Ask HN: I'm about to launch my startup, should I charge in dollars?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5723537

by _ompc • 13 years ago

1 11 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm almost ready to properly launch my one-man startup; I'm just setting up the company at the moment (which is a new experience for me).

I'm based in the UK, the site's hosted in the EU, and I have the opportunity to charge in GBP, EUR, or USD via Stripe; which should I use? Do US users hesitate when they see a price in pounds? I know a few UK startups (like Pusher) which bill in dollars but I want to know of any pitfalls that could entail.

I'm afraid this is a bit out of my regular experience, so I'd love any tips from others who have gone through this.

lakey4• 13 years ago

Who is your target market?

How / where will you market the product?

Can't you do both via geo-targeting?

robotmay5• 13 years ago

Stripe only lets me choose one currency for an account, as far as I know.

The target market is everywhere! I didn't want to plug it above, but it's a new photography community which you can currently see in beta: https://photographer.io.

I have some really active users in the UK, EU, USA, Australia, and some great photos from someone in Senegal right now.

I suppose I could always display a different currency but always bill in one, though that then involves fiddling with conversion rates.

lakey4• 13 years ago

Nice build - promising.

I'm in the UK but quite happy to pay for something in dollars. I don't think it works quite so well the other way around. Ultimately Stripe needs to build out its features, unless there is a hack of some kind to look into (http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-paid-memberships-p...).

It's a very saturated market. Have you got a clear plan of attack, as far as the marketing goes?

jaachan• 13 years ago

Being from the EU, I've got the idea that most people are pretty attached to their currency. I'm guessing it depends a bit on your market - some people (global-minded?) have no problem doing currency conversion, others do (nationally-minded?). For a company selling a downloadable program, I had to modify their website so it could sell in these three currencies (EUR, GBP, USD). Since they have no official presence there, I presume it was feelgood only.

I suppose the question is not "should you" but "can you afford to". If you can make it so, reaching out to the customer, "speaking" in their own currency, is always a benefit.

Edit: If you /need/ to pick one, pick the one were you expect the most revenue? I don't think anyone of them are less hesitant about it than others. Save for maybe EU people since they might remember the good ol' days of the Mark and the Franc and such.

robotmay5• 13 years ago

That's the problem I'm facing at the moment; each currency would be relevant to a certain section of my current user base. Plenty of users in the USA, about the same in the UK and EU, and a sizeable number in Australia too. I'm not sure if Stripe incurs extra charges for using non-native currencies; I've tried looking through their docs but the UK documentation is a little sparse right now.

chrisdew• 13 years ago

Be careful of Stripe, if you're in the UK.

You currently need a US bank account to charge in dollars. They are looking at multi-currency, but it's not available yet.

You can charge in multiple currencies - they advised setting up multiple Stripe accounts.

robotmay5• 13 years ago

Aaah, that would make sense; there's so little documentation for UK users at the moment that I wasn't sure if something like that was the case. So I'm assuming I can only charge in GBP or EUR with a UK bank account?

Ask HN: I'm about to launch my startup, should I charge in dollars?

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