Startups founded by Sri Lankans and incorporated abroad, with the engineering done here, deliberately

A first step

Take a product you have already built or started, and ask three prospective customers abroad whether a company registered in their country would make them more likely to buy. Then ask an accountant abroad for the cost of incorporating there and contracting the engineering here. The customers' answers and the quote let you decide before spending anything.

Who pays first

A foreign customer or investor who needs a company in a familiar jurisdiction but is glad to pay for engineering done here.

What leaves today

Engineering done here earns only wages, while the company's value, its equity and its headquarters sit abroad with no deliberate link back.

The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.

The test

Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?

The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.

In the book

• Ch. ThreeWhat We Have Already Built
  The stock exchange in Malabe

More from cluster 15

• 296Remote-work hubs in Kandy, Galle and Jaffna with fibre, power and a lawyer who knows the tax
• 297A Sri Lankan software product, not a services firm: one tool, sold by subscription to the world
• 298Accounting and bookkeeping outsourcing for small British and Australian firms, in their time zones
• 299Legal paperwork done for foreign law firms, since commercial law here follows English law, the higher courts work in English and the lawyers are here
• 300Typing up doctors' notes and reading scans for foreign hospitals, overnight, to their standard
• 301Architecture and engineering drafting services for firms in the Gulf and Europe

All 25 ideas in this cluster