I don't want to invest money in a project that I am not sure is going to make any returns. Also, don't want to pay taxes in the US with Atlas, maintain a corporation there, etc.
A couple of my heuristics
1. Running a smaller business takes the same amount of work as running a bigger one.
2. A running a failing business takes more of the owner’s energy than running a successful one.
This thread exemplifies at least one of them because if the plan was a bigger business, you would not be spending time on alternatives to Stripe.
Business ideas can be feasible but not viable. If it does not pencil out, it doe not pencil out.
> Running a smaller business takes the same amount of work as running a bigger one.
It does however, take a lot more capital to run the bigger one. From a personal perspective the opportunity cost of starting the bigger company is all the luxuries and security that cash-in-hand brings, not to mention the possibility of an even better business opportunity arising in the future.
Inadequate capital is a reason a lot of businesses are not viable. Thus a reason to forgo the idea.
But to be more direct, it takes as much effort to run an umdetcapitalized smaller business as iIt does to run an undercapitalized larger one and in both cases you are hoping for luck.
Not only is hope not a plan, the upside of good fortune with a smaller business is smaller than the upside of good fortunes with a larger one.
Finally, adequate capitalization is the high level bit of designing a business. Ideas are so abundant as to be worthless and cash is king.
> I don't want to invest money in a project that I am not sure is going to make any returns.
That's the underlying risk of being an entrepreneur. If it were a sure thing, everyone else would be doing it. This isn't a comment about Stripe Atlas but about the whole thing being a gamble. If you don't have the stomach for that kind of a gamble at large, being entrepreneur isn't for you.
It's easy to buy shares of Uber on the stock exchange after they went public, it's way harder to put down money on Uber in 2008. And you could be Flywheel instead of Uber.