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I love the quote from John Collison: "This is digital migration in a very compressed period of time, for both businesses and customers," Collison adds. "My mom

I love the quote from John Collison: "This is digital migration in a very compressed period of time, for both businesses and customers," Collison adds. "My mom recently asked me if I'd heard of 'this Instacart thing.' Yeah mom, I have."

mc32 6y ago
So the question is, will the adoption of these services stick after things return to a more normal state? Certainly there will be some stickiness, but how much and for whom? To state the obvious, some adoption will be permanent but others not much. Where that will happen and by how much is a diff question. Example, will people go back to Starbucks or will they keep on making more coffee at home, maybe get an entry espresso machine?
- chishaku 6y ago
  When will things return to a more normal state?
  - mc32 6y ago
    I don’t know. People are creatures of habit though. People will return to old routines to different degrees. Even Mao with his Hong weibings wasn’t able to stamp out the parts of Chinese culture he wanted to stamp out forever.
- gk1 6y ago
  The biggest barrier to late adopters is the learning curve and confidence: They worry that new tech will take too long to learn, and they're not confident it will work right. Right now a lot of people have no choice but to learn how to meet with Zoom, how to order with Instacart, how to communicate through Slack, ... And as they do, hopefully things are working out OK and they're building confidence in those technologies. When the pandemic subsides, I don't see much reason for people to revert en masse.
  - colinmhayes 6y ago
    The biggest barrier to instacart is that the experience is awful. 80% of the time the deliverer calls to say they can't find half the items and half the time don't do what you tell them. Then it costs $10-20 extra, nah.
    - twitchard 6y ago
      Still competitive with "sending husband out to get groceries"
- saluki 6y ago
  We had been talking about trying out instacart in December. I was just spending lots of time running to pick things up at the store. We used to grocery shop small orders every 2 days or so. Sometimes daily. Now we are trying to minimize going out at all. So we've been using instacart and shipt for over a month and it's a big time saver. So I expect we will continue to use them once we are in a more normal state. So I expect lots of people will keep using them just because it saves time. I think normal is going to be way out like 18 months at least and probably longer. Even at that point we're probably going to be minimizing crowds and shopping in stores. And we're definitely going to be shopping less frequently and larger grocery orders. This event will change how a large % of us lives and shops for a long time.
pc 6y ago
:-). True.
- hckr_news 6y ago
  How does stripe plan to navigate through the current economic climate and recession?
  - pc 6y ago
    We're focused on a few things -- - Staying secure, reliable, and available for our existing customers. Some businesses in Stripe are seeing huge surges in demand and others are seeing major shortfalls. In either case, we want to make sure we can that we can be relied on to provide flawless service. - Keeping up with the surge of new customers. A lot of businesses are migrating online and many of the platforms we serve are also seeing significant spikes in signups. So, we're investing a lot of effort in making sure that we can scale effectively there and remove all unnecessary friction. (There's a very active project working on cleaning up our docs and improving the integration experience, for example.) - Adding support for business models that were previously limited because of bank/card network restrictions. We just launched support for telemedicine last week. - Figuring out ways to help businesses by enabling access to government programs (e.g. the PPP program in the US). These programs usually haven't thought much about the somewhat unique characteristics of online businesses. We're trying to help government officials understand what internet businesses need. (And, per the comment elsewhere in this thread, we're rolling out our first PPP loans this week.)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- sjunlee 6y ago
  Is Stripe still hiring during COVID-19?
  - pc 6y ago
    Yes!
tlrobinson 6y ago
Sadly, it’s also likely one of the largest and fastest transfers of wealth from small businesses to large corporations. As Amazon hires 100,000+ workers how many small businesses are shuttering for good? Stripe is one of the “good” tech companies in this respect by helping to level the playing field for smaller businesses, but it’s not going to be enough.
- pc 6y ago
  The impact of Covid-19 on many businesses around the world is very sad. That said, it's less clear to me that the medium-term impact will be pro-incumbent or pro-large company. Big incumbents tend to be less adaptable and to benefit from large fixed cost barriers to entry (e.g. real estate). We're seeing a lot of nimble small businesses migrate to online business models far faster than the behemoths they used to struggle to compete against.
  - hooande 6y ago
    This is true, but the big incumbents will benefit from being able to buy up swaths of local business at a discount. Their advantages of scale will only increase
  - bagacrap 6y ago
    I think he's thinking about local specialty retailers, which pretty much by definition cannot pivot into some online model. If you aren't deemed essential, you're likely going out of business as your market is eaten up by Amazon and Target/Walmart (which get to keep selling various non essentials since they're allowed to remain open, so they can sell groceries and drugs). Small local businesses will fail or take out crushing loans from the govt, and your mom+pop kitchen store is not more able to cope than Target with its well staffed IT dept, unbroken revenue stream, and deep pockets.
- malandrew 6y ago
  I don't understand this idolization of small over large (or vice versa for others). The thing that matters most is that businesses best satisfy their customers, whether they are small or large. There's no benefit to having a small business that provides inferior products or inferior service relative to a large company. I buy from small companies all the time and many of those that I do will likely survive because they provide better goods and services than any large company.

mc32 6y ago

So the question is, will the adoption of these services stick after things return to a more normal state? Certainly there will be some stickiness, but how much and for whom? To state the obvious, some adoption will be permanent but others not much. Where that will happen and by how much is a diff question. Example, will people go back to Starbucks or will they keep on making more coffee at home, maybe get an entry espresso machine?

chishaku 6y ago
When will things return to a more normal state?
- mc32 6y ago
  I don’t know. People are creatures of habit though. People will return to old routines to different degrees. Even Mao with his Hong weibings wasn’t able to stamp out the parts of Chinese culture he wanted to stamp out forever.
gk1 6y ago
The biggest barrier to late adopters is the learning curve and confidence: They worry that new tech will take too long to learn, and they're not confident it will work right. Right now a lot of people have no choice but to learn how to meet with Zoom, how to order with Instacart, how to communicate through Slack, ... And as they do, hopefully things are working out OK and they're building confidence in those technologies. When the pandemic subsides, I don't see much reason for people to revert en masse.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  The biggest barrier to instacart is that the experience is awful. 80% of the time the deliverer calls to say they can't find half the items and half the time don't do what you tell them. Then it costs $10-20 extra, nah.
  - twitchard 6y ago
    Still competitive with "sending husband out to get groceries"
saluki 6y ago
We had been talking about trying out instacart in December. I was just spending lots of time running to pick things up at the store. We used to grocery shop small orders every 2 days or so. Sometimes daily. Now we are trying to minimize going out at all. So we've been using instacart and shipt for over a month and it's a big time saver. So I expect we will continue to use them once we are in a more normal state. So I expect lots of people will keep using them just because it saves time. I think normal is going to be way out like 18 months at least and probably longer. Even at that point we're probably going to be minimizing crowds and shopping in stores. And we're definitely going to be shopping less frequently and larger grocery orders. This event will change how a large % of us lives and shops for a long time.

pc 6y ago

:-). True.

hckr_news 6y ago
How does stripe plan to navigate through the current economic climate and recession?
- pc 6y ago
  We're focused on a few things -- - Staying secure, reliable, and available for our existing customers. Some businesses in Stripe are seeing huge surges in demand and others are seeing major shortfalls. In either case, we want to make sure we can that we can be relied on to provide flawless service. - Keeping up with the surge of new customers. A lot of businesses are migrating online and many of the platforms we serve are also seeing significant spikes in signups. So, we're investing a lot of effort in making sure that we can scale effectively there and remove all unnecessary friction. (There's a very active project working on cleaning up our docs and improving the integration experience, for example.) - Adding support for business models that were previously limited because of bank/card network restrictions. We just launched support for telemedicine last week. - Figuring out ways to help businesses by enabling access to government programs (e.g. the PPP program in the US). These programs usually haven't thought much about the somewhat unique characteristics of online businesses. We're trying to help government officials understand what internet businesses need. (And, per the comment elsewhere in this thread, we're rolling out our first PPP loans this week.)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
sjunlee 6y ago
Is Stripe still hiring during COVID-19?
- pc 6y ago
  Yes!

tlrobinson 6y ago

Sadly, it’s also likely one of the largest and fastest transfers of wealth from small businesses to large corporations. As Amazon hires 100,000+ workers how many small businesses are shuttering for good? Stripe is one of the “good” tech companies in this respect by helping to level the playing field for smaller businesses, but it’s not going to be enough.

pc 6y ago
The impact of Covid-19 on many businesses around the world is very sad. That said, it's less clear to me that the medium-term impact will be pro-incumbent or pro-large company. Big incumbents tend to be less adaptable and to benefit from large fixed cost barriers to entry (e.g. real estate). We're seeing a lot of nimble small businesses migrate to online business models far faster than the behemoths they used to struggle to compete against.
- hooande 6y ago
  This is true, but the big incumbents will benefit from being able to buy up swaths of local business at a discount. Their advantages of scale will only increase
- bagacrap 6y ago
  I think he's thinking about local specialty retailers, which pretty much by definition cannot pivot into some online model. If you aren't deemed essential, you're likely going out of business as your market is eaten up by Amazon and Target/Walmart (which get to keep selling various non essentials since they're allowed to remain open, so they can sell groceries and drugs). Small local businesses will fail or take out crushing loans from the govt, and your mom+pop kitchen store is not more able to cope than Target with its well staffed IT dept, unbroken revenue stream, and deep pockets.
malandrew 6y ago
I don't understand this idolization of small over large (or vice versa for others). The thing that matters most is that businesses best satisfy their customers, whether they are small or large. There's no benefit to having a small business that provides inferior products or inferior service relative to a large company. I buy from small companies all the time and many of those that I do will likely survive because they provide better goods and services than any large company.