Just emulating the clarity of Stripe's internal and external communications (like this letter), would be a better use of company time than 99% of corporate strategic goals.
It's not that Stripe doesn't have broken things: I could have made a big list from back when I worked there, and I bet the list is still large. However, you are just underestimating how broken other companies are. I've worked at 10+ companies, some far bigger, and some far smaller than Stripe, and even the smallest ones had a higher percentage of broken things, and the brokenness is often in far more vital places. It's never going to happen, but you'd learn so much from joining me as a professional tourist, and going incognito as a random dev in another big company for 6 months.
But you are showing classic Stripe culture here: I remember a place where everyone was embarrassed about how bad they think their latest shipped email was, and how they have so much to do, while their typical coworkers is instead in awe of how good said shipped email was.
Pretty cool to see a CEO of a famous company here at HN. Especially a humble one with a learning mindset.
I think back in the day I heard you mention that you are a big history buff. I do have a history question for you.
Do you know of any existing public company who were able to fix their problems at scale that did not have to change their flagship product? It seems like new product line were a forcing function to fix broken things at scale. It's as if those who kept their flagship product who had scalability problems had to either use duct tape fixes or make really painful choices.
* Warren Buffett enters the chat*
> Stripe has the same unevenness, cultural anomie, and mediocre middle management of any big company.
“I put numbers on the boards” - Pusha T
Well Braintree don't give you back the fee after a refund either.
"Transactions fees charged by Braintree will not be returned for refunded transactions. However, if you signed up prior to 1 August 2018, transaction fees charged by Braintree are returned for fully refunded transactions."
So my boss actually told them, we would use them only, if fees for refunds will be returned. And the deal was made this way.
So I encourage everyone else to do so...
they have no tech to prevent fraud, and you have to pay fees whenever customer chargeback
google/apple provide better services, plus it's built in
In comparison, with PayPal, if the fraud was detected and the bank issue a chargeback, you have nothing to pay, i have a SaaS since 2008, and never had a single problem with PayPal, the day i added Stripe, that issue started to appear, it disappeared the day i removed Stripe, i don't want to depend on a company that make me loose money (SaaS with low prices, -$15 per fraud, no thank you)