Run LendWings. Part 1. Belarusian swamp
Hello.
LendWings platform was a little delayed with the announcement of the launch of the beta version, but we are pleased to announce that this did happen.
Free video courses are now available on the site and payment system integration is on the way to launch the entire course pool. You can read about all upcoming training programs in the “Expected” tab, and add the video courses that interest you to the wishlist. The launch of the first version of the site according to plan will take place in early October.
')
In this post I want to tell you about the difficulties we faced in the Republic of Belarus and how we managed to lose more than a month of time.
It all started in late July, when the platform was still being written, and nothing foreshadowed a headache. We received a call from Minsk and asked to participate in the presentation session of the Belarusian Association of Business Angels “Bavin” and this call later brought us both grief and joy.
Without thinking twice, we hit the road, spoke, answered questions, and in high spirits went to drink beer.
At the presentation we used the following materials:
Video (which we have already shown):
And the PPT presentation itself HERE .
Most certainly embraced the idea of ​​a multi-segment educational platform with a creak. We fought off attacks and phrases like “We need to narrow down” and “Universal projects fail” and even put pressure on the arguments, forcing opponents to retreat, since the concept of tough authors, a calculated business plan and an analogue in the west allowed it. It seemed to us that we were interested in the gathered investors, because instead of the 15 minutes put on the presentation and questions, we stood in front of the round table for 40 minutes.
Immediately upon arrival home (the production department is located in the city of Gomel), we received a letter from the manager of the association “Bavin” that the project interested the investor, and he is ready to meet with us personally. It was good news, of course, because autumn was just around the corner, and personal savings for the maintenance and development of the project ended, not to mention the fact that it was impossible to carry out expensive marketing on your hard-earned ones.
A week passed, and we again met with an investor (one of those present at the presentation session), but already in a one-on-one format. The first thing I want to mention is the surprisingly strong level of entrepreneurs who live in our republic. It was a man, about 40 years old, who listened attentively to us, somehow quickly penetrated into the “topic”, asked questions about the stake in the company and the required investments, and left, promising to think about partnership the other day. A few days later the bell rang and we were invited by the investor to his office.
We agreed that the investor will receive 30% for $ 100,000, while dividing the investment package into several parts, which are paid after passing KPI points, to reduce risks. This amount is quite enough for us, given that we have five people who are co-founders and a bernrate will be 90% of the cost of marketing.
I will not talk in detail about all of our raids to their office, about all the issues raised and decisions, I will try to go directly to the problem that has arisen in the future to force us to register a company in the Republic of Belarus.
The first difficulty arose in the form of presidential decree No. 60 , which obliges all Belarusian legal entities to be hosted in Belarus, which in itself is no longer good, due to the moral and technical backwardness of our hosters compared to Western companies. After inventing the crutches who solved this problem: to host the site in Belarus, and video content on Amazon, we went further and faced the following problems.
In order to accept payments through the site, we had to connect a normal service like Robokassa, which is quite easy to integrate and support dozens of payment systems that are common in the CIS. However, in order for the Belarusian legal entity to work with Robokassa, we had to open a settlement account in the Russian Federation. In Belarus, permission to open an account outside our state, both physical and legal, is issued by one organization - the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus. We prepared documents, submitted an application to the National Bank and began to collect a package of papers for opening a company.
In parallel, as many as 2 alternatives were drawn:
1) work with the Belarusian representative of the Money Online payment system, without having to open an account in the Russian Federation,
2) working with the offshore company Money Online directly, so as not to lose interest on intermediaries.
In short, there were many options and at rallies we defined the task for ourselves as follows: “Find the most convenient and profitable way of working,” but it soon became clear that all of these options would sink in the Belarusian swamp.
The first one began to sink the scheme with the opening of an account in the Russian Federation. It turns out that Belaruskali can receive such a privilege, but not an educational startup, and the woman in the National Bank advised to open in the Russian Federation, because “We will have a lot of trouble with allowing you to open an account, so you pay taxes better than Russia”. As a way out of the situation, we were offered the Belarusian payment system Webpay . Of course, like any regular Belarusian company, the guys have their own hockey team:
This is a project of Reifazen Bank, which accepts cards and seems to work with Belarusian online stores. But here everything went awry! It turns out that in order to work with WebPay, we must limit the circle of persons making payments to our address to citizens of the Republic of Belarus. And that's all. No payments from malicious aliens!
Then the scheme with a contract with Money Online RB went to the bottom , and again due to the fault of the same National Bank, which saw banking services in the services provided, and Money Online is not an organization that has permission for such activities (it is possible that with our filing they will arrange a check in the Belarusian plane).
And the last one drowned was the option of signing an agreement with Cyprus (offshore zone) directly , due to a direct tax response, that such transactions are not welcome and will not be brought to good. That's it.
All these movements took about a month of time, and a week ago we decided to open an LLC in Russia and pay taxes in the Russian Federation.
I will write about how everything went right after the alpha release, and something tells me that Russia will be friendlier to foreigners than Motherland.
Summing up, I would like to say that there was a very unpleasant aftertaste from this whole story. We really wanted to be the first Belarusian Internet project with convenient international payment tools for our products, we did not promise multi-million tax inflows to the budget, but our precedent could be a good example for other teams not to hide offshore or escape to Russia. However, at the top of the article (under the swamp picture) you can see a quote, and it speaks of the current state of affairs for itself.
I urge all not indifferent to run around the site and quarrel with us if you find jambs and errors, but they are there because This is a raw beta version.
Thank you very much for your attention, I hope the information will be useful for someone.
LendWings platform was a little delayed with the announcement of the launch of the beta version, but we are pleased to announce that this did happen.
Free video courses are now available on the site and payment system integration is on the way to launch the entire course pool. You can read about all upcoming training programs in the “Expected” tab, and add the video courses that interest you to the wishlist. The launch of the first version of the site according to plan will take place in early October.
')
In this post I want to tell you about the difficulties we faced in the Republic of Belarus and how we managed to lose more than a month of time.
We will have a lot of trouble with allowing you to open an account, so pay taxes better than Russia.
It all started in late July, when the platform was still being written, and nothing foreshadowed a headache. We received a call from Minsk and asked to participate in the presentation session of the Belarusian Association of Business Angels “Bavin” and this call later brought us both grief and joy.
Without thinking twice, we hit the road, spoke, answered questions, and in high spirits went to drink beer.
At the presentation we used the following materials:
Video (which we have already shown):
And the PPT presentation itself HERE .
Most certainly embraced the idea of ​​a multi-segment educational platform with a creak. We fought off attacks and phrases like “We need to narrow down” and “Universal projects fail” and even put pressure on the arguments, forcing opponents to retreat, since the concept of tough authors, a calculated business plan and an analogue in the west allowed it. It seemed to us that we were interested in the gathered investors, because instead of the 15 minutes put on the presentation and questions, we stood in front of the round table for 40 minutes.
Immediately upon arrival home (the production department is located in the city of Gomel), we received a letter from the manager of the association “Bavin” that the project interested the investor, and he is ready to meet with us personally. It was good news, of course, because autumn was just around the corner, and personal savings for the maintenance and development of the project ended, not to mention the fact that it was impossible to carry out expensive marketing on your hard-earned ones.
A week passed, and we again met with an investor (one of those present at the presentation session), but already in a one-on-one format. The first thing I want to mention is the surprisingly strong level of entrepreneurs who live in our republic. It was a man, about 40 years old, who listened attentively to us, somehow quickly penetrated into the “topic”, asked questions about the stake in the company and the required investments, and left, promising to think about partnership the other day. A few days later the bell rang and we were invited by the investor to his office.
We agreed that the investor will receive 30% for $ 100,000, while dividing the investment package into several parts, which are paid after passing KPI points, to reduce risks. This amount is quite enough for us, given that we have five people who are co-founders and a bernrate will be 90% of the cost of marketing.
I will not talk in detail about all of our raids to their office, about all the issues raised and decisions, I will try to go directly to the problem that has arisen in the future to force us to register a company in the Republic of Belarus.
The first difficulty arose in the form of presidential decree No. 60 , which obliges all Belarusian legal entities to be hosted in Belarus, which in itself is no longer good, due to the moral and technical backwardness of our hosters compared to Western companies. After inventing the crutches who solved this problem: to host the site in Belarus, and video content on Amazon, we went further and faced the following problems.
In order to accept payments through the site, we had to connect a normal service like Robokassa, which is quite easy to integrate and support dozens of payment systems that are common in the CIS. However, in order for the Belarusian legal entity to work with Robokassa, we had to open a settlement account in the Russian Federation. In Belarus, permission to open an account outside our state, both physical and legal, is issued by one organization - the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus. We prepared documents, submitted an application to the National Bank and began to collect a package of papers for opening a company.
In parallel, as many as 2 alternatives were drawn:
1) work with the Belarusian representative of the Money Online payment system, without having to open an account in the Russian Federation,
2) working with the offshore company Money Online directly, so as not to lose interest on intermediaries.
In short, there were many options and at rallies we defined the task for ourselves as follows: “Find the most convenient and profitable way of working,” but it soon became clear that all of these options would sink in the Belarusian swamp.
The first one began to sink the scheme with the opening of an account in the Russian Federation. It turns out that Belaruskali can receive such a privilege, but not an educational startup, and the woman in the National Bank advised to open in the Russian Federation, because “We will have a lot of trouble with allowing you to open an account, so you pay taxes better than Russia”. As a way out of the situation, we were offered the Belarusian payment system Webpay . Of course, like any regular Belarusian company, the guys have their own hockey team:
This is a project of Reifazen Bank, which accepts cards and seems to work with Belarusian online stores. But here everything went awry! It turns out that in order to work with WebPay, we must limit the circle of persons making payments to our address to citizens of the Republic of Belarus. And that's all. No payments from malicious aliens!
Then the scheme with a contract with Money Online RB went to the bottom , and again due to the fault of the same National Bank, which saw banking services in the services provided, and Money Online is not an organization that has permission for such activities (it is possible that with our filing they will arrange a check in the Belarusian plane).
And the last one drowned was the option of signing an agreement with Cyprus (offshore zone) directly , due to a direct tax response, that such transactions are not welcome and will not be brought to good. That's it.
All these movements took about a month of time, and a week ago we decided to open an LLC in Russia and pay taxes in the Russian Federation.
I will write about how everything went right after the alpha release, and something tells me that Russia will be friendlier to foreigners than Motherland.
Summing up, I would like to say that there was a very unpleasant aftertaste from this whole story. We really wanted to be the first Belarusian Internet project with convenient international payment tools for our products, we did not promise multi-million tax inflows to the budget, but our precedent could be a good example for other teams not to hide offshore or escape to Russia. However, at the top of the article (under the swamp picture) you can see a quote, and it speaks of the current state of affairs for itself.
I urge all not indifferent to run around the site and quarrel with us if you find jambs and errors, but they are there because This is a raw beta version.
Thank you very much for your attention, I hope the information will be useful for someone.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/193370/
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