Ask HN: Startups who work from home, how do you handle mailing addresses?

8 points by sdotsen ↗ HN
So I signed up for mailchimp and I noticed they need a physical mailing address, which gets appended to the email of your newsletter. I live in an apartment and I would hate to put my real address on any site let alone a newsletter.

I'm thinking of getting a PO Box but in the event I move, I'll have to change those. Does anyone have experience with virtual mailing services?

8 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 23.1 ms ] thread
If you're not expecting any real mail why not get a PO box that forwards to an actual box in a store? You can check it from time to time if something might come through. If you do move, just ask them to change the store it gets forwarded to.
There are some services I know that offer a virtual mailing address. Not knowing where you live I would highly suggest taking this into consideration as we have one and works perfectly well with our system.
You can make your address sound more business like. i.e. if you live at

35 Southwark Street

London

E14 9PX

Change it to.

MyCompany.com

Unit 35 Southwark Street

London

E14 9PX

You could get a virtual office (like Regus i.e.). If you hustle a bit it will cost you next to nothing (don't EVER pay retail with these guys!), you'll always have a space to get some work done while travelling and they can even answer your phone.
If you plan to use the address for anything financial (bank accounts, credit cards, etc), using a PO Box or virtual office is an item in the potential fraud metric the financial institution calculates on new customers. You may still get the account, but from my experience the additional validation is a major headache.