In what ways is this different to Gumroad [1]?
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.
We've had one user crowd fund for a childs trustfund through us. Dudes in europe selling rare coffee beans. Contracts invoicing for their time through the platform. The generic digital sales cds/ebooks/etc
We cover a wide spectrum of products.
We're trying to create a framework/platform for longtail ecommerce. Not just a platform for people who want to sell digital things they create.
There is definitely overlap between us and groad, but its not our primary focus, for certain things you want to sell its just quicker to sell via them, and thats cool.
Can you compare and contrast the two in a meaningful way?
What can I do with Chec that I can't do with Gumroad? And for that matter, what does Gumroad do that Chec doesn't (yet) do?
3.5% fee compared to 5%
PayPal Integration (for your customers who feel safer using them)
Physical Product Handling
Access Windows for digital sales (https://trychec.com/assets/img/anything-digital.png)
Inline Social Payments on Facebook (checkouts in customers newsfeeds)
Social Deals - Based on influence or demographics
And a powerful merchant backend.
as well as a few smaller features around.
Groad is primarily built to deal with digital files, we can handle any type of good.
and that's just in v1. we've got a lot to do, and you'll see us differentiate more in the future.
It might be easier to give the stories behind the idea to help.
So, i created this initially for myself. As a teenager i had resale rights to a DVD info product, and made a couple thousand a month selling it.
I hated the checkout process of 2checkout, 1shoppingcart, ejunkie, and others. So I ended up throwing a paypal checkout in an iframe and creating a post hook script to manage the order.
I wanted a simple, clean, yet powerful app to manage everything, so i made one. The first version of this was built in 2010.
I had one professional/full product to sell and i sold it in fairly high volume, and I didnt need a fully fledged store, i just had a single product to sell. Over time i created more and more minisites to sell different types of info products so i could have some passive income whilst i was at school.
Gumroads story
Sahil created an icon on photoshop that he wasnt going to use, but thought other people would find value in it so he wanted a service that let him sell his "value" to his followers (if that makes sense).
Gumroad allows people to sell their small snippets of value. (primarily digital).
Chec allows smaller merchants to start selling online who have no need for a front end store. Merchants like mmfixed.com etc..
Is that a little clearer? :)
I.e. clicked via FB? Let try and use fb connect to prepopulate the checkout, provide an incentive to share this page if they're influential. etc..
We went through a pretty messy founder split which will probably come to light in full later on.
in short.
Chec's the original - you can probably tell by how consistant our product is compared. The old cofounder ran off with the corporation and didnt follow through on his agreement to transfer the assets over, after i was asked to stand down and incorporate a new entity - so i had to rebuild the company from the old room back in england.