[HN Gopher] Stripe launched 10 years ago today
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Stripe launched 10 years ago today
Author : tosh
Score : 142 points
Date : 2021-09-29 19:27 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| euoia wrote:
| What happened to capture the flag? I still have my t-shirt. But
| let's talk about the product. As a business owner and a
| developer, I would prefer suppliers that can make their invoices
| / receipts available via an API. It's such a mess and would save
| so much data entry. Someone please make this happen!
| agustif wrote:
| Wow, hard to believe how much the team lead by the collison's
| have achieved in only a decade...
| poszlem wrote:
| It is hard to overstate how much influence Stripe had on the
| financial services online. Great job Stripe!
| KorematsuFredt wrote:
| It also had immense influence on eng part as well. Stripe
| despite being a fintech startup set benchmarks of what we can
| expect in terms of developer friendliness.
| newsbinator wrote:
| I have to admit, there are zero competitors that I would
| seriously consider using instead of Stripe.
|
| They've got a moat the size of an ocean.
| sourcesmith wrote:
| And yet to have a card payment go through successfully via
| them...
| markdown wrote:
| Hard to believe I've been waiting a decade to find out when
| they'll add support for my country. It's been almost two decades
| since Paypal did.
|
| A decade has gone by and all they've managed are:
| US, Canada, Mexico UK, EU UAE India
| Singapore, Malaysia, Philipines, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Japan
| Australia, New Zealand Brazil
|
| Not a single African or SIDS country supported. Only one in
| Brazil and the Middle East.
|
| There are billions of people who stand to benefit from greater
| access to participation in ecommerce, but who are left out in the
| cold because banks won't give them merchant accounts. I once
| spoke to a banker who didn't know what a merchant account was.
|
| Congrats on your success, Stripe. Please consider doing good with
| it.
| Klonoar wrote:
| It's not like they haven't looked at the region (re: Africa, at
| least)
|
| https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/paystack-joining-stripe
|
| Both having invested in the Series A, along with eventually
| acquiring 'em.
| markdown wrote:
| It's a pity Alipay was hamstrung by an impotent Winnie the
| Pooh. It could have been a great catalyst in the belt-and-
| road region, waking US payment companies to the opportunities
| in this region.
|
| I'm glad Stripe is a making small steps.
| adamrezich wrote:
| I'd heard about Stripe for years but earlier this year I was
| finally given a solid opportunity to utilize it for a small-scale
| contract web development position. I was very pleasantly
| surprised at how easy to use it was, I expected a ton of
| boilerplate and dependencies but for a simple, straightforward
| PHP app, setting up secure payments was an absolute breeze. it's
| very satisfying to go in expecting headaches and edge cases and
| come away with a streamlined, efficient experience!
| xsc wrote:
| Patrick and John - you solved a real pain point for our
| community. Thank you.
|
| https://twitter.com/xsc/status/106149101720186880
| ivyirwin wrote:
| Congrats to the Stripe team. I can't believe it has only been 10
| years. I actually had to go check my inbox to see when I started
| using Stripe and it looks like I received my account notification
| on 8/30/11!
|
| As other have said here, Stripe was one of those things that just
| made sense. As a web developer I was tired of jumping through the
| many hoops of authorize.net or praying that people would complete
| the purchase path on PayPal. When Stripe came out I (apparently)
| jumped immediately on it and haven't looked back. It is the only
| payment solutions provider I offer my clients or use on my own
| projects.
|
| But the larger impact it has had on me is that it gave me that
| much more faith in HN as a source of emerging technology
| solutions. I still comb through batch announcements or check out
| Show HNs to see what's coming, because I feel like there's a good
| chance another Stripe is launching today. And it's just as cool
| that Patrick Collison still is involved in HN. Thanks pc and the
| rest of you all at Stripe!
| jedberg wrote:
| The launch thread:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3053883
|
| Interestingly, unlike most HN launches, the majority of the
| comments were actually positive, instead of "why not just do X
| instead?".
| mbesto wrote:
| I think you're saying this, but wanted to expand on this. I
| find positivity/negativity of Show HN a useless heuristic.
| What's important is how constructive the comment is:
|
| - "This is dumb and it'll never work"
|
| vs
|
| - "I'm you're target audience and I would never use this
| service because XYZ"
|
| Both have negative sentiment but one is FAR more useful and
| should be encouraged.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Not really. If you are my _actual_ target audience you use my
| product, because despite my solution being shit, it 's still
| filling a desperate need you have.
|
| Then you come to talk to me about all your pain points
| afterwards.
| hihihihi1234 wrote:
| No, if I use your product it's because I'm in your
| _audience_. If I 'm merely in your _target audience_ then
| there 's no guarantee that your shots will hit the target.
| afarrell wrote:
| Sure, but what I'm in the audience you _say_ that you
| intend to target, but I can see that I wouldn't use the
| product?
|
| That means you have a problem that you'd want to know about
| early.
|
| A. You aren't filling a need I have.
|
| B. You aren't showing that you'll fill a need I have with
| enough clarity to motivate me to invest a bunch of time
| into the product.
|
| C. Your description of your intended audience is low-
| specificity enough that I'd waste your sales time talking
| to them.
|
| D. Your description of your intended audience is low-
| specificity enough that if you give it to half your
| engineering team, she will spend lots of effort building
| something misaligned with the other half.
| blocked_again wrote:
| I am pretty sure the vast majority of comments in Show HN
| projects are mostly positive.
| peanut_worm wrote:
| Probably because Stripe solved a problem to which there was not
| a great existing solution for
| hunterb123 wrote:
| PayPal did that, Stripe was a good alternative with better
| documentation. They later expanded to many more features that
| are nice for small businesses.
|
| CTR+F "paypal" in the launch thread. I don't view Stripe as
| visionary or a break through in payment processing, that goes
| to PayPal, but Stripe has a better user experience.
| codegeek wrote:
| I disagree. I use both Stripe and Paypal and Stripe is not
| just "better documentation". The APIs are far more reliable
| and stable, customer support is better with Stripe (in my
| experience) and overall, it is very friendly to developers.
| Paypal could HAVE eaten Stripe for lunch but considering
| their shitty way of doing things, they never bothered to
| improve. They are the incumbent but Stripe is far better.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| > They are the incumbent but Stripe is far better.
|
| This was my point. PayPal disrupted the banks and ACH
| processors. Stripe perfected the UX/DX.
|
| PayPal is much larger than Stripe, afaik it's net worth
| is more and it's revenue is 3x.
| chrsstrm wrote:
| I signed up on 9/30/2011 and the registration form was sparse and
| a little confusing to the point that I ended up emailing support
| to make sure my account was set up correctly. Got an email back
| from some dude named John Collison who helped me out. Of course I
| had no idea who he was at the time but instantly recognized the
| name several years later when I came across the email again -
| Gmail had automatically put him in my contacts and I kept
| thinking it must be a mistake bc there's no way I have John
| Collison as a personal contact. Stripe has been good to me as a
| developer over the years and I hope they continue to innovate
| well into the future.
| handrous wrote:
| I still like them because their support folks sent me a t-shirt
| in, I dunno, maybe 2012, when I posted a slightly-clever
| workaround on their forums, for some subscription-related
| functionality they didn't have yet. Fairly cheap way to keep me
| feeling positive vibes about them, nearly a decade later.
| freetinker wrote:
| Nice story - thanks for sharing.
|
| I think thoughtfulness sticks because it requires effort, and
| injects humanity in an otherwise efficiently transactional
| culture.
|
| Thoughtfulness may be inexpensive to exercise money-wise, but
| it ain't cheap. ;)
| alberth wrote:
| Accepting payments and starting a business has never been easier
| ... and Stripe is a major contributing factor to that welcomed
| change.
|
| I do wonder what Stripe's financials look like given they have
| raised more funding than most startups ($2.2B raised [0]).
|
| Given these extremely favorable market conditions, I have to
| imagine they are accelerating an IPO very soon (no inside
| knowledge).
|
| [0] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/stripe
| cm2012 wrote:
| Apparently the founders are anti-IPO.
| dont__panic wrote:
| How does that affect engineer comp? I imagine folks are
| granted a lot of equity, but if the founders don't want to
| IPO... is there a buyback scheme in place for internal
| holders?
|
| Mind you, I'm also pretty anti-IPO -- I think that going
| public usually has a negative impact on a company's products
| (more push towards profit at the cost of quality and employee
| QOL). But if you're stuck with a lot of stock that you
| haven't exercised 10 years on, I can see the engineers
| getting really frustrated.
| n00bskoolbus wrote:
| The company can offer something called a Tender Offer or
| Liquidity Event (I've heard them used interchangeably)
| where when they're raising new funding the employees can
| put up the shares they hold as a part of the sale.
| Alternatively a share buy back.
| torgard wrote:
| The Stripe docs are a master-class in API documentation. I strive
| to write APIs that reach the knees of the height of theirs, all
| while keeping the docs simple and understandable.
|
| Amazing. No surprise from me the success they've had.
| codegeek wrote:
| I, like my other devs dreamed of starting my own SAAS product
| when Stripe made it so easy to start accepting payments. No
| hyperbole here. I remember their tagline used to be "Payments for
| developers" back in 2012 when I found them and I remember setting
| it up within few minutes even back then.
|
| Well deserved success to the Stripe team and we have been a happy
| customer in production since 2014. They even reached out to me
| once to discuss dashboard/UI change feedback. I know they have a
| few criticisms lately as they have grown but overall, if I could
| use the word "disruptor" (which usually is overused and cliched
| these days), it truly applies to Stripe. Kudos for not making me
| deal with Paypal and the others for the most part.
| jbschirtzs wrote:
| I am very sorry to hear that because of this:
| https://www.jbschirtzinger.com/post/stripe/
|
| I don't think Stripe deserves to be a major player since they are
| acting like the Gestapo.
| slownews45 wrote:
| A took a quick look through your email thread.
|
| From your first communication it's a very combative
| communication style and it continues that way to the end.
|
| "By the way, lest you think Kelsey was being super considerate
| above, she made sure to time several of her messages so that
| they arrived at three and four AM to make it rather harder to
| reply. Sometimes timing can be a quasi-malicious act."
|
| Business may need to determine if its worth doing business with
| a customer. For stripe, it may simply not have been worth
| trying to business with you. The good news - TONS of other
| providers in this space, including for very high charge back
| industries (adult, tatoo, strip clubs etc) so you should be
| able to get services if needed.
| jbschirtzs wrote:
| If they had said it isn't worth doing business with you say,
| four years ago, your point might persuade me.
|
| As to my communication style, you are entitled to your
| opinion. I won't cut your credit card off because you voiced
| it.
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| It was odd that they came back telling him used books sales
| was crowdfunding. They seemed to get that wrong. After that
| it was a bunch of useless corporate spam emails of the like
| you get from an App Store review or similar.
| slownews45 wrote:
| We don't know that they considered used books crowdfunding.
| It may have been other stuff on the site.
|
| It also looks like the site changed from the initial email
| to later emails but the author is confused as to why stripe
| is confused.
|
| http://www.beitesheldonate.org/ was maybe first website?
| Then a books website?
|
| What can happen is they look into things more closely and
| see they are doing donations perhaps without a clear exempt
| entity (ie, not setup as a charity) or any number of
| things.
|
| Anyways, to say that stripe should be shut down and is the
| "Gestapo" seems a bit misplaced. The crimes and methods of
| the Gestapo were truly horrific if you pay attention to
| WWII history - I'm still having trouble connecting stripe's
| behavior to the Gestapo.
| Edman274 wrote:
| They probably thought you were crowdfunding when they went onto
| the website and it said "Money. We always need money. Right now
| our funding goal is $50,000."
| jbschirtzs wrote:
| Stripe is the processor here:
| https://givebutter.com/blog/free-fundraising-sites
|
| I fail to see how they might have gotten confused. They
| clearly allow fundraising or else they wouldn't be a partner
| with givebutter.
| ranguski wrote:
| A decade of developer love, its 10 and never been binary with
| them.
| improvemewrong wrote:
| I don't use Stripe but my understanding is that it has dominance
| in its space. What are the competitors? BrainTree? Google Pay?
| Why haven't those services eaten Stripes lunch?
| mLuby wrote:
| Stripe focused on, built, and has amazingly mostly maintained
| goodwill and good word of mouth among developers. The others
| haven't focused on that.
|
| BrainTree was decent a few years ago, but PayPal acquired them
| and that seemed to drain the quality away.
|
| There are other, older competitors that have much worse APIs
| and docs and support, but my impression is they survive due to
| implementation lock-in.
| arnvald wrote:
| Payments business is huge and there is a lot of space there. A
| few global competitors are:
|
| * Braintree (acquired by PayPal) * Checkout.com * Adyen (more
| enterprise oriented)
|
| + there are a lot of local players, e.g. Mollie is popular in
| the Netherlands, Payu and Przelewy24 are large providers in
| Poland, in China people pay with Wechat and Alipay, and in
| Indonesia with GoPay by Gojek
|
| Stripe provides a lot of services besides payments, but if you
| just need a payment provide for your on-line shop, whether you
| go with Stripe or Braintree is not a very big difference. I
| mean sure, quality of documentation and customer service
| matters, but the 2 most important factors for people are
| pricing and support for the payment methods popular in your
| country (e.g. iDeal in the Netherlands, fast bank transfers in
| Poland etc.)
| sandes wrote:
| Awesome job patrick and team
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