Unbelievable. Due diligence for Series A rounds is pretty comprehensive. How in the world this process, especially in such a solid VC firm as Sequoia, could miss a potential significant conflict of interests is beyond my understanding.
(1) It wasn’t immediately apparent without getting deep into the weeds that they competed with Stripe;
(2) Finix pivoted in a manner that caused them to compete with Stripe more directly;
(3) There was a controversy at the beginning about whether there was a conflict, and someone broke the tie and decided it wasn’t enough of a conflict to worry about, and then someone else at Sequoia gained more influence or proximity, or reconsidered something they were previously sure of, and the balance tipped in the other direction.
BTW, kudos to you for your December 2018 blog post on bootstrapping (the relevant HN discussion does not disappoint either).
Or someone seriously dropped the ball, of course - it happens.
Not only do they do many of the exact same things that Stripe does, but even their design aesthetic is ripped directly from Stripe's, down to the signature tilted parallelogram.
Compare: