[HN Gopher] Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid k...
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Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle
Author : ekovarski
Score : 183 points
Date : 2022-05-06 11:50 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| Seems like stripe is constantly getting called out by other
| fintech companies. Honestly probably points to the key to their
| success, they play dirty and are in it to win.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I think we'd all be better off with more of this kind of thing.
| Basing your business on "ownership" of ideas or insider
| knowledge about some topic which can be trivially shared is a
| poor quality base for profit. So much of our economy is based
| on charging a lot to do something which would be quite trivial
| if the "how to do it" information was open.
| [deleted]
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| If anything, this shows that Stripe's competitors believe that
| Stripe is competently managed. If Google announced a product in
| this space, Plaid's CEO would have yawned. Google announced a
| Slack competitor that would be a free addition to its business
| suite in 2017, and Slack IPO'd two years later at a $30 billion
| market cap. SPOT opened higher the day after Google announced
| YouTube Music. I remember when companies would worry that
| Google would compete with them, but if your product isn't
| something that can be served on the search results page, there
| was never anything to worry about.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| Because they kill so many products a few years after launch.
| They could launch the best whatever app in the world and most
| people would never touch it because they don't trust it will
| be around in a year.
| staunch wrote:
| No one hates middlemen more than other middlemen.
| 0xedb wrote:
| "We're the exact opposite of Apple in this regard. People will
| buy fewer iPhones today if they know what the new one will do.
| But people are probably more likely to buy Stripe today if they
| know that the future Stripe will be even better"
|
| Will you keep your old iPhone if you knew what the new version
| will do?
| wsinks wrote:
| He's referencing that if you're looking to purchase a new
| iPhone right at this very minute, no matter if you already have
| a phone, that purchase decision can be influenced if there's
| information about a newer product that hasn't been released.
|
| I buy a phone about every 5 years. Will I wait a year if I find
| out that the new phone has a different chip in it that does
| something amazing? Absolutely! I'll wait, not give Apple any
| money this year, and give them money next year.
| echelon wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like Stripe just nuked the
| whole of Plaid's platform and value proposition from orbit.
|
| Plaid just went from a decacorn to a cheap acquisition target for
| PayPal, Square, Shopify, etc.
|
| I can understand this being absolutely gut wrenching for the
| founders and early employees that are still on board. It must
| feel like having tangible dreams crushed. Not as bad as a cancer
| diagnosis, but certainly worse than a rejection from your dream
| school.
|
| Competition is an evolutionary force of nature. Brutal at times.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Plaid has been thinking about this space for 9 years. It seems
| odd that they wouldn't be able to continue being a strong
| entrant here.
| alonmower wrote:
| What a whirlwind couple of years for Plaid employees. First the
| Visa acquisition for 5.3 Billion that falls through because of
| antitrust, then a round that values them at 13.4 Billion, then
| fintech and SaaS valuations crater, and now this
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Strike while the iron is hot. Any SaaS or speculative tech
| that sat on the sidelines during this massive bubble did
| themselves the injustice.
|
| Probably most of them actually believed in the numbers though
| axg11 wrote:
| You are not wrong, although I don't believe this will be the
| death of Plaid. Their growth is certainly limited. Plaid should
| focus on improving their product. They made a mistake by not
| expanding into related product segments. Now they will have to
| directly compete with Stripe on product quality.
| kbos87 wrote:
| I think this is right. Plaid will get by, but their ability
| to capture TAM is now constrained. Because they didn't expand
| horizontally into some related product offerings, they now
| look like a feature while Stripe looks like a platform. It
| sucks to be on your heels having to play catch-up from their
| position.
| vsareto wrote:
| >Not as bad as a cancer diagnosis, but certainly worse than a
| rejection from your dream school.
|
| We leave rich, but maybe not-as-rich as we thought?
| spiffytech wrote:
| That depends on their cap table and exit. In some high dollar
| exits even the founders don't make any money, because the
| sale price was too low to pay out anything but investors'
| preferred shares.
| [deleted]
| iambateman wrote:
| This is a good, helpful response!
|
| As an aside, I'm excited to switch to Stripe's transactions API
| from Plaid for MoneyHabitsHQ.com.
|
| Plaid's security review process is "submit questionnaire and wait
| an unspecified amount of time."
|
| I'm at five weeks of waiting and three help tickets and it's been
| absolute silence.
| goleary wrote:
| Pretty sure I've been waiting 3+ months at this point and am
| now unable to connect new items via Chase.
| phoenixy1 wrote:
| That's really an excessive wait time, I'm sorry. We are
| working on better systematic approaches to this issue, but in
| the meantime, would you be willing to send me your info so I
| can look at what's going on with the ticket? You can DM
| @plaiddev on Twitter or email customer-feedback@plaid.com
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > Maybe we should have explicitly reached out to them to discuss
| this upcoming launch so that they could privately express any
| concerns they had.
|
| A thousand times no. Companies privately discussing launches with
| each other to avoid stepping on each other's toes is bad for the
| consumer. In addition, it may actually cross the line into
| illegal market allocation.
|
| I am glad that Stripe developed and released a product that they
| thought would benefit their consumers.
|
| I do not want companies feeling they have to consult another
| company before entering a market. (which once again may actually
| be illegal).
|
| EDIT:
|
| Maybe I am being paranoid, but the tone of the Plaid founder and
| the apologetic nature of this post, kind of brought back memories
| of Steve Job's indignant emails about other companies hiring, and
| their apologetic response which ended up leading to an illegal
| agreement not to hire each other's workers. I don't want any
| "gentlemen's agreement" about market allocation and collusion
| about what products/services will be released.
| ec109685 wrote:
| This is a good point. I don't think companies can have
| gentleman's agreements to not compete with each other.
| [deleted]
| kbos87 wrote:
| I don't know all the specifics of the interaction that happened
| here, but the hard truth is that if you aren't eventually
| expecting this to happen to your business - regardless of the
| space you are in - you aren't being realistic about the nature of
| competition in SaaS.
|
| Plaid has enjoyed years of life without much direct competition.
| My hunch is that few other businesses were interested in the
| space because it feels inherently fragile, and Plaid has had the
| benefit from having spent years doing a lot of sausage making.
|
| The inevitable dynamics of competition are finally catching up to
| them. In established corners of SaaS a vendor with a unique idea
| barely gets 6 months before their competitors have replicated
| anything that shows signs of product market fit. Not saying it
| doesn't sting, but that's reality.
| pbreit wrote:
| Well, Yodlee & Finicity pre-dated Plaid by many years. But
| Plaid executed much better.
| websap wrote:
| Stripe seems to be gearing up to become the AWS of the FinTech
| world.
| drcongo wrote:
| Why is so much of Stripe's dirty laundry aired out in the open?
| It never looks good.
| websap wrote:
| The problem with being successful
| 0des wrote:
| Probably because of the association of HN and YC
| kehphin wrote:
| As a consumer, I'd welcome some more competition in this space.
| All of the personal finance aggregation apps I've tried, e.g.
| Mint, YNAB, Personal Finance, etc. have used Plaid and almost
| always, I have issues with connecting one or more banks on any
| given day. Submitting tickets re: connection issues rarely
| resolves in a timely manner too.
| cobbal wrote:
| The reason I hate plaid is that they are training people to
| hand over bank passwords/2fa tokens to 3rd parties. And
| sometimes there are no alternatives available to the consumer.
| wmf wrote:
| What you hate is not really Plaid but banks for not providing
| APIs. Banking data is too juicy to ignore, so when banks
| don't provide APIs _of course_ companies will resort to
| MITMing.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Not the original commenter, but no... Banks not providing
| APIs may be _a_ problem, I guess, but the problem that I
| really care about is a company actively and purposefully
| regressing the greater security landscape.
| neither_color wrote:
| I hate fintech apps for demanding information that's none
| of their business. I can't make an ACH payment on Paypal
| without giving them my bank login. It was an arbitrary
| requirement that Paypal started imposing after using the
| same account for years, now I simply don't use Paypal. On
| Cashapp, I can't withdraw via ACH unless I share my bank
| login(so I have to pay for "instant transfer to debit"
| instead. Apple Pay is my p2p of choice now because they
| don't engage in this nonsense, and I only deal with others
| on the rare occasion that someone can only pay me with one
| of the aforementioned abusive services.
|
| I would be OK with Plaid if they let you manage what you
| share with apps via permission management.
|
| For example: If fintech app wants to make sure I have $500
| to send to my friend, I should be able to tell Plaid NOT to
| share my entire transaction history and it should simply
| give said app a binary "sufficient/insufficient" balance.
| No institution should get to look through my transaction
| history without having a damn good reason. No, I won't give
| companies the benefit of the doubt in our "ask for
| forgiveness not permission" tech culture. Assume that any
| information gathered about you will be monetized or used
| against you.
| LegitShady wrote:
| No, he dislikes the idea of handing login data over, and if
| your business requires someone else create an API that
| doesn't exist and they don't want to make, you don't have a
| business.
|
| The reason they need login info is because thats the only
| way to get data, and a huge security risk for everyone
| (users, bank, and the service). Nobody is required to build
| an API for your financial business so it can work, and
| building such an api is not a small challenge in highly
| secure areas of business.
|
| Personally I won't use any service like this that asks me
| to break my bank's TOS and hand over login information.
| That's honestly crazy. I'd rather build my own spreadsheets
| and dashboards.
| cobbal wrote:
| Sure, banks are also to blame for it. But I also don't
| think that excuses Plaid at all.
| heromal wrote:
| Mint doesn't use Plaid, it uses Intuit's API since the
| acquisition.
| ridruejo wrote:
| That's freaking good leadership in written form if I have seen
| one...
| eins1234 wrote:
| A lot of comments here saying that this is the death knell for
| Plaid, but I wouldn't be so sure. Stripe has launched competitors
| to existing fintech products and failed to gain traction plenty
| of times before.
|
| Example: Remember the Stripe Corporate Card? It was "launched" as
| invite-only 3 years ago and is still invite only today, with
| little signs of traction. Meanwhile both Brex and Ramp have
| become decacorns through crazy revenue growth.
|
| It's not really just a Stripe thing either. I think people are
| way under-estimating how hard it is for a large company to launch
| and succeed with a product outside of their core offering,
| especially when the competition is a small nimble startup with a
| singlular focus on that one product.
|
| Startups die all the time, for all sorts of reasons, but "large
| company started competing with it" is a rather rare one.
| pbreit wrote:
| There will be plenty of users (skewing large) who will want to
| get account validation and payment processing from different
| vendors.
|
| I wonder if this opens up a Visa acquisition?
| mbesto wrote:
| > A lot of comments here saying that this is the death knell
| for Plaid, but I wouldn't be so sure.
|
| The fact that no one has mentioned Yodlee once makes me think
| very few people in this thread actually know this market.
|
| Not to mention there are probably quite literally thousands of
| Stripe competitors.
|
| The world is a big place and the SV bubblethink of "only one
| person wins" is highly myopic.
|
| Plaid will be fine. They just might not be $10B valuation fine.
| That's all.
|
| EDIT: Doh, saw Yodlee mentioned once much lower in thread now.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| > Meanwhile both Brex and Ramp have become decacorn
|
| That was at peak bubble. Given that most public Fintech
| companies crashed around 70% from ATH I assume the same holds
| for Brex and Ramp.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| So now they're just tricorn?
|
| (The things you can do to/with a language ... "Verbing weirds
| language" takes the cake, though.)
| eins1234 wrote:
| Re: Plaid itself, having used some of their competitors,
| specifically Finicity, which is one of Stripe's partners for
| this, I wouldn't be too worried if I were them.
|
| IME, Plaid is lightyears ahead in terms of reliability and
| overall developer and end-user experience.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > IME, Plaid is lightyears ahead in terms of reliability and
| overall developer and end-user experience.
|
| I regret handing over my bank login details to Plaid, since
| they scraped my bank statements without stating so upfront
| and offered that information to 3rd parties (indirectly, as a
| score of some sort, IIRC, but that's scraping _very_ personal
| information).
|
| When I mentioned it on HN a year or 2 ago, someone who works
| there denied the practice - might have been a cofounder. A
| few months ago I was contacted regarding a settlement for a
| Plaid class action suit regarding the very actions that had
| been denied on HN. Plaid - never again.
| mikeodds wrote:
| I got the same answer from them on HN here 10 months ago
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27467797#27476452
|
| Me: Always been curious - do you (Plaid) use the
| transaction data or any other data obtained from customers
| logins for anything other than the reason the customer
| supply's their credentials? I.e if I use plaid to link to
| my Robin Hood account, do you in any way sell/share/use my
| data apart from allowing me to fund my Robin Hood account?
|
| Response: Good question! No, we don't. Our official
| statement on this is at https://plaid.com/how-we-handle-
| data/ "Plaid only shares your data with your consent. We
| don't share your personal information without your
| permission, and we don't sell or rent it to outside
| companies."
| SpikedCola wrote:
| This is something that absolutely blows my mind. The bank's
| terms of service say you can't hand over your password to
| anyone, and here is Plaid asking users for their login
| information! I can't understand how they can ask users to
| breach terms of service, and have gotten so far.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Why isn't it done through a proper API that you grant
| them a token for?
|
| And how do Plaid bypass your bank's per-login 2FA if
| they're logging in as is they were a user?
| pbreit wrote:
| Because not many banks have such an API.
|
| Plaid just relays the 2FA question.
|
| I think websites would have a tough time preventing users
| from sharing username/password. It would certainly be
| acceptable in a power of attorney situation.
| sangnoir wrote:
| I was dubious while doing it - and I gave Plaid access to
| my settling account. I consoled myself that they wouldn't
| have by income, but then realized they had a copy of my
| financial information on spending, which is equally bad,
| or worse than just income. I ought to have been more
| vigilant - I unfortunately fell into the trap of thinking
| that banks are slow-moving and reluctant to develop API
| access.
|
| I will never sign up for a service that requires Plaid.
| milesskorpen wrote:
| The class action was settled -- which just means it was
| cheaper to settle than to fight in court, not that there
| was wrong doing. This kind of thing is very very common,
| and the settlement amount was modest in the scheme of class
| action settlements.
|
| Plaid is pretty clear in their privacy policy that they DO
| NOT repackage and resell data (they do sell data - as in,
| when you use Plaid to give your banking info to a mortgage
| broker, the broker is paying Plaid for your data, but it is
| at your explicit request).
|
| If banks didn't want Plaid to do screen scraping, they
| could build APIs. Some are now. But they've been VERY VERY
| reluctant to do so, because they want to hold customers
| (us!) hostage to their services and make it painful to go
| anywhere else to get financial services. I appreciate that
| Plaid figured out how to break their stranglehold, which
| has directly enabled the current blossoming of FinTech apps
| ... even if they had to do so in a way I don't love.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| Not really. APIs cost money to develop, and people, and
| time. And many large banks don't have robust engineering
| teams that can tackle new challenges or support a public
| api.
|
| Small projects as you might imagine are measured in
| years, not days or months.
|
| An API like you describe could take half a decade to
| build, at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.
| These are not fake numbers or estimates. This is what it
| would cost.
|
| When you think big finance, think government.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > If banks didn't want Plaid to do screen scraping, they
| could build APIs.
|
| Even if we take this as a given - what if customers don't
| want Plaid to scrape their data? I only used Plaid to
| verify that I own the bank account - but they went out of
| their way to scrape my _transaction_ information, just
| because they could, and that data is valuable - that is
| messed up. I 'm sure if my bank had an API, Plaid would
| still have hoovered up my transaction information, so the
| "API access vs Scraping" debate is a sideshow.
|
| If they hadn't scraped my transaction information, I
| wouldn't have been part of the class, but they chose to
| maximize data collection. If it had been Facebook or
| Google that harvested financial info the way Plaid did,
| no one would be saying "Their TOS is clear about it".
| Additionally, any big tech company can purchase Plaid and
| get that data (I can't remember if the settlement has a
| provision for deletion of that data).
| Aeolun wrote:
| The product maybe, but my interactions with the company have
| been dissapointing.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| I still find this to be rather passive aggressive. Sharing an
| 'internal' doc immediately...Why not call a public statement?
|
| Mention Zach deleted his tweet, but not mention what he actually
| said: "Deleted tweet. Misunderstanding or different styles
| perhaps. Presuming positive intent."
|
| All so underhanded
|
| [0]https://twitter.com/zachperret/status/1522444749877088256
| nazka wrote:
| I actually find him to be too defensive instead of passive
| aggressive. It's his job to create new products, new features,
| and new tools for his customers. He shouldn't be so sorry like
| that. Should any CEO be sorry every time they start to compete
| with someone else? And what about Plaid here? It's weird if you
| think about it. That you will have to feel sorry and go public
| statements and things like that to have to talk about it.
| Finally. Plaid should have seen that coming a long time ago. In
| fact I can't even imagine any of their chief officers never
| having to see that coming.
|
| Edit: the classy way as an example is Airbus response to Boeing
| after their failure with the 747 Max or what. Now that's some
| clean PR well done. And they never had to.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWaTjYpczKQ
| ergocoder wrote:
| I'm surprised that all the comments here are not about how Plaid
| CEO maliciously misled people.
|
| "Interview" turns out to be a job interview before Jay even
| joined Stripe back in 2014. Jay started working on this product
| in 2019.
|
| "RFP" turns out to be a regular RFP where Stripe wants to
| integrate with multiple partners like MX and finicity.
|
| In the past few years, Plaid CEO and Plaid requested meetings
| with Jay. Jay never initiated those meetings.
|
| Plaid CEO has very low ethics, it seems.
| lvl102 wrote:
| They're both suspect in my view.
| ergocoder wrote:
| Can you point me to what Jay did wrong here?
| koch wrote:
| What is the front page test he refers to (second image, last
| bullet point)?
| felixrieseberg wrote:
| It's a common test to ensure you're truly comfortable with your
| decisions and actions: If a major newspaper would describe your
| actions or quote you directly on their front page tomorrow,
| would you still stand behind those words and actions?
|
| The "test" is much older than Stripe but we often use it as a
| shorthand to ask ourselves whether we truly think a certain
| course of action is the right one.
| onphonenow wrote:
| We use this test in a related field.
|
| If you read about X on the front page (in potentially a
| negative light) would you feel good about it, could you stand
| behind it. This helps with clients who are considering going
| sideways. Usually their lawyer will make some long complex
| argument about why something is "OK" or "legal".
|
| We might disagree technically as well (ie, no its not legal),
| but sometimes it is easier to ask, hey, if this were on the
| front page tomorrow, would you feel good about this? The
| reality is the board members or whoever who have a lot of
| reputation really would NOT be OK with whatever - and usually
| speak up at this point, particularly as their personal upside
| to doing whatever bogus BS is low and their downsides are often
| much higher.
| [deleted]
| gimme_treefiddy wrote:
| What we really need a thread by Ryan Breslow.
| [deleted]
| endisneigh wrote:
| I'll never get over how regressive it is that we are literally
| clicking on images filled with text as a way to share... text.
|
| I seriously cringe each time, lol.
|
| Anyway, on topic, it's good to see this little debacle behind
| them. Both stripe and plaid offer good services and competition
| is good in any case.
|
| I do wonder if there's some room for innovation here from Google
| and Apple. It would be interesting to see if it's possible to
| login to any website using plain text passwords in a way that can
| be delegated to other sites without them knowing the password
| too.
|
| ---
|
| Thinking about this more, if browsers generally allowed this it
| would allow integrations between sites to be implemented pretty
| fast by simply scrapping text.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >we are literally clicking on images filled with text as a way
| to share... text.
|
| In this case, it sounds like the original post was removed, so
| the only thing left would be images types of things. Also, does
| an image/screengrab add any more validity to something rather
| than text quoted on another page/site?
| [deleted]
| endisneigh wrote:
| It's not about validity, it's about accessibility. For
| example in the image there's a link which can't be clicked
| because the info wasn't included
| dylan604 wrote:
| Just pretend it's your mom bringing you a sheet of paper
| she printed of the website she wanted to show you, or
| worse, the ambitious mom that then rescanned the printout
| so she could email it to you.
| notyourwork wrote:
| And Elon Musk but the damn platform. Sigh.
| [deleted]
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Luckily, Twitter has accessibility options which you can use to
| describe/transcribe images so that people with visual
| disabilities can enjoy your content too!
|
| Not that anybody ever uses that feature.
| ivank wrote:
| I use that feature, but it's effectively broken with the 1000
| character restriction.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't complain about tangential annoyances--things
| like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-
| button breakage. They're too common to be interesting._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| I agree. There's a great lesson here when thinking about the
| complexity of real world interoperability, and the
| ramifications of attempts to control information flows.
|
| Frankly, this sort of thing has caused me to become a very
| regular user of Google Lens on my phone. I just copy the text
| out of the image and go on about my day.
|
| Improving the usability of image -> text translation is
| probably the most effective way forward, as silly as that may
| seem.
| op00to wrote:
| I was about to say something about how pictures of text are not
| that bad, and then decided to click through first and .. wow.
| Talk about fine print. Yeah, that's far too silly!
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| This isn't regressive at all. It's a way to preserve and
| document something that will probably be deleted or made
| private. The alternative is maybe putting it into a pastebin or
| rehosting the text somewhere but somehow it seems less
| trustworthy that way even though photoshop exists. For
| accessibility purposes alt-text should be possible.
| endisneigh wrote:
| https://imgur.com/ju8XgGd
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| It's definitely regressive, it's not even accessible. Some
| people literally won't even be able to read it.
| kyle-rb wrote:
| Twitter allows alt text but it's dependent on the user
| including it when they post (@collision did not) and it's
| limited to 1000 characters.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| 4000. Still too few.
| greenthrow wrote:
| It's super regressive. You should be able to maintain all the
| content and all formatting and styling using far less data
| than a PNG or JPG of that same text requires. Images of text
| are super wasteful and their ubiquity is a condemnation of us
| both as users and software engineers.
| abirch wrote:
| If Reddit made it easy for me to follow people and have stuff
| pop into my feed like Twitter, I'd walk away from Twitter.
| tootie wrote:
| Ironically, Reddit's main source of news is screenshots of
| tweets.
| robby_w_g wrote:
| Screenshots of tweets shared on reddit is so much faster on
| my phone than loading Twitter mobile. The screenshot is
| better UX too since I often get re-directed to a sign up
| page when I load twitter mobile
| twic wrote:
| We're doing this for the sole purpose of trolling Ted
| Nelson.
| krallja wrote:
| That's not true, there's also reposts of TikTok videos.
| skrbjc wrote:
| LOL, seems the same way on parts of 4chan these days as
| well
| [deleted]
| tempest_ wrote:
| I am pretty sure you can follow users and have their posts
| show up in some sort of feed but I think it might be a Reddit
| 2.0 thing and the UI is such trash that I never go there if I
| can help it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is crazy to me too. When I was younger, I thought how great
| it is that we can use websites as a cheap and easy way to
| authenticate or reasonably assume the authenticity of what was
| written or said, and here we are using screenshots of text on
| twitter as evidence.
| dylan604 wrote:
| What about websites provided something as authentic to you?
| The not-knowing how easily websites are to make and that
| anybody can put anything on them? Since you specifically
| stated "when younger", I'm assuming you no longer feel the
| same way. Did getting into tech/dev squash the dream of what
| the internet could have been? It did for me
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Presumably, the website has a history or reputation (such
| as Stripe or Plaid's official website). I guess Twitter
| might serve the same function, especially since this is a
| real person posting under their supposedly verified
| account, but I do not use Twitter, so for me, it is less
| easy to verify the source.
|
| A better example is the tech emails twitter account that
| posts screenshots. How would I know if they are fake or
| not?
|
| I would think a website with links to the source material
| such as the court filings showing the emails on a
| government website would be preferable.
| a-dub wrote:
| it seems the maladaptive images of text thing is being used
| to work around the 140 character limit rather than any sort
| of authentication here.
|
| it's pretty funny where you see this and twitter "threads" of
| like 14+ posts.
|
| life is complicated, 140 characters is not enough.
| vmception wrote:
| The only thing I learned from this is that both companies have
| ways to connect directly to banks via API.... _sometimes_ for
| _some banks_ , _sometimes_
|
| and the consumer cant tell at any time.
| astrange wrote:
| It's pretty obvious, you go through an OAuth flow on the bank's
| website.
| samirsd wrote:
| Plaid was and is "just a feature" so this day should have come as
| no surprise... or am I missing something?
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Maybe this entire thing will serve as a warning to those who
| don't have an easy pricing calculator on their website.
| [deleted]
| rabidonrails wrote:
| I think that people underestimate what this feels like for the
| Plaid founder and potentially for Patrick too.
|
| For Plaid you've spent your life building this business.
| Presumably there are many happy customers and you're working
| really hard to define the space and provide service. One morning
| you flip on your laptop and see a headline that one of your
| customers (and competitors) launched a new service that directly
| competes with yours.
|
| As the founder of "attacked" company not only do you see the
| competition coming from a customer but from another "friendly"
| company in your space. Yesterday you were friends, today you're
| enemies. Doesn't matter who you are, this comes as a shock and it
| stings.
|
| Worse still, when you show up on HN, a space that in the past
| might have championed your service, you are now met with comments
| about how your customers are excited to switch.
|
| Showing up to HN and seeing your comrades immediately jump ship
| stings no matter who you are. And if you're Stripe leadership and
| you believe that you're playing an infinite game, then pissing
| off another similarly minded company (and supplier) isn't a good
| feeling either.
| gigatexal wrote:
| When your business becomes a feature of another larger offering
| it's time to sell and move on.
| [deleted]
| peyton wrote:
| 10 years in I highly doubt either of them take _anything_ that
| personally.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > As the founder of "attacked" company not only do you see the
| competition coming from a customer but from another "friendly"
| company in your space. Yesterday you were friends, today you're
| enemies. Doesn't matter who you are, this comes as a shock and
| it stings.
|
| Some time back, Steve Jobs felt the same way about Apple
| employees being offered positions at other companies, so he
| sent an email to his "friends". The result was an illegal
| "gentleman's agreement" not to hire each other's employees.
|
| Companies basing their decisions about entering a market based
| on what their "friends" at other companies think is market
| allocation, and it is illegal.
| peyton wrote:
| Ok, the truth on the Jobs one is significantly more nuanced.
| Not everything is public. I don't think it was a friendly
| thing haha.
| cj wrote:
| I don't think anyone would argue that it's a blow to the chest
| for Plaid.
|
| But, that's business.
|
| Plaid has raised $700m+ and is valued $10+ billion according to
| Wikipedia. This move by Stripe is absolutely one that any
| competent leadership team should have expected would happen
| sooner or later.
| pbreit wrote:
| Especially since Stripe indicated exactly what it was doing
| via RFP.
| collectedparts wrote:
| Nit: I think you meant "I don't think anyone would dispute
| that it's a blow".
|
| Saying "I don't think anyone would argue that X" means "I
| don't think anyone thinks X".
| CPLX wrote:
| I think his phrasing is also grammatical English. The
| degree to which it sounds right or wrong is probably
| idiomatic.
|
| "it's a blow to the chest for Plaid" is a coherent phrase
|
| "I don't think anyone would argue that" is a coherent
| phrase that contains a pronoun, "that." The antecedent of
| this pronoun is that first phrase.
|
| I don't think anyone would argue X can mean the statement X
| is so true nobody would argue it.
|
| An example would be "I don't think anyone would argue the
| legitimacy of George Washington as the first president of
| the US" or "I don't think anyone would argue the merits of
| food when you're hungry"
|
| Therefore the phrase can be correctly interpreted to mean:
|
| I don't think anyone would argue that -> [it's a blow to
| the the chest for Plaid]
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > is so true nobody would argue it.
|
| You mean: is so true nobody would argue AGAINST it.
|
| The ambiguity is whether argue means FOR or AGAINST.
| CPLX wrote:
| Indeed. Which makes the sentence work.
| cercatrova wrote:
| This is a strange comment. This is literally how business and
| competition works, and how customers benefit as a result. No
| doubt it sucks to have a product competed with but that's just
| business. Of all areas on the Internet I'd have expected those
| on HN to understand, as it's run by a VC who is all about
| disruption of the competition.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| And the the valuation fir the smaller company is 10 billion.
| Its not like they are crushing your mom and pop shop here.
| wmf wrote:
| Stripe attempting to devour the entire financial stack should
| not have come as any surprise; their strategy is by now obvious
| from the long list of features they've launched over their
| history.
| powerslacker wrote:
| Seems like they pull a stunt like this every year.
| eatonphil wrote:
| > pull a stunt
|
| You mean growing their business?
| snake_doc wrote:
| Minor comment on the infinite game assumption from a game
| theory perspective . Stripe is clearly deviating, which means
| that they have made a payoff calculation that it's better to do
| say despite being punished by Plaid and other players.
| stu2b50 wrote:
| I mean, I guess? I would feel a bit more sympathetic if it were
| a very small company, and very young. But while Plaid is small
| relative to Stripe, it's a _9 year old company_ that's worth
| 10-13 _billion_ dollars. If you're seriously that affected by
| other companies in the space launching competitor products...
| in the _9_ years of your company's existence, in a market
| evidently lucrative enough to net you a several billion dollar
| valuation... I'm not sure what to say.
| bestcoder69 wrote:
| Please... my violin can't get any tinier or we risk splitting
| the atom.
| Jcowell wrote:
| I don't think OP isn't asking for sympathy but empathy? Is
| this the name of the game ? Yeah it is , always has , always
| will be. Does it suck for the loser ? Yes for course.
| arinlen wrote:
| > I don't think OP isn't asking for sympathy but empathy?
| Is this the name of the game ?
|
| Unless you believe a company like Plaid is entitled to a
| monopoly and should be free from any semblance of
| competition, I don't see a problem with that.
|
| What happened to free market capitalism?
| bestcoder69 wrote:
| It's fair to ask I guess. But thats just gonna be another
| form of disappointment for them...
| rabidonrails wrote:
| First, I think you hit the nail on the head in:Is this the
| name of the game ? Yeah it is , always has , always will
| be. Does it suck for the loser ? Yes for course.
|
| However, I didn't really ask for anything. In fact, what I
| think that bestcoder69 is missing is that the person who is
| asking/showing empathy is actually PC.
|
| If we look at what he wrote, he doesn't just come out and
| say something like _tough luck for them, this is business_
| , instead he says things like _" we could have handled this
| better"_ and _"...will retro this next week "_ and then
| lays out what the lessons should be for _his team__
|
| Just because empathy is important in business doesn't mean
| you aren't allowed to win.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Maybe we can harness the energy from pity parties of
| sufficiently notable scope.
| djbusby wrote:
| The power of a thousand tiny violins?
| arinlen wrote:
| > One morning you flip on your laptop and see a headline that
| one of your customers (and competitors) launched a new service
| that directly competes with yours.
|
| What's wrong with that?
| darkerside wrote:
| CEOs are literally paid to deal with these emotions
| constructively. In this case, that would have looked like
| welcoming a competitor to the space and being ready to win on
| execution, because ideas are free.
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| Ideas are not free. Good execution is better than good ideas
| alone, true. But ideas can definitely be worth a lot.
| mbesto wrote:
| Is there an eBay/Amazon for ideas? Didn't think so.
|
| Ideas are worthless.
| darkerside wrote:
| Any sufficiently good idea is really hard to communicate
| but really easy to demonstrate. That means you get a head
| start, but the next person gets it for free. That head
| start is your time to build a business with a moat. If you
| haven't done it by then, the next person will.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > Any sufficiently good idea
|
| There are all sorts of good ideas. Some are easy to
| communicate, some demonstrate, some both, some neither.
| davidatbu wrote:
| > Any sufficiently good idea is really hard to
| communicate but really easy to demonstrate.
|
| I'm gonna steal this.
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| That phrase was his idea.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| But it was just communicated. Wait till they demonstrate
| it.
| rchaud wrote:
| Yeesh, I'm glad he didn't say that. What a vapid soundbite. I
| don't mean that to reflect on you, you worded it exactly as a
| CEO would. "We welcome competition", what a joke!
| eli wrote:
| What would you say?
|
| Making it personal I don't think helps anyone.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I get the CEO speak, but I think rchaud is saying "no one
| welcomes competition - everyone wants a monopoly and to
| make as much money as possible". So saying otherwise
| sounds like garbage.
|
| People only "want competition" in the manner of
| controlled opposition, where they know they can beat
| someone.
| darkerside wrote:
| Competition is going to come whether you like it or not.
| You can whine about it, or you can use it as a tool to
| push yourself to be better.
|
| rchaud find this to be a platitude, but frankly, I don't
| give a shit what he thinks. If I'm a good CEO, I care
| much more about how my employees react to the new
| competition than to how this internet rando feels about
| my public response.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Speaking of effective communication, I don't think your
| tone effectively persuades skeptical listeners. You _are_
| on a forum of Internet randos, having a polite
| discussion.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I'll attempt to gently point out something that's
| important to me: this is also an example of how males
| discuss things.
|
| It's very difficult to bring up this topic in a
| constructive, thoughtful, and impactful way. But I urge
| you to really sit down and think carefully about it, even
| for a few minutes.
|
| His tone was the tone I used to use. I still do,
| sometimes. I have to catch myself, because old habits are
| hard to break.
|
| The reason I decided to break the habit is because it
| discourages people like my wife from becoming engineers,
| let alone founders. She's one of the most talented
| hackers I know. And you'd be reasonable to suspect that
| I'm exaggerating or being nice because she's a woman, but
| you'd be mistaken. If you're a react dev, there's a very
| strong probability that if you went head to hews with her
| in a "who can ship a great looking website faster?"
| contest, you would lose badly. I didn't believe it until
| I saw it more than once.
|
| The world is worse without people like her as engineers.
| And -- most importantly -- it's worth altering our
| behavior in the default case, not to be nice or to be
| more inclusive, but because it will make everyone's lives
| better in the long run.
|
| Just some food for thought. It didn't sink in for me
| until I pointed out she could be paid a lot more if only
| she'd aggressively negotiate. She mentioned "yeah, I know
| it's how men do it." A little switch flipped in my head.
| It doesn't need to be this way; we decide to be this way.
| darkerside wrote:
| Please see my other response to your peer comment. It's a
| better example of how I typically communicate and
| describes why I chose to say what I did in the more
| controversial comment I posted.
|
| I agree with everything you said, and I'd add that this
| is not unique to women. There are many creators who don't
| want to operate in a bro culture.
|
| Personally, I consider it a strength to be able to work
| with _all kinds of people_, and communicate in ways that
| are effective to each of them.
|
| Edit to add: My default communication is more inclusive.
| But there are definitely situations where a leader needs
| to be aggressive (e.g. against an external threat), and
| failure to do so can jeopardize the well-being of your
| own employees who aren't prone to that communication
| style themselves.
| darkerside wrote:
| That was a bit of a gambit on my part. Operating as an
| internet rando myself, I knew I didn't need to
| communicate like a CEO. In fact, I calculated that my
| message would distance myself from typical CEO-speak,
| imbuing myself with a bit of anti-authoritarian branding
| that might actually appeal to the people who least
| understood my first message.
|
| You're probably right that there are some fence sitters
| who were put off by that aggressive follow up. I hope
| they can judge the initial comment on its own merits, and
| challenge or ask for clarification if it's helpful.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| A lot of CEOs say this platitude. They are initially
| worried, but it often turns out to be good news because it
| accelerates or is a sign of a growing market.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| See: Zuckerberg's response to the launch of Google Plus.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| A CEO like Steve Jobs would have sought to destroy them and
| wouldn't have been afraid to openly snub them. Sometimes you
| go for the jugular
| hobs wrote:
| And Steve Jobs was an asshole who died believing citrus
| would cure his cancer while parking in handicapped parking
| lot zones so, maybe don't idolize him.
| bernardom wrote:
| "NBA players are literally paid to entertain us. They should
| just absorb the verbal abuse."
|
| "Waiters are literally paid..."
|
| Or we could be humans?
| caylus wrote:
| Where did you get "verbal abuse" from? We're talking about
| competition, so a far closer analogy would be an NBA player
| having to play a a game against one of their friends.
| Should they not have to do that in exchange for their
| salary?
| bestcoder69 wrote:
| What's the analogy here exactly? Non-coordinated
| competition is akin to verbal abuse?
|
| Isn't there a much more obvious NBA analogy here, which
| would actually make the CEO-empathy pleas appear even more
| ridiculous?
|
| Were you attempting the move "X=Bad to me, Y=Bad to you,
| Bad=Bad, therefore X=Y"?
| itslennysfault wrote:
| A prime example of this is the response Slack gave when
| Microsoft launched Teams. It was a direct copy-cat and they
| didn't throw a temper tantrum. They welcomed Microsoft into
| the space and saw it as validation of their product.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it was a direct copy-cat and they didn 't throw a temper
| tantrum_
|
| I'm seeing people conclude a lot more about Plaid from the
| CEO's outburst than from Stripe's announcement. If a
| competitor throws into your ring and your first move is to
| call foul on technicalities, it suggests you don't think
| you can win on merit alone.
| 60secz wrote:
| This. Moat harder.
| voidfunc wrote:
| Im rolling my eyes at this. Dont get into business or politics
| if you have thin skin.
| Dayshine wrote:
| So... Be born into a lift of luxury?
| dymk wrote:
| I thought the lofty rich were the ones with the thin skin,
| and it's the built-it-with-grit folks that have the thick
| sink.
| kelnos wrote:
| Plaid is a huge company with a CEO who is presumably a
| professional adult. Making sarcastic, whiny commends on Twitter
| should be beneath him. He just sounds like a child throwing a
| tantrum because a company decided to compete with him.
|
| Not saying he shouldn't feel bad, or threatened, or upset --
| those are perfectly valid feelings to have -- but airing those
| feelings like that is unprofessional and, frankly, pretty lame.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _sarcastic, whiny commends on Twitter should be beneath
| him. He just sounds like a child throwing a tantrum_
|
| The problem is it looks like someone who feels they've been
| beaten. Twitter tantrums are precedented and tolerated for
| Silicon Valley CEOs at this point.
| anon_3b4150 wrote:
| I have dealt with Stripe as a partner for my last three
| companies, and I do not trust them.
|
| The core team was A+ and very reasonable, but the non-core folks
| would regularly lie and misrepresent themselves. I have to be
| careful about examples because I don't want blowback to my
| colleagues, but here's one: telling a third party that they
| should not do a hybrid Stripe + my_old_company solution because
| our product couldn't support the use case. But, of course, we had
| the exact product requested in market then, and the team in
| question knew that. It's fine to want to close a deal, and I
| guess some people lie to close a deal. But saying one thing to me
| and another thing to the world has happened many times with
| Stripe.
|
| I don't know anything about this particular case, but it does
| match a pattern that I have seen firsthand.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >telling a third party that they should not do a hybrid Stripe
| + my_old_company solution because our product couldn't support
| the use case.
|
| To be clear, are you complaining about salesmen at a competitor
| lying to close a sale? Are you also unhappy about water being
| wet, or bears shitting in the woods?
| anon_3b4150 wrote:
| No, that is not what happened.
|
| We were partnering with Stripe on a deal that we originated.
| They verbally agreed to terms. They then lied about our
| abilities. So we cut Stripe out, got the deal, and moved on.
|
| The point isn't that competition exists; the point is that
| Stripe will say one thing and do another. If this is how you
| live your life, fine, but many people would like to know that
| Stripe has a history of bad behavior.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >We were partnering with Stripe on a deal that we
| originated.
|
| So... a sale? The Stripe staff you were working with were
| from the sales department?
| themacguffinman wrote:
| I don't know why you think salespeople are expected to lie
| about competitors, I don't think that's normal and I consider
| it a huge red flag for any vendor if I found out they
| intentionally lied about their competitors. No one would be
| surprised at spin or bias, but lying is not okay.
| password4321 wrote:
| A lot more anecdata: _Accepted and ghosted: interviewing for a
| leadership position at Stripe_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29387264 (672 comments;
| 20211130)
|
| > _Stripe, and especially the founders, have a quite a poor
| reputation for screwing over people in and around their orbit._
|
| --
|
| Follow-up discussion of the initial announcement: _Stripe
| releases Plaid-like project, Plaid CEO objects to process_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31263288 (15 comments; 2
| days ago)
|
| > _Unless I 'm mistaken, Stripe has a history of behaving this
| way._
|
| --
|
| Initial announcement discussion -- Plaid CEO's comments:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31262361#31263005
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31262361#31263017
| guelo wrote:
| I want an API to my account data but I don't want any of these
| 3rd parties having access. The banking free market has failed, we
| need regulators to require apis.
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