Hey -- just want to say thanks to the people on HN who've given us feedback and encouraged us along the way. We're building Stripe for the kind of people who read Hacker News, and the suggestions we've received here have generally been the most useful feedback we've gotten anywhere.
So, thanks. We're pretty excited about the next few years.
Just to chime in with the others regarding international support: hopefully the funding will help you expand in that way. I'm in the UK and would like to see some more viable alternatives to Paypal.
Don't forget to spend some of the money to lower your costs and then lower the fees. This field needs competition to make the old players uncompetitive and run them out of business.
One thing that YC drills into you is to not settle for B or C class talent. You just have to look at Stripe's team overview to see how talented this company is: https://stripe.com/about
Stripe is a lesson on how to build a company from the ground up. Surrounding yourself with incredibly intelligent people tends to have an outcome like this (both product and valuation). Congrats guys!
Am I the only one who finds the language "C class talent" really distasteful? I feel like it's worse than referring to your employees as "human resources".
I understand the importance of passing on people who are a close-but-in-the-end-imperfect fit for your organization. But using the concept of class and grading people from A to F just makes my skin crawl, and it makes me want to avoid any company or organization who things about people that way, YC included.
I did have a look, but didn't see anything out of ordinary there.
Surely the team must be great to be doing so well, and best of luck and kudos to them! But what exactly am I supposed to be seeing on that overview page? Which part triggered your "A class" detector?
From my experience running a startup this isnt necessarily true.
I hired what you would call B/C class talent because i loved their work ethic. Simply put, they get shit done and follow the guidelines while some A class people try to write the perfect solution which takes more time (planning overhead etc). Of course you need A class talent for certain positions, but certainly not all, not even in engineering.
Also if you are bootstrapping on a rather low budget, attracting A class talent isnt the easiest thing todo anyway.
Awesome product, brilliant people, answered all my emails in less than 15 minutes...
I so much want to become a customer that I'm seriously considering incorporating ShiningPanda LLC (or C-Corp) somewhere in the United States for this sole purpose. And probably dissolving ShiningPanda SAS (French equivalent, more or less, of a C-Corp) to reduce the costs, as SAS are pretty expensive to keep around, and it would become largely pointless.
Do someone have experience with such an endeavor? The part that I can't seem to figure out is how to pay foreign people, living abroad, from an American company. All the while avoiding double taxation.
If someone have references toward a good lawyer / accountant / tax lawyer to figure out all that... My email is alexis dot tabary at shiningpanda dot com
There's a lot to like about Stripe, but my absolute favorite under-appreciated thing is their name and domain name.
Hard to quantify just how much it helped, but I seriously doubt they would have had quite this trajectory with a name like Chargerly.com or even possibly Stripe.io.
I love stripe. I got everything setup and accepting payments this morning for a side project in less than 20 minutes before I had to leave for work... It's such a joy to use.
This definitely draws a line in the sand for the online payment provider process. Looks like Paypal has been served.
Disclaimer: my business is a huge Paypal user, but we've been actively looking at Stripe and put in our plans for 2012 to begin to transition to them. Exciting times!
Congrats guys! I just want to say that I love Stripe. You are really changing the game. I love that you are focusing on developers.
I wonder what might happen down the road when users make mistakes that put themselves in PCI compliance violation (like posting a form to their server with input names, thus sending the card info). What kinds of effects could this have on the business, their image, and the customers?
Quite likely. I think Sequoia's bet goes hand in hand with the trend as of late of 'democratizing' programming and CS education (Stanford online classes, Udacity, Codeacademy and others). More and better programming means more projects and more demand for payment platforms like Stripe.
[+] [-] pc|14 years ago|reply
So, thanks. We're pretty excited about the next few years.
[+] [-] phillmv|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmitcheson|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dspillett|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sycr|14 years ago|reply
Get yourselves into Canada!
[+] [-] shimon_e|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ernestipark|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pclark|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aquinn|14 years ago|reply
http://www.tt-orchestra.de/images/logo_deutschebank.png
[+] [-] olivercameron|14 years ago|reply
Stripe is a lesson on how to build a company from the ground up. Surrounding yourself with incredibly intelligent people tends to have an outcome like this (both product and valuation). Congrats guys!
[+] [-] erikpukinskis|14 years ago|reply
I understand the importance of passing on people who are a close-but-in-the-end-imperfect fit for your organization. But using the concept of class and grading people from A to F just makes my skin crawl, and it makes me want to avoid any company or organization who things about people that way, YC included.
Am I the only one?
[+] [-] Radim|14 years ago|reply
Surely the team must be great to be doing so well, and best of luck and kudos to them! But what exactly am I supposed to be seeing on that overview page? Which part triggered your "A class" detector?
[+] [-] kayoone|14 years ago|reply
I hired what you would call B/C class talent because i loved their work ethic. Simply put, they get shit done and follow the guidelines while some A class people try to write the perfect solution which takes more time (planning overhead etc). Of course you need A class talent for certain positions, but certainly not all, not even in engineering.
Also if you are bootstrapping on a rather low budget, attracting A class talent isnt the easiest thing todo anyway.
[+] [-] vidar|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Xixi|14 years ago|reply
I so much want to become a customer that I'm seriously considering incorporating ShiningPanda LLC (or C-Corp) somewhere in the United States for this sole purpose. And probably dissolving ShiningPanda SAS (French equivalent, more or less, of a C-Corp) to reduce the costs, as SAS are pretty expensive to keep around, and it would become largely pointless.
Do someone have experience with such an endeavor? The part that I can't seem to figure out is how to pay foreign people, living abroad, from an American company. All the while avoiding double taxation.
If someone have references toward a good lawyer / accountant / tax lawyer to figure out all that... My email is alexis dot tabary at shiningpanda dot com
[+] [-] staunch|14 years ago|reply
There's a lot to like about Stripe, but my absolute favorite under-appreciated thing is their name and domain name.
Hard to quantify just how much it helped, but I seriously doubt they would have had quite this trajectory with a name like Chargerly.com or even possibly Stripe.io.
[+] [-] alapshah|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmf|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TomGullen|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klaut|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RexM|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kareemm|14 years ago|reply
:)
Congrats gang. I'm sure it's only partially a manpower issue with international expansion - dealing with institutions only moves so quickly.
[+] [-] bkorte|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blantonl|14 years ago|reply
This definitely draws a line in the sand for the online payment provider process. Looks like Paypal has been served.
Disclaimer: my business is a huge Paypal user, but we've been actively looking at Stripe and put in our plans for 2012 to begin to transition to them. Exciting times!
[+] [-] Newgy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dexec|14 years ago|reply
Proud to see more Irish founders succeeding in the US, and as I know they'll be reading here: good job guys, keep it up.
[+] [-] yesimahuman|14 years ago|reply
I wonder what might happen down the road when users make mistakes that put themselves in PCI compliance violation (like posting a form to their server with input names, thus sending the card info). What kinds of effects could this have on the business, their image, and the customers?
[+] [-] ChadMoran|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bostonvaulter2|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moses1400|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bmaeser|14 years ago|reply
congrats to the stripe folks!
[+] [-] rabidonrails|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mshafrir|14 years ago|reply
(And I think that's a good thing.)
[+] [-] rpbertp13|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ashhimself|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mekarpeles|14 years ago|reply