Comment by skirsch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by skirsch | Hacker News Reader

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Early on at Token, we looked Teller as a possible solution to getting to market quickly. We found two things: 1) the lawyers told us to stay clear (huge greyzone) and 2) the banks themselves didn't want to engage with us using teller even if it sped up development time. We even brought stevie in talk to our lawyers to make his case. He failed to convince them. Finally, we inquired about the price. Stevie was elusive on pricing. I finally asked, "Look, if we paid you $1M, how many banks could we get?" He said one. So at that point, we were so far apart on all issues, so we pulled out. Token will be doing something similar to teller in terms of "one API for all banks" (aggregating banks' PSD2 interface with Token acting as a PISP/AISP). But we are also providing the PSD2 interface for other banks. We have raised plenty of money to do it right ($18.5M Series A to start with), but our pricing to developers will be ridiculously inexpensive. Also, we need to hire developers very quickly, so if you are interested in helping us do it right (no shared secrets, all end-to-end secure protocols, secure central PII storage (where the decryption keys are only available at endpoints), please let us know. We don't have a lot of time left to do this right. We are located in London and San Francisco.

Steve,

I'm really surprised.

> the lawyers told us to stay clear (huge greyzone)

I remember going in to speak with your lawyers, convincing them, you emailing me the same day telling me as much and still wanting to do a deal.

> Stevie was elusive on pricing. I finally asked, "Look, if we paid you $1M, how many banks could we get?" He said one.

If you then thought I was going to give you, a competitor, my core IP for 1 million dollars a year, while you used it with your series A money to capture the market, well then you must be out of your damn mind.

> the banks themselves didn't want to engage with us using teller even if it sped up development time

Banks don't want to engage with you period. Nobody has heard of Token, you have zero technology and zero bank integrations.

Best of luck with it all, Steve.

It seems you boys can settle your dispute the old fashioned way: by providing support for your claims.

I remember going in to speak with your lawyers, convincing them, you emailing me the same day telling me as much and still wanting to do a deal. At least one of you should have these emails.

If you then thought I was going to give you, a competitor, my core IP for 1 million dollars a year, while you used it with your series A money to capture the market, well then you must be out of your damn mind. You would have been paid $1m/year to provide a service. You wouldn't have given up ownership of your company, or taken a risk on stock valuations. $1m cash. Each year. Actual cash. For a startup of 1. If you don't think that's good money right out of the gate, you have serious judgment issues (and this is also reflected in your top-floating comment re security).

Nobody has heard of Token, you have zero technology and zero bank integrations. This was the first time I've heard of Teller...If Token claims they have bank customers that they're providing integration for, it's an easy matter for them to prove it; they only need to publicize one bank client to refute your claims. On the other hand, you come across as very petulant when you say nobody has heard of Token and that they have zero technology or bank integrations since that's an easily disprovable claim.

FinTech and financial services place a lot of value in judgment, since their industry is defined by risk. Right now, you're not showing much good judgment, and if you keep up like this, you have no chance in this space because you're demonstrating in many ways that you're a bad risk for them to take.

Do you know what reasons the lawyers gave for steering clear? i.e. The arguments for your scenario as a potential competitor may not apply to other potential users. Also some lawyers just give "steer clear" as default advise, since that way they themselves are in the clear / there's no benefit to them to tell you to go for it, so the incentive is for them to be overly cautious.

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