7 ms·

[Stripe cofounder] Thanks to everyone here who took a chance on us in the beginning and shared helpful feedback over the years! How to serve startups/developer

by pc 7y ago

[Stripe cofounder] Thanks to everyone here who took a chance on us in the beginning and shared helpful feedback over the years! How to serve startups/developers more effectively at scale is still the main thrust of our product focus. We've fixed and improved a lot of things since we launched here in 2011, but we also still have a lot of work to do. (Both "obvious things we want to fix" and "new functionality we want to build".) I always appreciate hearing from HN users (even if I don't always have time to respond): patrick@stripe.com. For anyone thinking about what they should work on: I started building developer tools when I was 15 and "tools for creation" is still, IMO, one of the most interesting areas to work in.

czbond 7y ago
What was your MVP that you were charging cards in a few weeks of start?
pitchups 7y ago
Kudos to Stripe on an amazing journey! Interesting to revisit the original HN submission of Stripe's launch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3053883 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3053883
- hiharryhere 7y ago
  Incredibly the API links from 2011 still work. Just followed one mentioned in that old discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3054726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3054726
  - speedplane 7y ago
    > Incredibly the API links from 2011 still work. Developers rightly praise Stripe's API documentation, but their approach to versioning and backwards compatibility is a gold standard that is not sung enough. What other fast-moving startup that constantly tweaks and changes their APIs also provide backwards compatibility with their earliest versions? Stripe understands that handling payments is critical, scary, and hard to get right. When a company builds a payment solution that works, there is strong resistance to mess with it. The fact that Stripe is so backwards compatible means that they do not have to.
josh33 7y ago
Just want to say your Connect product is INCREDIBLE. Our company couldn't function (at least not well and at scale) without it!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
markh 7y ago
Patrick, the way Stripe continues to engage with Hacker News and remains true to its roots is an inspiration. Congratulations!
hbbio 7y ago
Thanks @pc for the last words! I built opalang.org many years ago - introducing a mix of functional programming, strong static typing for the web, fixing the independence mismatch between client/server/db etc. in 2009, and although we were not able to make it a big success, I'm still spending all my time in this area and am convinced that there is a lot to fix.
hartator 7y ago
Congrats on Stripe. Producing and marketing for developers first is indeed a passionating topic.
dmarlow 7y ago
Thanks for all that you, John and Stripe have done for startups. Question for you, how will you continue to remain focused on helping startups if/when you go public and have shareholders to appease?
rglover 7y ago
Well deserved. Stripe is and has been best in class and best in industry for years.
andygcook 7y ago
Wanted to hop in and say thank you for starting Stripe. At my first startup, we had to integrate with an old merchant processor for payments and it was a nightmare. With my current startup, we were able to setup Stripe in the first week of operations and take payments seamlessly without too much hassle. Freeing us up from thinking about how to take payments allows us to focus on our product and building out our company. I'd imagine this is a similar story for thousands of other startups too. Hats off to you, your brother, and all the Stripes.
- mehhh 7y ago
  Stripe has a slick API, but their banned merchant categories (anything telecom or networking related) have caused trouble for many potential clients, esp. as Ubiquiti integrated them as their first payment processor. The distinction between high risk consumer sales & B2B low risk sales is not drawn by Stripe.
  - edwinwee 7y ago
    Most of those categories are from financial institutions or card networks. Stripe has been working with them so we can support more businesses, and I know of quite a few networking equipment businesses that run on Stripe today. If you're still seeing any trouble, we'd love to take another look—our support team's at support@stripe.com (and my email's edwin@stripe.com).
    - mehhh 7y ago
      Support told me that our business could not continue to use Stripe 2 years ago, we've been with Payment.ninja since (and pay a little under half what we used to pay Stripe). I took what Stripe Support told us very literally, and we ceased using DigitalOcean and one other service since their only recurring billing options were Stripe. We don't want to break Stripes ToS or do wrong by our clients, hence our contract-less, B2B only, monthly prepaid business model. Apparently this is too high risk for your company?
      - deleted 7y ago
zelly 7y ago
one of the few that actually deserves it. thank you.
ravenstine 7y ago
Besides your product, I thank you all at Stripe for setting an example of what real API/SDK documentation is.
- taurath 7y ago
  Its the basis upon which I form my opinion as to what "good docs" look like. It makes you incredibly spoiled when trying to use some of Stripe's competitors.
  - stickfigure 7y ago
    I've integrated 8+ payments APIs over my career. IMO, Stripe's "secret sauce" is the quality of the API and the documentation. It's so compelling that I repeatedly choose Stripe over other payments systems that offer network effects like PayPal and Amazon. I sometimes get asked by customers if we take PayPal. I tell them truthfully "no, it's just too much trouble". It doesn't seem like "better developer experience" is much of a moat, but based on how bad the competition is - year after year - it sure seems to be. I wonder what other services could be "disrupted" the same way.
    - rhaksw 7y ago
      I had the same experience my first go at integrating Stripe. I was able to accept donations in all the ways I wanted: - using Netlify (free hosting, includes lambda) - custom amounts - one-time payment or recurring - form on my own site code is here: https://github.com/revddit/revddit/blob/master/lambda-src/donate.js https://github.com/revddit/revddit/blob/master/lambda-src/do... https://github.com/revddit/revddit/blob/master/src/pages/common/donate/index.js https://github.com/revddit/revddit/blob/master/src/pages/com...
    - speedplane 7y ago
      > I repeatedly choose Stripe over other payments systems that offer network effects like PayPal and Amazon. For one of the first SaSS products I ever worked on, I (naively) chose Amazon payments. Within six months, Amazon introduced backwards incompatible changes. Six months later, they did it again. For another project I started 5 years ago, I used Stripe. We're still using the same 5 year old API and it works perfectly, even though Stripe has added new features and bells and whistles in their newer versions. Their commitment to backwards compatibility is probably the best I've seen of any fast moving API.
mattmar96 7y ago
Just listened to the How I Built This with you and your brother. Thanks for sharing your story there. Big fan of Stripe!
colemorrison 7y ago
Congratulations! Stripe has consistently made my life as a developer and entrepreneur significantly easier. I still remember that feeling of relief some 5-6 years ago thinking, "Yes! I don't have to use PayPal's API!"
- gingerlime 7y ago
  Customers still want PayPal though :( Can't wait for Stripe to integrate PayPal as one of the options. Seems unlikely to happen, but I keep my fingers crossed.
  - pteraspidomorph 7y ago
    I use paypal because their arbitration (buyer protection) has worked very well for me as a buyer when a vendor tries to screw me over (which does happen from time to time). I do otherwise prefer stripe. I've always hyped it to my friends as a well made and reliable service.
    - swish_bob 7y ago
      The vendor experience with PayPal is appalling though. They'll randomly take money back off you when a customer hasn't even complained, frequently they'll just freeze you out of your account for months at a time. Better not rely on that seasonal income, half the time it'll be delayed by three months ...
- huhtenberg 7y ago
  Their API is actually not bad. The problem is with their libraries, sandbox and testing tools. Also, their support is a complete and utter clusterfuck. But the API is OK.
rblion 7y ago
I respect the scale of your ambition and the suite of services/products you guys offer to realize it. I love the copy on Stripe's website. Who wrote it? Godspeed.
- mandeepj 7y ago
  > I love the copy on Stripe's website. Who wrote it? It's not available at Stripe's home page. Would you mind sharing it? Thx
  - mkl 7y ago
    "Copy" in this context is the text: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_(written) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_(written) So yes, it is available on the home page - it's the most important thing there!
alanmeaney 7y ago
Patrick, how do you approach reconciliation at Stripe?
antihero 7y ago
Please can you make your update PIN flow a bit different to your view PIN flow ta? If you are developing an app it's nice to be able to confirm that someone has got their OTC correct before they move to setting their PIN - so perhaps give us an ephemeral key for updating PIN we can use to do this as opposed to it being a one step process
WDimi 7y ago
Never had the chance to use Stripe, however back in the day I played stripe ctf. Best and most fulfilling 8 hours without a single break. Thank you for the t-shirt and the most enjoyable ctf I had a chance to play!
EpicEng 7y ago
I've always heard Stripe is a great place to work as well. Have been considering applying for one of your remote positions. Congrats and keep it up!
nailer 7y ago
Hi Pat. Do you have archives of the original /dev/payments around anywhere? The internet doesn't seem to have any and it would be great to see what Stripe version 0 looked like.
samstave 7y ago
I’m going to ask a favor on behalf of a multi billion dollar industry: please figure out how to service cannabis companies. I build cannabis tech. Its reall stressful when doing over $1 million in sales in a month and it’s literally all freaking cash and we have to spend hours even with a counting machine counting $20 bills. Please tell me what your plan is to support legal cannabis. Thanks
- dannyw 7y ago
  Federal legislation is required.
  - samstave 7y ago
    Not true. Take for example all thecredit unions in OR, CO, CA Like north bay credit union in santa rosa.... their requirwments list for opening an account is RIDICULOUS!! Other companies want either 3% of your deposits or $3,000 a month for a checking account whichever is higher. Other banks AND companies will cancel your account if you even have the word “canna” in your name. Ive literally sat there looking at $160,000 in cash with bills needed to be paid and no way to pay the bills... You know how fun it is to go to seven different post offices with four employees in tow to buy as many money orders as you can so you can pay bills, such as a $25,000 software bill?
nickpp 7y ago
I think the international expansion is still your weakest point. We've been waiting for Stripe in Romania for years now, and it's an EU country...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
speedplane 7y ago
> Thanks to everyone here who took a chance on us in the beginning ... Stripe is one of the few successful silicon valley companies that provided a service of real value, with enormous efficiency gains, upfront pricing, and don't screw over people as part of their business model. They may have "disrupted" the online payments market in SV parlance, but they didn't actually disrupt anything, they found a nascent but fast-growing market (online payments), and built a product targeted just for it. Mastercard and Visa are each worth 10X as much as Stripe. Stripe is one of the few unicorn companies that's probably under-hyped.

by pc 7y ago

czbond 7y ago

What was your MVP that you were charging cards in a few weeks of start?

pitchups 7y ago

Kudos to Stripe on an amazing journey! Interesting to revisit the original HN submission of Stripe's launch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3053883 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3053883

hiharryhere 7y ago
Incredibly the API links from 2011 still work. Just followed one mentioned in that old discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3054726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3054726
- speedplane 7y ago
  > Incredibly the API links from 2011 still work. Developers rightly praise Stripe's API documentation, but their approach to versioning and backwards compatibility is a gold standard that is not sung enough. What other fast-moving startup that constantly tweaks and changes their APIs also provide backwards compatibility with their earliest versions? Stripe understands that handling payments is critical, scary, and hard to get right. When a company builds a payment solution that works, there is strong resistance to mess with it. The fact that Stripe is so backwards compatible means that they do not have to.

josh33 7y ago

Just want to say your Connect product is INCREDIBLE. Our company couldn't function (at least not well and at scale) without it!

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

markh 7y ago

Patrick, the way Stripe continues to engage with Hacker News and remains true to its roots is an inspiration. Congratulations!

hbbio 7y ago

Thanks @pc for the last words! I built opalang.org many years ago - introducing a mix of functional programming, strong static typing for the web, fixing the independence mismatch between client/server/db etc. in 2009, and although we were not able to make it a big success, I'm still spending all my time in this area and am convinced that there is a lot to fix.

hartator 7y ago

Congrats on Stripe. Producing and marketing for developers first is indeed a passionating topic.

dmarlow 7y ago

Thanks for all that you, John and Stripe have done for startups. Question for you, how will you continue to remain focused on helping startups if/when you go public and have shareholders to appease?

rglover 7y ago

Well deserved. Stripe is and has been best in class and best in industry for years.

andygcook 7y ago

Wanted to hop in and say thank you for starting Stripe. At my first startup, we had to integrate with an old merchant processor for payments and it was a nightmare. With my current startup, we were able to setup Stripe in the first week of operations and take payments seamlessly without too much hassle. Freeing us up from thinking about how to take payments allows us to focus on our product and building out our company. I'd imagine this is a similar story for thousands of other startups too. Hats off to you, your brother, and all the Stripes.

mehhh 7y ago
Stripe has a slick API, but their banned merchant categories (anything telecom or networking related) have caused trouble for many potential clients, esp. as Ubiquiti integrated them as their first payment processor. The distinction between high risk consumer sales & B2B low risk sales is not drawn by Stripe.
- edwinwee 7y ago
  Most of those categories are from financial institutions or card networks. Stripe has been working with them so we can support more businesses, and I know of quite a few networking equipment businesses that run on Stripe today. If you're still seeing any trouble, we'd love to take another look—our support team's at support@stripe.com (and my email's edwin@stripe.com).
  - mehhh 7y ago
    Support told me that our business could not continue to use Stripe 2 years ago, we've been with Payment.ninja since (and pay a little under half what we used to pay Stripe). I took what Stripe Support told us very literally, and we ceased using DigitalOcean and one other service since their only recurring billing options were Stripe. We don't want to break Stripes ToS or do wrong by our clients, hence our contract-less, B2B only, monthly prepaid business model. Apparently this is too high risk for your company?
    - deleted 7y ago

zelly 7y ago

one of the few that actually deserves it. thank you.

ravenstine 7y ago

Besides your product, I thank you all at Stripe for setting an example of what real API/SDK documentation is.

taurath 7y ago
Its the basis upon which I form my opinion as to what "good docs" look like. It makes you incredibly spoiled when trying to use some of Stripe's competitors.
- stickfigure 7y ago
  I've integrated 8+ payments APIs over my career. IMO, Stripe's "secret sauce" is the quality of the API and the documentation. It's so compelling that I repeatedly choose Stripe over other payments systems that offer network effects like PayPal and Amazon. I sometimes get asked by customers if we take PayPal. I tell them truthfully "no, it's just too much trouble". It doesn't seem like "better developer experience" is much of a moat, but based on how bad the competition is - year after year - it sure seems to be. I wonder what other services could be "disrupted" the same way.
  - rhaksw 7y ago
    I had the same experience my first go at integrating Stripe. I was able to accept donations in all the ways I wanted: - using Netlify (free hosting, includes lambda) - custom amounts - one-time payment or recurring - form on my own site code is here: https://github.com/revddit/revddit/blob/master/lambda-src/donate.js https://github.com/revddit/revddit/blob/master/lambda-src/do... https://github.com/revddit/revddit/blob/master/src/pages/common/donate/index.js https://github.com/revddit/revddit/blob/master/src/pages/com...
  - speedplane 7y ago
    > I repeatedly choose Stripe over other payments systems that offer network effects like PayPal and Amazon. For one of the first SaSS products I ever worked on, I (naively) chose Amazon payments. Within six months, Amazon introduced backwards incompatible changes. Six months later, they did it again. For another project I started 5 years ago, I used Stripe. We're still using the same 5 year old API and it works perfectly, even though Stripe has added new features and bells and whistles in their newer versions. Their commitment to backwards compatibility is probably the best I've seen of any fast moving API.

mattmar96 7y ago

Just listened to the How I Built This with you and your brother. Thanks for sharing your story there. Big fan of Stripe!

colemorrison 7y ago

Congratulations! Stripe has consistently made my life as a developer and entrepreneur significantly easier. I still remember that feeling of relief some 5-6 years ago thinking, "Yes! I don't have to use PayPal's API!"

gingerlime 7y ago
Customers still want PayPal though :( Can't wait for Stripe to integrate PayPal as one of the options. Seems unlikely to happen, but I keep my fingers crossed.
- pteraspidomorph 7y ago
  I use paypal because their arbitration (buyer protection) has worked very well for me as a buyer when a vendor tries to screw me over (which does happen from time to time). I do otherwise prefer stripe. I've always hyped it to my friends as a well made and reliable service.
  - swish_bob 7y ago
    The vendor experience with PayPal is appalling though. They'll randomly take money back off you when a customer hasn't even complained, frequently they'll just freeze you out of your account for months at a time. Better not rely on that seasonal income, half the time it'll be delayed by three months ...
huhtenberg 7y ago
Their API is actually not bad. The problem is with their libraries, sandbox and testing tools. Also, their support is a complete and utter clusterfuck. But the API is OK.

rblion 7y ago

I respect the scale of your ambition and the suite of services/products you guys offer to realize it. I love the copy on Stripe's website. Who wrote it? Godspeed.

mandeepj 7y ago
> I love the copy on Stripe's website. Who wrote it? It's not available at Stripe's home page. Would you mind sharing it? Thx
- mkl 7y ago
  "Copy" in this context is the text: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_(written) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_(written) So yes, it is available on the home page - it's the most important thing there!

alanmeaney 7y ago

Patrick, how do you approach reconciliation at Stripe?

antihero 7y ago

Please can you make your update PIN flow a bit different to your view PIN flow ta? If you are developing an app it's nice to be able to confirm that someone has got their OTC correct before they move to setting their PIN - so perhaps give us an ephemeral key for updating PIN we can use to do this as opposed to it being a one step process

WDimi 7y ago

Never had the chance to use Stripe, however back in the day I played stripe ctf. Best and most fulfilling 8 hours without a single break. Thank you for the t-shirt and the most enjoyable ctf I had a chance to play!

EpicEng 7y ago

I've always heard Stripe is a great place to work as well. Have been considering applying for one of your remote positions. Congrats and keep it up!

nailer 7y ago

Hi Pat. Do you have archives of the original /dev/payments around anywhere? The internet doesn't seem to have any and it would be great to see what Stripe version 0 looked like.

samstave 7y ago

I’m going to ask a favor on behalf of a multi billion dollar industry: please figure out how to service cannabis companies. I build cannabis tech. Its reall stressful when doing over $1 million in sales in a month and it’s literally all freaking cash and we have to spend hours even with a counting machine counting $20 bills. Please tell me what your plan is to support legal cannabis. Thanks

dannyw 7y ago
Federal legislation is required.
- samstave 7y ago
  Not true. Take for example all thecredit unions in OR, CO, CA Like north bay credit union in santa rosa.... their requirwments list for opening an account is RIDICULOUS!! Other companies want either 3% of your deposits or $3,000 a month for a checking account whichever is higher. Other banks AND companies will cancel your account if you even have the word “canna” in your name. Ive literally sat there looking at $160,000 in cash with bills needed to be paid and no way to pay the bills... You know how fun it is to go to seven different post offices with four employees in tow to buy as many money orders as you can so you can pay bills, such as a $25,000 software bill?

nickpp 7y ago

I think the international expansion is still your weakest point. We've been waiting for Stripe in Romania for years now, and it's an EU country...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

speedplane 7y ago

> Thanks to everyone here who took a chance on us in the beginning ... Stripe is one of the few successful silicon valley companies that provided a service of real value, with enormous efficiency gains, upfront pricing, and don't screw over people as part of their business model. They may have "disrupted" the online payments market in SV parlance, but they didn't actually disrupt anything, they found a nascent but fast-growing market (online payments), and built a product targeted just for it. Mastercard and Visa are each worth 10X as much as Stripe. Stripe is one of the few unicorn companies that's probably under-hyped.