March 21, 2023

This would kill our company immediately

38 minutes

Jon's back from his first real vacation in years. In this episode, we discuss how we've been removing inactive accounts on Transistor, SVB, Section 174, Revin is shutting down their Merchant of Record service, SaaS sales tax compliance:

(00:37) - Jon in vacation mode

(02:30) - Kicking off inactive accounts

(04:30) - Silicon Valley Bank

(06:06) - What is Mercury bank?

(13:16) - Section 174 in the USA

(19:05) - Sales tax compliance update

(25:56) - What could we do?

(32:13) - Patreon integration update

(34:57) - MyPodStudios

(36:33) - Patreon Thanks

Links:

Matt Levin's excellent summary of the Silicon Valley Bank run
Ian Landsman: "This is why I don't use startup-friendly banks (Mercury, etc)"
Section 174: join ssballiance.org
Revin has shut down its Merchant of Record service
Flurly (another Merchant of Record) was shut down by Stripe

From the Revin email:

“The most relevant reason [we are closing] is that the Merchant of Record model is too risky for both sellers and the MOR operator. Sellers bear the risk of platform shutdown (as seen in the example of Flurly & Stripe), and the MOR operator could potentially become involved in illicit or illegal activities quickly, which could lead to all sorts of problems.

Furthermore, it became increasingly clear that the Merchant of Record model primarily appeals to small-scale sellers or businesses with questionable and high-risk business models. This presents a significant challenge as we strive to move up the market.

The recent change in Stripe's risk behavior has caused us to experience issues with keeping Stripe accounts live.”

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