't know why I wasted this time double checking.
How about this: I'll do a live Zoom session where I: - Deploy the entire stack locally - Walk through the code - Show the admin panel, monitoring, databases - Answer any technical questions - Prove this is real
Schedule: [pick a time in next 24 hours] Zoom link: [create one]
Anyone who's skeptical is welcome to join and grill me.
If it's a scam, this should expose it quickly.
I have a ton of respect for Iranian folks and I hope the relations between our two countries can get better. Best of luck to you.
Okay, but you linked to a generic landing page with a "Book a private demo" button. So what exactly does your product do? And why should anyone here be interested if you can't as much as post a video of it working?
youll be all set
The EU seem to have less strict sanctions against Iran, specifically for specific entities, people, and services. Telecommunication is one of those services.
In theory you could get hired in an EU company that doesn't deal with an US company (for example an EU-only payment provider. If such a thing exists. (One can only hope GNU Taler will be it some day)). Though the compliance requirements might not be easy and cost you a bit to get some layers involved and fill out paperwork together with someone you'd convenie as your partner.
I'd pursue this avenue of research further if I'd where you, or another country wherein the US sanctions aren't a real factor. Best of all would be if you'd be able to emigrate and become a resident of a non sanctioned country.
"Meet HAVVA. The new face of luxury brand"
1. The AI couldn't even grammat-check a half-sentence.
2. Who wants to buy from a "luxury brand" that's uncanny valley AI slop?
Why are all 3 options, "pay this person $30K+" ?
Option 1: Co-Founder Partnership: You invest: $50-80k + handle sales/operations/Stripe access
Option 2: Outright Sale + Long-Term Contract: You pay: $60-80k upfront (full code ownership, all IP rights)
Option 3: Revenue Share Partnership: You invest: $30-50k upfront + Stripe access + sales/marketing
Where's the option "You run my system, and send me X% of the revenue" ?
Nobody here can help you and in fact I think GitHub and YC may be required to ban your account once they become aware you're Iranian. It's so flagrantly stupid and imo a violation of human rights to so utterly restrict the citizens of both our countries from freely doing business with each other but that's how it is right now.
Considering this all to be truthful, it seems you have fallen for the startup mythology - I know because I have been there too.
Maybe you can make it work, who knows, but the chances are slim - even more because of your nationality.
Don't all-in in this, protect yourself and your family.
Don't believe those hard-working startup stories, most of them in reality are really luck or contacts, nothing to do with hardwork, quality, strategy, etc. And there's people profiteering over believers like you...
I won't even comment on the irony of an iranian citizen asking for help from the Silicon Valley - when did these people help you or your country, ever????????
Best of luck
Every "web marketing" person I ran into does it, it comes from that environment?
It's something considered to result in more sales, or maybe a way to signal that you're connected to some web marketing guru?
The shortest way out is island nation golden passport plus renunciation of Iranian citizenship plus incorporation in Dubai and then get going. Rough because startup cost is $250k. Well, you have a story to tell a VC. It'll be tough, though. None of the A listers will risk this.
ahmadss•1h ago
malfist•1h ago
tbrownaw•1h ago
system2•1h ago
8note•46m ago
a major crypto usecase is terrorist financing/sanctions avoidance
echend•1h ago
Why enterprise: B2B customers pay $500-5000/month. Consumer would be $10-50/month. I need fewer customers to survive.
Why not crypto: Tried that. B2B accounting departments won't pay recurring subscriptions in Bitcoin. Too volatile, compliance issues. Consumer crypto payments might work but harder to scale.
The honest answer: I built what I knew how to build (enterprise infrastructure) without validating the market first. Classic founder mistake (see avandekleut's comment above - they're right).