Launch HN: Ontop (YC W21) – Easily hire and pay remote workers in LATAM
92 comments
Congratulations! I'm happy for you.
So we have Ontop for LATAM.
We have Manara (https://manara.tech) for MENA (Middle East and North Africa). It's backed by YC as well.
We have Andela (https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/23/connecting-african-softwar...) for Africa.
Honorable mentions: Pesto (https://pesto.tech/), Turing (https://turing.com/), Youteam (https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/23/youteam/).
Now I wonder whether I should make one but for South-East Asia (I live there)? :)
So we have Ontop for LATAM.
We have Manara (https://manara.tech) for MENA (Middle East and North Africa). It's backed by YC as well.
We have Andela (https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/23/connecting-african-softwar...) for Africa.
Honorable mentions: Pesto (https://pesto.tech/), Turing (https://turing.com/), Youteam (https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/23/youteam/).
Now I wonder whether I should make one but for South-East Asia (I live there)? :)
There is also Pilot (https://pilot.co) originally for CEE, backed by YC as well.
Thank you very much!! Even though we are latam focused we currently have clients worldwide and we already serve +150 countries. Happy to help :)
Congratulations on your launch!
I'm curious about the trend of choosing .ai domains. Is this to signal state of the art technology is being used?
Which part does AI play in your infrastructure/service?
Thanks!
I'm curious about the trend of choosing .ai domains. Is this to signal state of the art technology is being used?
Which part does AI play in your infrastructure/service?
Thanks!
We want to eventually use ai for 1) smart contracts. and 2) payment route optimization and FX. But first, we need to live the whole process, from manual to automated, to intelligent and evolving.
Forgive me for my ignorance but, what is LATAM? Latin America?
I was having a hard time with that too, I found an airlines but it soon clicked.
Short Hand for South and Central American (Mexico can be considered in or out of LATAM) and also Caribbean Islands.
Yes. Latin America! :)
At least in Argentina, we use LATAM only for the Chilean Airline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LATAM_Chile
PS: In the main text, remember to add https to make the link clicky https://www.ontop.ai
PS: In the main text, remember to add https to make the link clicky https://www.ontop.ai
Yeah, my wife used to work form them hahaha However it is standard to refer to latin america as LATAM.
great!! Thank you very much for the feedback!!
Latin America.
yes
How do you all deal with permanent establishment? Especially with renewed focus in BEPS and all that... e.g. substantive work as employee or agent in another country means proportional corp taxes
We offer a standard handling of contractor agreements, in which our database knows exactly what the regulation for each country is, and what the corresponding gross up has to be in order for the contractor to net the desired income. We assist contractors in their tax residence, to optimize their payouts to government, while keeping everything 100% compliant so the company is not as risk. Whenever regulations get too complex for independent contractos in a country, we offer plug and play, which is an outsourcing of the contractor, and Ontop hires them.
> we offer plug and play, which is an outsourcing of the contractor, and Ontop hires them
Would just be careful, if the client is still the economic employer that's still a PE trigger, under countries that follow OECD model anyways. Idk I just have some concerns with these models like Remote, Deel, Skuad, Papaya Global, Oyster, etc., in that technically they're likely exposing many of their clients to PE risk w/o the client knowing... if you're sourcing value from country X, incl employment (direct or indirect), country X is going to want you to pay the equiv corp tax, generally speaking.
Would just be careful, if the client is still the economic employer that's still a PE trigger, under countries that follow OECD model anyways. Idk I just have some concerns with these models like Remote, Deel, Skuad, Papaya Global, Oyster, etc., in that technically they're likely exposing many of their clients to PE risk w/o the client knowing... if you're sourcing value from country X, incl employment (direct or indirect), country X is going to want you to pay the equiv corp tax, generally speaking.
You are 100% right. We have agreements with local governments and help them out to ensure contractor taxes are up do date always and everything is done legally.
Sorry, I won't belabour the point further, but I guess the point is the client's corporate tax exposure in the country would have to be assessed client-by-client how using employee/contractor. At any rate thanks for responding and best of luck here.
I appreciate your feedback a lot. It's challenging comments like these that make us grow. Will study the topic more and find a better solution. :). Thank you very much.
How do you ensure quality work?
Companies could already use freelancers on other platforms in many cases, but the main issue is ensuring the work is completed and to a high standard.
Companies could already use freelancers on other platforms in many cases, but the main issue is ensuring the work is completed and to a high standard.
The company has direct communication with the contractor. The contractor has incentives because we don't commission on their payment as upwork and other platforms. We have several features to submit time sheets and proof of work. Thanks!
I had a question about payment but your FAQ answered it, great work on being flexible for freelancers, Payoneer makes it a lot easier about getting paid in Argentina for example.
A couple of questions: 1- Do you think you will ever integrate with remote job boards like remoteok.io? 2- Did you consider adding Venezuela to the list of countries, or are things too difficult to do legally?
A couple of questions: 1- Do you think you will ever integrate with remote job boards like remoteok.io? 2- Did you consider adding Venezuela to the list of countries, or are things too difficult to do legally?
Hey Gaby. We are working very hard to make our service available in Venezuela. Actually we are already working with a couple of contractors there. And Argentina is another difficult jurisdiction that we are already solving for.
Good luck! My question is... how do you find developers? Most LATAM countries tax service exporters a lot of money, that's why devs prefer to stay under the radar and use stuff like Payoneer or Paypal. What's the advantage, as a dev, to use your service? It everything is legal paper-wise I have to pay more taxes.
We have special agreements with local governments that are interested in exporting technical talent. Even though we are not head hunters we can help in that regard. You are right, there are a lot of people that just avoid taxes, however this is a huge liability for companies and some have already realized this. We want to help out both parties to achieve high levels of compliance and still have the economic benefit.
Do you help locate talent in LATAM?
Also, which countries do you cover? I'm assuming Colombia is one of them.
Also, which countries do you cover? I'm assuming Colombia is one of them.
Yes all of latin america. Colombia included. Even though we are not a head hunter we have partners and can help you with that too.
Awesome - great job, guys!
Most engineers in very low paying countries that are in any way good and can speak half decent English could easily earn multiples of what they're earning at home through skilled visas in any number of developed coutries.
Most of these engineers take that option. They'll do "work experience" in their country of origin for a year or two, then head overseas. So most talent left in developing countries is usually not as good quality as what you'd find in developed countries that have attracted all the good engineers. Developing countries are known to have a big "brain drain" for in demand skills as they generally can't pay people well enough.
Most of these engineers take that option. They'll do "work experience" in their country of origin for a year or two, then head overseas. So most talent left in developing countries is usually not as good quality as what you'd find in developed countries that have attracted all the good engineers. Developing countries are known to have a big "brain drain" for in demand skills as they generally can't pay people well enough.
Or they can be hired in their country for a foreign company for a ridiculously high salary for the country. Anyway good engineers won't be outsourced for a company that keeps 70% of what the customer actually pays for long.
A friend of mine lives in Bolivia, and literally tripled his salary (actually a bit more than triple) just by doing this.
A friend of mine lives in Bolivia, and literally tripled his salary (actually a bit more than triple) just by doing this.
"quality at a fraction of price compared to what they can get elsewhere." - not sure about this part. I moved from $LATAM_COUNTRY to $A_COUNTRY_NORTH_OF_MEXICO precisely because given my skill level, compensation was too low and my work too undervalued. Remote should leverage the playing field in the other direction: expect to be paid as well as you would if you lived in a more developed country. Insist on it. Don't undersell yourself.
You are the product here, or well, people like the former you in theory."Cheap" developers, the American companies win, this "innovative" company wins, and the developers get screwed. Do you want to work with American companies? Open an US account as a person or as an LLC (it is very easy these days) and request to be paid there in USD.
However opening up an LLC and a bank account is not that easy, when you are from latin america, and receiving the money in a US bank account implies you have to report to the IRS.
Report to IRS is not a bug is a feature you have to pay taxes somewhere and there are plenty of non double taxation agreements within the US and Latam.
Amazing. Thanks for the feedback. With your help we can get better.
Excelente lo que estan logrando amigo. Dios los prospere en todo lo que estan emprendiendo. Saludos de Chicago.
Muchas gracias por la buena energia!
Opening an LLC as a sole foreign proprietor is very easy. Not only that, if you dont physically conduct business in the states (as in a developer programming from outside) you dont pay any taxes in America (you still have to file of course). Getting a bank account is also easy with an established LLC, directly with Mercury or indirectly through Stripe.
https://www.llcuniversity.com/irs/how-to-apply-for-ein-witho...
https://www.llcuniversity.com/irs/how-to-apply-for-ein-witho...
Agree. In decent remote-first companies the "quality at a fraction of price compared to what they can get elsewhere" makes no sense at all.
Average software developer compensation in the US can be around 100k to 120k . In latin america you can get excellent top tier tech talent for 30k-40k.
In my experience you can't get Colombian top developers for less than 60k
Happy to make some introductions and get you that talent. Email us!
Thanks for making my point with actual data :) (to restate: if the US pays 100K for this skillset, don't sell yourself cheap at 30K. Where you are only matters to local companies.)
Thank you for your comment. Completely agree.
Hello Santiago, Julian, and Jaime. Congratulations on the product. How is this different from: https://www.letsdeel.com?
Thanks! We are born out of LATAM so we have faster payments and a better understanding of local regulations.
I am sorry to let you down, but I used Deel to pay people in Colombia, and it works like a charm.
Cool! Those guys are great! If you ever need anything from us we are at your service.
As the world keeps moving full remote this type of hiring middleware makes a lot of sense, but I have reservations for the trajectory of this model.
First, yes, companies in US/Canada and Europe will look for different regions (including LATAM) to source their talent needs. And I do believe that many companies will rely on middleware like this to handle contract and payments. It's great that you're setting up yourselves to be the leader of this model in Latam.
The problem I see is that your successful trajectory only makes sense to me if you guys handle dozens of contracts for a single operator a time. Meaning having something like 500 companies with ten or more remote Latam employees each.
Now, as an agent you have extraordinarily little leverage for retention. You generate all the contracts and boilerplate, and handle payments. But once a business has set certain employee footprint in a region, what will prevent them from cutting you off?
The way I see it, your path to success looks like having hundreds of companies that just need an employee or two per country, but that sounds like an incredibly intense operational overhead. Maybe that's how you have been thinking about it and have ideas for addressing this at scale with technology, idk.
In general, it seems that there are two potential paths, but one will be harder than the other one. One with long-term relationships which means more recurring revenue and a more predictable financial horizon. The other one is with short-term relationships (short-lived contracts, low footprint, small labor) and that path is more convoluted and with a less clear trajectory towards profitability.
This is of course a problem that all the companies operating on this model need to figure out. Not only you.
The other problem I see is with a foundational thought of your business: "quality at a fraction of price compared to what they can get elsewhere."
I would thread lightly with that. It almost seems like you're saying: "feel free to exploit the already undervalued and underpaid talent of Latam. We will make it easier"... My concern is that you're setting up your brand to have the same reputation as companies like Cognizant, Infosys and TATA. Yes, you could be generating value for stakeholders but at the expense of facilitating the exploitation of Latam professionals.
I would hope that this model doesn't become an alternative to the H1-B fiasco that was pervasive in the US. As a US immigrant that had an H1-B visa I will always remember those companies as the worst type of companies because they exploited Indian tech workers for years to the detriment of other immigrants like me that had to compete for the same visas.
Not saying that's what you're doing, but words matter so I would re-evaluate how you talk about the value you bring.
P.S: Also, as a fellow Colombian and Technologist please know that I'm rooting for you. One word of advice regarding HN etiquette. Please don't have other team members commenting as random commenters. It looks disingenuous.
First, yes, companies in US/Canada and Europe will look for different regions (including LATAM) to source their talent needs. And I do believe that many companies will rely on middleware like this to handle contract and payments. It's great that you're setting up yourselves to be the leader of this model in Latam.
The problem I see is that your successful trajectory only makes sense to me if you guys handle dozens of contracts for a single operator a time. Meaning having something like 500 companies with ten or more remote Latam employees each.
Now, as an agent you have extraordinarily little leverage for retention. You generate all the contracts and boilerplate, and handle payments. But once a business has set certain employee footprint in a region, what will prevent them from cutting you off?
The way I see it, your path to success looks like having hundreds of companies that just need an employee or two per country, but that sounds like an incredibly intense operational overhead. Maybe that's how you have been thinking about it and have ideas for addressing this at scale with technology, idk.
In general, it seems that there are two potential paths, but one will be harder than the other one. One with long-term relationships which means more recurring revenue and a more predictable financial horizon. The other one is with short-term relationships (short-lived contracts, low footprint, small labor) and that path is more convoluted and with a less clear trajectory towards profitability.
This is of course a problem that all the companies operating on this model need to figure out. Not only you.
The other problem I see is with a foundational thought of your business: "quality at a fraction of price compared to what they can get elsewhere."
I would thread lightly with that. It almost seems like you're saying: "feel free to exploit the already undervalued and underpaid talent of Latam. We will make it easier"... My concern is that you're setting up your brand to have the same reputation as companies like Cognizant, Infosys and TATA. Yes, you could be generating value for stakeholders but at the expense of facilitating the exploitation of Latam professionals.
I would hope that this model doesn't become an alternative to the H1-B fiasco that was pervasive in the US. As a US immigrant that had an H1-B visa I will always remember those companies as the worst type of companies because they exploited Indian tech workers for years to the detriment of other immigrants like me that had to compete for the same visas.
Not saying that's what you're doing, but words matter so I would re-evaluate how you talk about the value you bring.
P.S: Also, as a fellow Colombian and Technologist please know that I'm rooting for you. One word of advice regarding HN etiquette. Please don't have other team members commenting as random commenters. It looks disingenuous.
The first problem with the model is that the income cannot come from a small group of clients, because if one cancels the contract everything goes to the floor. example revenue top 10 <70%
Thank you very much for the valuable feedback. Noted. You have some strong arguments and points that we will definitely consider in our model. Much appreciated.
No problem! As I said, rooting for you since this is a much-needed actor especially with acceleration of remote work.
What's the core difference between something like this and remote.com?
Hey! We are better and faster with payments and compliance in LATAM. We are also cheaper and have much better customer support :)
Congrats, we're building a similar platform but trying not to be a middle man as much as possible (https://ontwik-dev.com)
Where do you recommend companies first look for talent in LATAM?
Colombia and Argentina are increasingly popular
Sorry I meant from the perspective of how does one find engineers, job boards, platforms etc? Any you recommend?
Way to go OnTop! I'm a huge fan of your podcast btw.
Thank you very much!! Hope we're adding value!
LATAM engineers should try to immigrate to the US instead to working remote. The same owner of Ontop is saying that they are getting just 33% of the salary they'd get in the US.
Venausa (https://www.venausa.net) is giving a coaching in Spanish to get a job in the US in less than one year averaging 90.000 USD annually for LATAM engineers.
I would recommend the opposite. I lived in a LATAM country and I earned a modest USD salary but my quality of life was much better than now, when I receive the "33% more" and live in the US. This is because:
- USD is always high, so currency conversion is very favorable. I literally earned 4x more than an engineer at the same position in a local big company.
- My spending was in local currency, so utilities and most of everything is very low priced compared to what I earned.
- Taxation in many LATAM countries is about 15% or less, depending on how you incorporate yourself.
- Health is much cheaper than of the US at a similar quality. I could have a major heart surgery for less than 10k USD with world renowned doctors.
- Migrating is never easy, cultural barriers, lack of family support and bureaucracy can add a huge amount of stress.
edit: some minor grammar mistakes
- USD is always high, so currency conversion is very favorable. I literally earned 4x more than an engineer at the same position in a local big company.
- My spending was in local currency, so utilities and most of everything is very low priced compared to what I earned.
- Taxation in many LATAM countries is about 15% or less, depending on how you incorporate yourself.
- Health is much cheaper than of the US at a similar quality. I could have a major heart surgery for less than 10k USD with world renowned doctors.
- Migrating is never easy, cultural barriers, lack of family support and bureaucracy can add a huge amount of stress.
edit: some minor grammar mistakes
I was sort of passing by Bogota a few years ago and got a job for BairesDev... It was 2,500 US a month kind of job... I guess thats peanuts in the US but it was quite a bit for my needs in Bogota, rent included near Calle 85 (which I miss like hell!)... Super secure as well... never had a problem in Bogota... LATAM is the best, I must say.
Check out my story of relocating to Mexico nearly 4 years ago. Everything you say here is true, and more... https://obie.medium.com/you-should-relocate-to-mexico-598743...
Excellent comment! Agree 100%. Thank you
Tell me about security living there ... ?
Where I lived had a very low crime rate, similar to where I live right now.
The US has many parts where crime is much worse, such as Baltimore, Detroit or some parts of Chicago.
The US has many parts where crime is much worse, such as Baltimore, Detroit or some parts of Chicago.
yeah, that bad US places are not offering jobs for software engineers usually.
You don't have to worry about security. Glad to invite you down here so you can change your perspective! Cheers.
LATAM is big and in a lot of countries it's a valid concern.
Source: living for 10 years in LATAM
Source: living for 10 years in LATAM
Should is the wrong word. I think what you mean is it would benefit them financially to immigrate. Some people may not want to leave family in their home country and others may simply not want to live in the US.
90k USD in USA and 40k USD in LATAM is a huge difference not in favour of USA
That's just an average. I'm doing 130K now. I'm from Chile and the cost of life difference between Santiago and Utah is practically zero, earning 6x.
Obviously is more difficult to do it having a family with kids, that the visas can cover the family as well. Giving a English education to your kids can be the best gift you can do them.
Cost of living in latam is very low compared to the US and exchange rates almost multiply your purchasing power by 4.
>because talent is increasing in quality at a fraction of price compared
Funny that this didn't get much discussion than I thought this would. Would this mean that developers living in high-priced areas in North America would just need govt assistance since their salary would not be able to meet cost of living?
Funny that this didn't get much discussion than I thought this would. Would this mean that developers living in high-priced areas in North America would just need govt assistance since their salary would not be able to meet cost of living?
No, if the market wage fell below the cost of living in SF, the developers would have to move out. Just like every other profession.
So if the market wage fell below the cost of living everywhere in US and Canada, then we would all move out to latin america or any other country with a lower cost of living, thereby a lower standard of living. Got it.
This is obviously a far fetched scenario you're concocting, but yes, if the market wage for your labor completely crashes, then your standard of living will decrease, obviously. Software development is not unusual in this regard.
Or we just unionize.
> Would this mean that developers living in high-priced areas in North America would just need govt assistance since their salary would not be able to meet cost of living?
What do you think is fueling the high cost of living where developers are concentrated in North America?
What do you think is fueling the high cost of living where developers are concentrated in North America?
How developers can get in touch with you guys for being hired?
How do we check it out?
email us and we can give you a demo. [email protected]
and you can check out our page www.ontop.ai. Cheers!
Love it!
Amazing! Looking forward to trying you out the next time we're hiring :)
Thank you!! Happy to help you out :)
Awsome! I believe it is an incredible business model, you guys are an example to Latin American people
Thanks!
COVID-19 has taught us all that remote works. Our bet is that companies in the US and Europe will start hiring more people in LATAM because talent is increasing in quality at a fraction of price compared to what they can get elsewhere.
Paying people in LATAM requires local knowledge to get the level of speed and compliance that workers need to get their money on time. We are building a solution so companies hiring in LATAM have to do less paperwork, can easily be compliant and disperse payments to different countries in a single place.
In our previous startup Fitpal (multi gym membership in LATAM) we experienced the pain behind signing contracts, collecting documents and sending money to different countries. We had to pay hundreds of gyms in LATAM and were frustrated by the amount of time we spent doing administrative work, when we should have been thinking on how to hack our way to growth.
We handle all paperwork, compliance and payments so onboarding new people is really easy. And most importantly, everything done legally, by the book, so that companies are always due diligence proof.
Our solution is tailored for LATAM guaranteeing the best speed and compliance in the market.
We want to hear your thoughts on our solution. We value feedback and case uses that you might have. Email us at [email protected] and we will personally give you a demo.