The Story Behind Payment Disruptor Stripe.com And Its Founder Patrick Collison
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Like most, I've met many people over my life thus far. I'm a social person by nature. I feel as though I understand people. I've got a good sense for them. I'm not sure how else to explain it.
When I was with them, something felt different. I just felt like they are going to do important things with their lives. Have a huge impact (with Stripe and whatever else they decide to do).
As the article points out, they're both quite intelligent. During our conversation, it was immediately apparent to me that they're also ambitious.
But what probably stood out to me the most, given the other two qualities, was their true sense of integrity. They just seemed like nice people. Unpretentious. Would do anything for their friends that they could, as well as for well-meaning strangers.
I think Stripe will make it big.
But I'm mostly rooting for them for another reason: for being good people.
For caring.
I think the way in which they apply that quality may be what sets them apart in the end.
A few years ago when I was in college, I randomly emailed Patrick looking for advice on where to begin on the path to eventually doing a startup. I was only half expecting a response, I mean he doesn't know me from Adam and it was an email out of the blue from me.
Instead, he gave me his mobile number and told me to ring him to have a proper conversation. I had like a half hour+ conversation, about web frameworks, visa advice for the US, and so on. Incredibly guy, unbelievable generosity. I was floored by it.
I've no doubt Stripe will go public some day (unless it gets bought for a huge sum by Visa or someone), I'll be rooting for those guys all the way.
They built a very easy to use tool on top of an outdated (though still commonly used) payment technology.
Stripe has already clearly proven itself as a company operating on a plane far higher than most "startups". My co-founder and I take a look at their team page when we're looking at new hires just to remind ourselves of how high our standards need to be. The size of their recent raise shows investors heard things that got them pretty excited, too. I'll not doubt them.
That has huge potential! Unless an easier competitor comes along I do and will continue to use Stripe for anything that I'm not using for a primary source of income.
No offense but I think this statement shows exactly what makes Stripe so non-disruptive. Stripe has targeted a niche, not a vertical. Payment processing exists beyond the needs of new web ventures. The majority of businesses (brick and mortars) can't even make use of stripe without a VAR or OEM acting as a middle man, and at that point where is the value that stripe brings to the table? The savings will be eaten up by the middle man.
Stripe may be great for a small development shop cranking out mobile and web apps (I'm their target market, I'm considering using it for my SaaS myself) but once a business starts to scale saving a quarter or half percentage point on processing fees by using something like auth.net makes sense when weighed against the usability of stripe from a developer perspective.
Isn't that the textbook (Christensen) method to successfully attack larger entrenched interests?
Sustaining innovation is when a company keeps improving a product and raising the prices. Stripe is more of a sustaining innovation than a disruptive one. Typically incumbents are the ones to improve their products while raising the price, but it is also possible for a new entrant to do the same. Providing a much better user experience could potentially lead to Stripe dominating the payments market but it is really just a less hassle version of what is in place today. Payments are a huge hassle to deal with as a merchant/developer so this is still an innovation but just not a disruptive one.
Dwolla is a better example of disruptive innovation in that they are circumventing the whole credit card system which could potentially save merchants and indirectly, consumers, large amounts of money.
Stripe is actually more like a new market disruption because it is bringing in non-consumers who might not have even been able to setup payment processing without their solution. The same is true of Gumroad, or Shopify.
Could you please expand on this?
And, if possible, describe newer/better technologies?
Thanks!
I mean, could you imagine someone inventing a payment technology today that required you to give away your secret password to each and every person who needed to bill you? It's no wonder there is so much money lost to fraud.
I think companies like Dwolla are the real future, even if Dwolla itself fails. The tokens they issue for payments are only good for a certain amount to a certain recipient. Recipient gets hacked? Sign in to Dwolla and expire that token, simple as that.
Also CC fees are absolutely astronomical, we've just gotten used to paying them. We really need a future where money transfer is not controlled by a few private interests that are capturing 3% of everything.