7 ms·

Patrick from Stripe here. I wanted to quickly chime in to emphasize that our goal in acquiring Indie Hackers is to simply ensure that the site becomes as succes

by pc 9y ago

Patrick from Stripe here. I wanted to quickly chime in to emphasize that our goal in acquiring Indie Hackers is to simply ensure that the site becomes as successful as possible. The Stripe upside we're hoping for is that more companies get started and that they're more successful. We already see a very large fraction of new internet companies choose Stripe; we're mainly hoping that Indie Hackers can help us grow the overall number rather than to grow our fraction. (Our product has to do the latter part.) Also: congrats to Courtland on building an awesome site! I've been enjoying the interviews on it since it launched. It's very refreshing to hear from so many people who are quietly building real businesses with real revenues.

brilliantcode 9y ago
What do see on your acquisition list in 2017/2018?
- pc 9y ago
  It's very hard to know upfront -- what made us interested in Indie Hackers wasn't just the idea per se (we'd thought about it before and looked at other sites in the past), but rather the fact that it was executed so well. There are tons of things that we'd in principle be open to acquiring if the right company existed. In general, we look for small, highly-effective technical teams with a very high bar for execution quality. (Indie Hackers, which was pretty much just Courtland operating solo, cleared this threshold by a significant margin: https://twitter.com/Shpigford/status/851851923502268416 https://twitter.com/Shpigford/status/851851923502268416) To the extent that the team really understands either developer tools or startups, that's a bonus.
  - austenallred 9y ago
    > Indie Hackers is one of those things that came out of nowhere with super high quality everything. I love that notion. To come out of nowhere with super high quality everything.
nitam 9y ago
You can help us help you by a) becoming available in more countries b) Atlas LLC
- camhart 9y ago
  +1 for Atlas LLC
- rhizome 9y ago
  This was brought up in the Stripe thread the other day. I'm sure both are on their radar.
- kcorbitt 9y ago
  Agree about Atlas LLC: the best way to help "more companies get started and that they're more successful" is to help the companies at the margin -- the companies that won't actually get around to being formed if the prospective founder has to take 2 weeks out of his schedule just to figure out the legal and financial aspects of operating a side business. And for that type of company, an LLC is the no-brainer correct choice for the corporate structure. Source: a prospective customer. :)
- will_brown 9y ago
  There is a lot of echo for your sentiment, and no reason for Atlas to not create an LLC package for customers (at some point), but are You (and so many others) really putting off a. Starting a business, or b. Creation of a business entity (LLC) for an on going business until Stripe can form it for you as a service? If so, what is it they provide that isn't available - and cheaper - elsewhere?
- justinclift 9y ago
  With that LLC thought, does that still mean US based? Atlas sounded interesting to me (doing product dev atm), however it's based on incorporating in the US. The US seems like it's gone in a seriously bad direction for non-US citizens (I'm Australian, living in the UK), with no positive end to that in sight. So incorporation in the US isn't really a goer (personally speaking).
pnathan 9y ago
Thanks for chiming in. One of the joys of HN is seeing people Doing The Real Thing show up and be candid.
inputcoffee 9y ago
Thanks for commenting and responding. Can you say a little more about how you hope to ensure it becomes successful? I mean, what can Stripe do to help the site? You might spend some money on it, but that might have been done more cheaply without acquiring it. Do you plan to add some sort of features? advertise it broadly?
- pc 9y ago
  The main thing we can do is free up Courtland to spend more time on it rather than having him sell ads. We're also going to invest in it so that his brother, Channing, can join him. On top of that, we expect that there'll be some Stripe users who'd benefit from discovering it earlier in their lifecycle and getting advice and feedback from other community members. Most people building a business on Stripe are doing it for the first time. Longer term, there's a lot that we're interested in adding. (The site isn't even a year old yet -- check out https://indiehackers.com/timeline https://indiehackers.com/timeline. There was no forum or podcast in the beginning.) But we're flexible on the details there and we'll experiment and adapt based on what we learn along the way.
  - posguy 9y ago
    Quick question about Stripe, how do you plan to retain customers long term? I ask this as a person who has moved a couple businesses off Stripe, pricing & corner cases like easy debit support are the main two motivational factors. For example, Centurylink lets you pay online via debit card with just the card # alone. No CVV, address, expiration date, etc. For low fraud industries, this is a way to leverage very cheap debit card rates (eg $0.65 flat for small bank/credit union debit & 0.05% + $0.21 for large banks that are regulated debit), while making it simple to use debit cards compared to a credit card. If Stripe were to offer something like this, it would be a harder sale to make when I come in and review their phone/payment processing/ISP bills and pitch them $XXX savings. Another thing is on credit, not offering over interchange pricing essentially limits you to only working with very small businesses. A supermarket I work with (4 employees including the owner) does $100k volume a month average, and is paying only 0.83% to 0.85% ($830 to $850 a month in total fees on 100k volume) a month, how can Stripe get anywhere close to that? These types of issues could limit Stripe to a small & shrinking niche long term, especially with Mercury offering similar APIs with more features (though less accessible) at rock bottom pricing, and Heartland, Gravity and others piling on in a race to the bottom. IMO the reasonably easy to access & inexpensive API is the differentiator keeping Mercury viable.
joering2 9y ago
Hi Patrick - would you be able to acquire my website as well to "ensure that the site becomes as successful as possible" ? A serious question...
- corobo 9y ago
  You sorta have to have a useful website for that. Probably need to start with having some way to find your website to figure out whether it's useful!
kirillzubovsky 9y ago
You guys are my favorite startup and it's great to see that you're not just focused on the bottom line, but also doing good for the world. Very few do. Keep on rocking, pc!
- glenneroo 9y ago
  > ...doing good for the world. Too bad they are only US-based.
fictioncircle 9y ago
https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/stock-trading-bot https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/stock-trading-bot > I'm surprised this article is still up when it seems pretty clear it's a scam and all the comments on Hacker News agree. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13593599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13593599 Honestly, given IndieHackers promotes obvious bullshit that could make 4-5 figures of cash for a few minutes effort I have to seriously question the wisdom of associating it with Stripe.
- Cian911 9y ago
  You don't throw out the basket for one bad egg.
  - fictioncircle 9y ago
    The fact its still there implies its the basket that is bad.
TheAntiEgo 9y ago
Our peer education marketplace www.helpwith.co is powered by Stripe. Want to help us get a 50k investment from Stripe? It'll allow us to ad a lot of users to for you guys. Who could I talk to about this?

by pc 9y ago

brilliantcode 9y ago

What do see on your acquisition list in 2017/2018?

pc 9y ago
It's very hard to know upfront -- what made us interested in Indie Hackers wasn't just the idea per se (we'd thought about it before and looked at other sites in the past), but rather the fact that it was executed so well. There are tons of things that we'd in principle be open to acquiring if the right company existed. In general, we look for small, highly-effective technical teams with a very high bar for execution quality. (Indie Hackers, which was pretty much just Courtland operating solo, cleared this threshold by a significant margin: https://twitter.com/Shpigford/status/851851923502268416 https://twitter.com/Shpigford/status/851851923502268416) To the extent that the team really understands either developer tools or startups, that's a bonus.
- austenallred 9y ago
  > Indie Hackers is one of those things that came out of nowhere with super high quality everything. I love that notion. To come out of nowhere with super high quality everything.

nitam 9y ago

You can help us help you by a) becoming available in more countries b) Atlas LLC

camhart 9y ago
+1 for Atlas LLC
rhizome 9y ago
This was brought up in the Stripe thread the other day. I'm sure both are on their radar.
kcorbitt 9y ago
Agree about Atlas LLC: the best way to help "more companies get started and that they're more successful" is to help the companies at the margin -- the companies that won't actually get around to being formed if the prospective founder has to take 2 weeks out of his schedule just to figure out the legal and financial aspects of operating a side business. And for that type of company, an LLC is the no-brainer correct choice for the corporate structure. Source: a prospective customer. :)
will_brown 9y ago
There is a lot of echo for your sentiment, and no reason for Atlas to not create an LLC package for customers (at some point), but are You (and so many others) really putting off a. Starting a business, or b. Creation of a business entity (LLC) for an on going business until Stripe can form it for you as a service? If so, what is it they provide that isn't available - and cheaper - elsewhere?
justinclift 9y ago
With that LLC thought, does that still mean US based? Atlas sounded interesting to me (doing product dev atm), however it's based on incorporating in the US. The US seems like it's gone in a seriously bad direction for non-US citizens (I'm Australian, living in the UK), with no positive end to that in sight. So incorporation in the US isn't really a goer (personally speaking).

pnathan 9y ago

Thanks for chiming in. One of the joys of HN is seeing people Doing The Real Thing show up and be candid.

inputcoffee 9y ago

Thanks for commenting and responding. Can you say a little more about how you hope to ensure it becomes successful? I mean, what can Stripe do to help the site? You might spend some money on it, but that might have been done more cheaply without acquiring it. Do you plan to add some sort of features? advertise it broadly?

pc 9y ago
The main thing we can do is free up Courtland to spend more time on it rather than having him sell ads. We're also going to invest in it so that his brother, Channing, can join him. On top of that, we expect that there'll be some Stripe users who'd benefit from discovering it earlier in their lifecycle and getting advice and feedback from other community members. Most people building a business on Stripe are doing it for the first time. Longer term, there's a lot that we're interested in adding. (The site isn't even a year old yet -- check out https://indiehackers.com/timeline https://indiehackers.com/timeline. There was no forum or podcast in the beginning.) But we're flexible on the details there and we'll experiment and adapt based on what we learn along the way.
- posguy 9y ago
  Quick question about Stripe, how do you plan to retain customers long term? I ask this as a person who has moved a couple businesses off Stripe, pricing & corner cases like easy debit support are the main two motivational factors. For example, Centurylink lets you pay online via debit card with just the card # alone. No CVV, address, expiration date, etc. For low fraud industries, this is a way to leverage very cheap debit card rates (eg $0.65 flat for small bank/credit union debit & 0.05% + $0.21 for large banks that are regulated debit), while making it simple to use debit cards compared to a credit card. If Stripe were to offer something like this, it would be a harder sale to make when I come in and review their phone/payment processing/ISP bills and pitch them $XXX savings. Another thing is on credit, not offering over interchange pricing essentially limits you to only working with very small businesses. A supermarket I work with (4 employees including the owner) does $100k volume a month average, and is paying only 0.83% to 0.85% ($830 to $850 a month in total fees on 100k volume) a month, how can Stripe get anywhere close to that? These types of issues could limit Stripe to a small & shrinking niche long term, especially with Mercury offering similar APIs with more features (though less accessible) at rock bottom pricing, and Heartland, Gravity and others piling on in a race to the bottom. IMO the reasonably easy to access & inexpensive API is the differentiator keeping Mercury viable.

joering2 9y ago

Hi Patrick - would you be able to acquire my website as well to "ensure that the site becomes as successful as possible" ? A serious question...

corobo 9y ago
You sorta have to have a useful website for that. Probably need to start with having some way to find your website to figure out whether it's useful!

kirillzubovsky 9y ago

You guys are my favorite startup and it's great to see that you're not just focused on the bottom line, but also doing good for the world. Very few do. Keep on rocking, pc!

glenneroo 9y ago
> ...doing good for the world. Too bad they are only US-based.

fictioncircle 9y ago

https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/stock-trading-bot https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/stock-trading-bot > I'm surprised this article is still up when it seems pretty clear it's a scam and all the comments on Hacker News agree. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13593599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13593599 Honestly, given IndieHackers promotes obvious bullshit that could make 4-5 figures of cash for a few minutes effort I have to seriously question the wisdom of associating it with Stripe.

Cian911 9y ago
You don't throw out the basket for one bad egg.
- fictioncircle 9y ago
  The fact its still there implies its the basket that is bad.

TheAntiEgo 9y ago

Our peer education marketplace www.helpwith.co is powered by Stripe. Want to help us get a 50k investment from Stripe? It'll allow us to ad a lot of users to for you guys. Who could I talk to about this?