Not really related to the product idea (there've been a raft of gumroad-type services launching lately), but has anyone else noticed the absolute explosion in blurred background images in designs these days? I swear the vast majority of new startup landing pages involve a highly blurred background of some kind.
It makes the landing page similar to a photo captured with an expensive lens on a high quality camera, where the foreground (text and logos, in this case) is in crisp focus, whereas the background is said to be in [bokeh](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh).
Seems like we get a site like this every few days. Are they making crazy money or is there some other reason everyones is making one? Are they just really easy to make? Maybe because payment process disruption has occurred? What's up?
Most of these sites will go down due to one big hurdle. Payments.
Underwriting merchants and get verified by Visa/MasterCard as a payment service provider is a bitch. Aggregating credit cards is a heavily regulated area - but most of these sites are unaware of this issue.
We initially started on Stripe, and got told what we were doing was unregulated/not allowed on stripe, so we then grabbed a coffee with them and learnt about this process.
In fact I was grabbing coffee with Sahil (Gumroad) a few months ago and they've just run into this issue themselves - which they are starting to solve. so you'll probably notice them asking you for more information to underwrite you, unless they find a way around this.
That's also why we ask users to go through an activate process.
My guess is that it's because payments are much easier thanks to online and developer-friendly merchant systems. PayPal has had IPN for a long time. Then there was BrainTree and open-sourced libraries like ActiveMerchant. This made billing for your own app and some marketplace options easier. We do 3rd party payment aggregation with NextProof (www.nextproof.com) and I still get an email every week from someone who read an HN post I wrote 2+ years ago. But after the financial crisis, most merchant underwriters frowned upon payment aggregation.
Then all the billing/charging services came along. Recurly, Chargify, Spreedly, CheddarGetter, etc. These made billing and charging your own customers easier. They never really handled "products" but I think they paved the way a bit by showing that having easy APIs is important.
Now you have services like Stripe. So, you can do recurring billing and individual charges. You can let your customers setup their own accounts (via Stripe Connect) but still keep the business logic in your app. This also takes care of the disbursements/payout issue and puts the onus of chargebacks on the user. The API is easy. PCI compliance is not as much of a problem. Transaction fees are in line with PayPal (but our BrainTree fees are lower). You can build a tool like this, a marketplace like Etsy, a crowdfunding site, etc. ... If you look through Stripe posts on HN, the biggest gripe is always international payments. I built www.bngal.com because it was easy and fun.
It will be interesting to see what's next ... possibly integration with in-person payment systems (like Square) or maybe cardless payments (linked to bank account?).
Link based selling has been around for years. 2checkout, 1shoppingcart, ejunkie etc...
I started working on Chec in late 2010/early 2011, before groad launched. (https://www.facebook.com/checkoutbyswipe, if you wanna trace down to the day that page was setup) - It's a long story between then and today.
Short Version - University in England -> AngelPad Incubator -> Raised large seed -> Founder Split -> Had to rebuild new company.
My 0.02c: you should change the name. If you already have to append "(kout)" to explain it to hackers, it will be 10x more difficult marketing it to a larger crowd. Or you can start printing stickers that read "you know, without the 'k'" ;-)
Gumroad's a platform for people who want to sell digital things they create and has a 5% fee.
We're a platform for long tail merchants. So for example - you'd sell the psd your not going to use in your app on gumroad, but you'd sell the final app through chec. - if that helps. - we also only charge 3.5% and can do a lot more with downloads + handle physical products.
We position ourselves between Gumroad & Shopify (if they did payments).
on a side note - me and sahil know each other well. Back in april 2011 when Chec was called Kout I actually reached out to him to join Kout after he launch groad on hackernews. He said "you've already built the software why do you need me" but we've kept in touch and occasionally get coffee and discuss the space.
Link based selling has been around for years. 2checkout, 1shoppingcart, paypal, ejunkie, quixly etc have been at it for a while. I came up with the idea for Chec after i ended up throwing a PayPal checkout in an iframe for a info product i was selling.
P.S - if anybody is wondering about the 2 year gap between launching - that story will come to light shortly.
Looks like a bit better Gumroad. Design is nice, blah blah blah. Why I'm writing is this: when activating account what the hell is supposed to be Seller's Name?
This annoying popup keeps telling me "Must contain only letters, numbers, or - ( ) , . ' &". I must say I haven't seen many names with numbers or ampersands in it. If it's meant to be a username, than ok but say it specifically. If it's really meant to be a name - it's 2013 for Ozzie's sake, use the damn UTF.
Like Devan stated below - "We position ourselves between Gumroad & Shopify (if they did payments)".
In the future, we plan on adding widgets that will work within our application that will cater to some of the cases you pointed out. Some of these widgets will include date/time charging (tutor offering hours/days of work) and subscription based charging (SaaS service you mentioned). Of course, we're not limited to just that.
As for the PSD, we host the file for you so all you need to do is upload the PSD and after the checkout process, the buyer can immediately download it.
It'd be cool if there was some option to post stuff to Craigslist or auto-format copy/markup for Craigslist, but that's just me asking for my own Pony. I like the look and ease of listing stuff.
Love your site design - great use of whitespace and big, bold images! It would be nice to see a sample of a cart/page before signing up so you know what your "shop" will look like..
We provide region specific shipping options for physical products, and will be doing tight integrations with UPS, Fedex, RoyalMail apis to help you with fulfilling physical items.
[+] [-] marknutter|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ultimoo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] verelo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brador|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devan|13 years ago|reply
Underwriting merchants and get verified by Visa/MasterCard as a payment service provider is a bitch. Aggregating credit cards is a heavily regulated area - but most of these sites are unaware of this issue.
We initially started on Stripe, and got told what we were doing was unregulated/not allowed on stripe, so we then grabbed a coffee with them and learnt about this process.
In fact I was grabbing coffee with Sahil (Gumroad) a few months ago and they've just run into this issue themselves - which they are starting to solve. so you'll probably notice them asking you for more information to underwrite you, unless they find a way around this.
That's also why we ask users to go through an activate process.
[+] [-] callmeed|13 years ago|reply
Then all the billing/charging services came along. Recurly, Chargify, Spreedly, CheddarGetter, etc. These made billing and charging your own customers easier. They never really handled "products" but I think they paved the way a bit by showing that having easy APIs is important.
Now you have services like Stripe. So, you can do recurring billing and individual charges. You can let your customers setup their own accounts (via Stripe Connect) but still keep the business logic in your app. This also takes care of the disbursements/payout issue and puts the onus of chargebacks on the user. The API is easy. PCI compliance is not as much of a problem. Transaction fees are in line with PayPal (but our BrainTree fees are lower). You can build a tool like this, a marketplace like Etsy, a crowdfunding site, etc. ... If you look through Stripe posts on HN, the biggest gripe is always international payments. I built www.bngal.com because it was easy and fun.
It will be interesting to see what's next ... possibly integration with in-person payment systems (like Square) or maybe cardless payments (linked to bank account?).
[+] [-] devan|13 years ago|reply
I started working on Chec in late 2010/early 2011, before groad launched. (https://www.facebook.com/checkoutbyswipe, if you wanna trace down to the day that page was setup) - It's a long story between then and today.
Short Version - University in England -> AngelPad Incubator -> Raised large seed -> Founder Split -> Had to rebuild new company.
[+] [-] sylvinus|13 years ago|reply
Apart from this, great design!
[+] [-] liquidise|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sim0n|13 years ago|reply
[1] http://gumroad.com
[+] [-] devan|13 years ago|reply
We're a platform for long tail merchants. So for example - you'd sell the psd your not going to use in your app on gumroad, but you'd sell the final app through chec. - if that helps. - we also only charge 3.5% and can do a lot more with downloads + handle physical products.
We position ourselves between Gumroad & Shopify (if they did payments).
on a side note - me and sahil know each other well. Back in april 2011 when Chec was called Kout I actually reached out to him to join Kout after he launch groad on hackernews. He said "you've already built the software why do you need me" but we've kept in touch and occasionally get coffee and discuss the space.
Link based selling has been around for years. 2checkout, 1shoppingcart, paypal, ejunkie, quixly etc have been at it for a while. I came up with the idea for Chec after i ended up throwing a PayPal checkout in an iframe for a info product i was selling.
P.S - if anybody is wondering about the 2 year gap between launching - that story will come to light shortly.
[+] [-] MichalBures|13 years ago|reply
Looks like a bit better Gumroad. Design is nice, blah blah blah. Why I'm writing is this: when activating account what the hell is supposed to be Seller's Name?
This annoying popup keeps telling me "Must contain only letters, numbers, or - ( ) , . ' &". I must say I haven't seen many names with numbers or ampersands in it. If it's meant to be a username, than ok but say it specifically. If it's really meant to be a name - it's 2013 for Ozzie's sake, use the damn UTF.
[+] [-] sjs382|13 years ago|reply
Also, ampersands are common in company names. (Procter & Gamble, etc)
[+] [-] zaidrahman|13 years ago|reply
How would Chec work for the following cases:
* A non-profit selling shirts to raise funds.
* A freelancer charging for his work. Essentially, a money transfer.
* A SaaS style service charging $5 a month.
* Charging for a PSD.
[+] [-] yookd|13 years ago|reply
In the future, we plan on adding widgets that will work within our application that will cater to some of the cases you pointed out. Some of these widgets will include date/time charging (tutor offering hours/days of work) and subscription based charging (SaaS service you mentioned). Of course, we're not limited to just that.
As for the PSD, we host the file for you so all you need to do is upload the PSD and after the checkout process, the buyer can immediately download it.
[+] [-] lysol|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ecaroth|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yookd|13 years ago|reply
For now, you can view the video under the "Beautiful Checkout" section on the main page. It will show you a sample page and flow of the checkout.
[+] [-] ante_annum|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] autoreverse|13 years ago|reply
Do you support withdrawal of funds to non-US bank accounts?
Can't see this in the FAQ.
Likewise there don't seem to be any limitations on seller location. Are there any?
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] robinjfisher|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cristinacordova|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lingben|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sjs382|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abdophoto|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pogosian|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rgbrgb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sv123|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arkitaip|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devan|13 years ago|reply
But we've got a lot to do here.
[+] [-] qdawg|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aMoniker|13 years ago|reply
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