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I totally agree with you on all points. I think its really interesting how businesses have lifecyle patterns, where business build up resources like "goodwill"

• Silhouette 11y ago
  I wonder whether goodwill is really the right term to use in this sort of situation. I will always be grateful to Stripe for helping my own business interests and those of various other people I know at a time when there were few services available that did what we were all looking for. I don't hold it against them that they've outgrown some of those businesses today. On the other hand, I also don't recommend them by default to people in my network with new startups or small businesses any more. I don't expect anyone in that sort of position who does sign up with them today to enjoy the same advantages that some of us did a few years ago. Maybe Stripe have a clear idea of how this is going to work out for them in the long run. Objectively, I'm sure that if they lost every business that I personally work on today that still uses them, they wouldn't even notice. They could probably also lose every business that went with them in part because of my recommendation and not even notice, since as far as I know none of those businesses has yet exploded to unicorn-like proportions. Presumably the risk is that if they alienate the startup community as a whole then sooner or later they will start missing out on attracting startups that will go on to be very successful, and that would make a significant difference. However, if they're now doing well with more traditional and already-established businesses anyway, maybe it's still commercially in their best interests to go that way.
  • ChrisDutrow 11y ago
    Yeah I don't know if goodwill is the best term. I think of "goodwill" as sort of an intangible inertia that comes from positive recognition - in people's minds, media, etc... I think losing reputation and volume with the start-up community is probably very costly. An interesting thought is they might not have a viable alternative? If their cup is already too full, they have to cut back somewhere. Providing good service, at scale, while also growing rapidly is debateably impossible.
    • Silhouette 11y ago
      From a purely selfish point of view, I think the more interesting questions are around what the small businesses and startups have as viable alternatives for collecting money from their customers. Obviously there are several other card payment services these days that might not be quite a easy to integrate as Stripe but might have compensating advantages in other respects. However, there are other payment methods that might wind up being better bets anyway as they are increasingly available to smaller businesses through other new services. An obvious example here in the UK is GoCardless for Direct Debits, which easily beats Stripe on most of the important metrics but has the huge disadvantage of only being available to customers with a local bank account. However, SEPA is already starting to change what "local" means in that context, and if they start partnering up with other alternative payment schemes internationally, I could see them becoming a very good option for a lot of smaller businesses if they can avoid the same fate as Stripe. The elephant in the room for me is whether there is now an opportunity for someone to out-Stripe Stripe. After all, they established the viability of the market for processing payments for small businesses, and they now seem willing to surrender that market as they move on to bigger things. That leaves quite an attractive gap for a new entrant to become the default payment service for startups for a while (probably before either following a similar growth path or being acquired by one of the incumbents, so you have multiple potential big exits as well).