Ask HN: Have you ever had to turn down customers because of sanctions?
Over the last few years I've had to turn away a few customers from countries like Iran, Russia and China because either a BIS license was required due to general EAR restrictions on cyber products to those countries, or the entity was actually on the BIS Entity list. Have you experienced this? How do you handle it?
In some sense it sucks because the markets of some of these countries are large, and there may be people in those countries who want it for legitimate reasons (Freedom, etc). At the same time, you have to obey the law and respect sanctions. They have a legitimate purpose. That's non negotiable. Any cybersecurity people have experience with this kind of scenario?
Technically it's possible to apply for licenses, but if the status is "presumption of denial", or even if it's not, the process is a massive hassle for tiny product companies that just want to build stuff.
I'm not losing sleep over this stuff - but it doesn't feel great - and I'm just curious of others' experiences in US corporations (not sure if EU has similar).
If it's sanctioned, it's sanctioned. It's a simple math. It's seldom caused by mistake.
I'm in EU, on top of mandatory regulations of not dealing with sanctioned nations, strictly regulated finance (including insurance), constant mandatory trainings for employees, obligatory sanction list checks for individuals, we entered a phase that any company could be forced to let whole business in another country go.
Sold for cheap, not to mention IP and know-how left there. You gotta do what you gotta do.
Thanks for sharing your experience, sounds nasty! But I agree, got to do what you got to do.
How do you handle it?
Just move onto the next customers and prospects, it's out of your hands.
I'm not losing sleep over this stuff
Perfect. It's on the people in those countries to find a way to emigrate if they can but either way it is not your problem. You can't save everyone.
Thanks, man! It's not a massive problem - card fraud / license piracy is probably a bigger issue - but just good to know other people are even aware of this! :)