This goes for anyone on HN -- feel free to email me directly. I'm (my HN username)@stripe.com I'm happy to expedite things if e.g. they're time sensitive for you.
Thanks Patrick; this is the first time I've heard of Atlas and it looks like a great service. Is there a floor of what you expect from applicants, i.e., is a website showing some viable product required before an applicant would be considered competitive?
Investors have some limited pool of capital or bandwidth and want to conserve it for the companies they think are most likely to be successful. We are not constrained in this fashion.
We need to know what the business intends to actually do, mostly for compliance reasons. A working website or prototype we could look at makes this easier, but we know there are a lot of ways early stage startups get to market. We can be flexible -- if you don't have a website but do have a deck, we can evaluate that.
We (and our partners) have a notion of what companies are a good fit for Atlas, and it's not quite as broad as "every business we could legally transact with." It's described in more detail in the FAQ, but broadly speaking we're looking for businesses that are intrinsically international and/or ambitious and technology-enabled.
The world needs more hair salons, too, but we'd probably not work with a hair salon at the current moment in time. We're not confident that the thing we are building is appropriate to their needs yet, and want to stay focused while making something for our core audience.
That helps clarify things for me. I did find more information in the FAQ, but I would suggest making it easier to find. Maybe a simple Is Stripe Atlas right for my business? link in the "Ready to join Stripe Atlas?" section.
