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Lago, Open-Source Stripe Alternative, banks $22M in funding
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- w-ll 2y agowhats the motive?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- joe_guy 2y agoThis article reads like an ad.
- squigglydonut 2y agoMy thoughts as well. My first thoughts was "wow I guess anyone can just bribe techcrunch writers these days
- gnrlst 2y agomy company regularly pays for techcrunch, so yes
- AnhTho_FR 2y agoLago founder here, I can testify we have never bribed a journalist. I had a call with Ingrid from TechCrunch on Zoom, it was my first time (and unique time so far) meeting her, so I did not even got to buy her coffee.
- squigglydonut 2y agoHey. Their article read like this to me. I am not saying you did anything. Maybe it is just the way they are writing their articles these days.
- jpcapdevila 2y agoFrom the readme this may be interesting: Event-based: if you can track it, you can charge for it; I see this being useful for usage based pricing.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mvkel 2y agoIf I still have to pay the processing fees, what's the advantage here? Having to maintain my own payments stack (and PCI compliance) sounds like a massive distraction.
- btown 2y agoThis is an alternative to Stripe Billing, not the core Stripe payment rails themselves. In fact, one would use Stripe or similar with Lago: https://docs.getlago.com/guide/payments/overview https://docs.getlago.com/guide/payments/overview . Tracking the edge cases around recurring payments, invoicing, pro-rated tier changes, and metered billing is hard! And Stripe Billing APIs aren’t the most fluent for many cases. It’s good to see new layers in the space.
- squigglydonut 2y agoWhat are you talking about Stripe is great and really well made. I just built on it and was able to do whatever I wanted. Lago looks like just one more platform I'd have to keep track of for no reason.
- TheCapeGreek 2y agoThen it's evidently not for you, if the use case benefit isn't apparent? Same reason you personally wouldn't use Chargebee but others might.
- squigglydonut 2y agoWhat's your point?
- TheCapeGreek 2y agoThat when you say "Lago looks like just one more platform I'd have to keep track of for no reason", it clearly means it's not for you, but there might be other users who get benefit from it. Surely that's obvious?
- abledon 2y agoTheir github README uses a Drake meme lol https://github.com/getlago/lago https://github.com/getlago/lago https://imgur.com/a/gsrhUXm https://imgur.com/a/gsrhUXm I'd never thought I'd see Meme-ification of technical docs.... oh god
- grzeshru 2y agoMemes existed in technical docs for as long as technical people and docs existed.
- dotancohen 2y agoHave you not looked up recursion in K&R? I believe even Google was in on the joke once.
- leosanchez 2y ago> I believe even Google was in on the joke once If you search for recursion. Google asks did you mean recursion.
- vram22 2y agoYup. https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2013/12/google-gets-recursion.html?m=1 https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2013/12/google-gets-recursion.ht...
- tamimio 2y ago> I'd never thought I'd see Meme-ification of technical docs They always been, in different forms. I am glad to see them too, harmless and signal IQ/EQ, taking anything too seriously is not a good thing.
- leononame 2y agoI also like seeing them. I know there are a lot of people who hate that, similar to cutesy error messages on web pages which I also happen to like. But in no way does this signal IQ/EQ. It's just a personal preference
- mooreds 2y agoRaised series A of 15M on a valuation (rumored, not announced) of 100M. 7M was seed, raised in 2023 according to crunch base. Sounds like they aren't trying to be an entire stripe replacement (from the last paragraph of the linked article). Anyway an interesting story of a successful startup pivot starring a passionate HN post.
- Rafsark 2y agoWe're diving first into creating an alternative to one of Stripe's key services which is billing. We especially building billing on areas where Stripe struggles, like mixed or usage-based billing models.
- darylteo 2y agoSelling to developers is where i know it will struggle... Developers are cheap ass and would rather build it themselves at 10x the opportunity cost. And the moment it attempts to monetise itself in some form, there'll be a massive "betrayal" exodus a la Redis. I know, cuz I am one.
- baxtr 2y agoThey probably didn’t get the level of funding if they haven’t already solved this.
- IshKebab 2y agoNah there are tons of startups with funding and only vague plans for actually making money.
- pooper 2y agoI don't know anything about funding but most of the funding came in the before times, when we had a zero interest rate policy, right? In post zirp, would even Y Combinator darling Dropbox or Airbnb be able to secure funding (without a solid plan)?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- AnhTho_FR 2y agoWe raised the biggest chunk of the money in 2023, which was far from being « zero interest rate », and « founder friendly », or even « fintech friendly ». What is true is we raised the initial $3M in 2021, out of YC, on the back of our initial product that was not open source.
- that_guy_iain 2y agoDevelopers aren’t that cheap. Plus they’re not the decision makers.
- baxtr 2y agoThis is the HN post (mentioned in the article) that resulted in their pivot from marketing into billing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31424450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31424450
- plantain 2y agoI tried to use it for a new SaaS product - but their plans start at 3000$/mo. It seems like they have things backwards. The small fry like me don't want to self-host, we want a managed solution. The big fishes have enough scale to self-host.
- quartesixte 2y agoMedium Trout may be the intended market?
- boudin 2y agoThey have things backwards only if their strategy is to focus on the low end of the market. It doesn't seem to be the case here.
- plantain 2y agoThe big end of the market starts at the small end with a few large VC-funded exceptions...
- pc86 2y agoThis may be true in the most technical sense but it's a pointless observation. There are of course plenty of big businesses now so it's a perfectly rational business decision to target those big ones first. Because they were small 5, 10, 50 years ago is completely irrelevant.
- redslazer 2y agoGot trapped by the same thing. Usage based billing is a huge pain point for us we were really excited by lago but dont want to self host infra if we can outsource it. We ended up talking to about 5 different usage based billing API providers and basically no one is interested in servicing the sub $1000 per month market which is where we will realistically be for the next year as we grow. Additionally lago and other providers advertise "no revenue cut" and then always quote pricing as a percentage of revenue (which is technical not a revenue cut except your fee scales pretty linarly with revenue).
- globalise83 2y agoParis seems to be absolutely on fire when it comes to producing new fintech startups.
- wslh 2y agoCompletely agree, bad track record and/or explained by help from the EU. Not saying that EU promotions are bad but that there are not enough hungry entrepreneurs in Europe which is easy to explain by the great life standard there. This is the paradox. On the other hand there are counterexamples about great intentions coming up from France. For example, Semmle [1] which was acquired by GitHub for performing static analysis over the repository. Inria [2] is great but the problem is not research but how to compete at the business level with American-like companies. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmle [2] https://www.inria.fr/en https://www.inria.fr/en
- dewey 2y agoI think you misunderstood the parent comment, unless they used "on fire" in a negative way.
- azophy_2 2y agohave anyone using this encounter any legal issues, as this project use AGPL?
- AnhTho_FR 2y agoWhy would there be legal issues? Any example in mind?
- giorgioz 2y agoSimilarly there is https://hyperswitch.io https://hyperswitch.io open source written in Rust. Lago is written in Ruby. I found few other open source billing systems written in Java. Anyone knows anything written in nodeJS?
- Alifatisk 2y agoWhy does the language the service is built upon matter? I won’t directly interact with Stripe or Lagons codebase.
- fragmede 2y agoNo, but an API is a leaky abstraction. you'll notice slowness, you'll encounter bugs, you'll see shortcomings in the data model used. All of those flow from the choice of language used on the backend. I'm not claiming that any one language is better than another, just that the leaky abstraction means the choice of language will have user-facing consequences.
- Alifatisk 2y agoOhhh okey
- rrr_oh_man 2y ago> you'll see shortcomings in the data model used Betting you a case of beer I can write a horrible data model in any language
- fragmede 2y agoand I say you win that bet. but that horribleness will be influenced by the underlying language is my point
- giorgioz 2y agoI'm a fullstack JavaScript developer. I'm not too fluent in Rust and Ruby. I would be more efficient poking and hacking a nodeJS codebase. If I treat the whole codebase as a black box there is no advantage for me in using an open source project.
- ku1ik 2y agoMaybe I’m old and my feeling for what open-source means haven’t adapted to the changing reality, but whenever I see “open-source” and “$22 in funding” in one sentence I immediately think “open-source my ass”.
- TheCapeGreek 2y agoI agree with you, but at the same time what's the alternative? Build it anyway on free time, beg for scraps in donations, and have $corporate sell it as a service while giving nothing back? I don't understand the benefit of OSS in Lago's context other than PR/developer goodwill. It's a catch-22 when building in open source nowadays, so if this is the future of it with the benefit of things having better longevity and support, so be it.
- gigatree 2y agoIs there a guide somewhere about how someone’s supposed to create open source software without monetizing it? Or is it just the VC money that makes it not real open source? I’ve seen this sentiment a lot, especially from OSS veterans like rich harris (who ironically now gets his paycheck from VC money). On one hand I want to complain about it too and say that people should only build open software for the love of building and sharing, but on the other hand it costs a lot of money to exist in meat space and it seems counterproductive and unfair to expect people to build software I find useful (and most likely even profit off of myself) on nights and weekends and get paid in GitHub stars.
- twelvechairs 2y agoWhile there's lots of different models of open source, what I've seen most often is people setting it up first then selling themselves as gurus and support for major users with money. Often they live low overhead lives - not competitive with SF salaries or startup world. VC money doesn't generally fit this model. While I'm sure there's some, the vast majority of open-source software relied on to run most of the modern world is not VC funded.
- AnhTho_FR 2y ago(Lago co-founder here) We shared a few thoughts about « why oss does not win by being cheaper », we are trying o find the balance between oss, quality, sustainability, indeed. https://github.com/getlago/lago/wiki/Open-Source-does-not-win-by-being-cheaper https://github.com/getlago/lago/wiki/Open-Source-does-not-wi... It got a fair share of comments on HN as well https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37682684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37682684
- wslh 2y agoELI5: what is the value proposition for Lago? That is open-source? I am not a Stripe customer but I interacted with it as a normal user (e.g. KYC) and was impressed by their UX/UI, an area where open source projects doesn't excel at all. UX/UI is really hard to grasp. Stripe customers look for a strong finance platform, they don't care if it's open source or not. Also, from the business perspective you need to have a hard drive to manage a company like this.
- Rafsark 2y agoWe're diving into creating an alternative to one of Stripe's key services which is billing. Especially focusing on areas where Stripe struggles, like mixed or usage-based billing models. We do offer a great UI/UX ;)
- AnhTho_FR 2y agoThe value prop is composability, extensibility, building trust, and no lock in into Stripe’s ecosystem More details here: https://www.getlago.com/resources/compare/lago-vs-stripe https://www.getlago.com/resources/compare/lago-vs-stripe Yes we’d love feedback on our UX/UI as well!
- super256 2y agoDid you guys implement versioning and grandfathering yet? Iterating on pricing and packaging without overwriting the whole config and f-ing up existing subscriptions is important. I remember when I last time looked into lago, there was no versioning and the json configs were unintuitive and difficult to use. (I think it was also impossible to create a metered usage with a fixed one time fee$
- jbverschoor 2y agoIt’s not a stripe alternative. Billing, invoicing, payments, entitlements, subscriptions. All different things.
- AnhTho_FR 2y agoWe are starting with billing indeed, with a long term vision of becoming the « open revenue hub » (laid out the high level steps here: https://www.getlago.com/blog/lago-raises-22-millions https://www.getlago.com/blog/lago-raises-22-millions), meaning we want to offer an open alternative to everything RevOps. Instead of choosing to be in a closed source ecosystem like Stripe’s (they have 21 products and most founders don’t realise they are using 3-6 of them, not only « Stripe payments », each of them usually taking a cut on revenue), you could build a customised stack, in a « best of breed » approach, and add the long tail of tools/use cases/home-grown system if you’d like.
- mib32 2y agoCan you please explain, why the ruby engineer vacancy is remote only within certain countries - FR, PT, GB, NL, ET, and IT? Why if I live in Latvia or Poland, or Sweden, I can't work with you? I don't want to call you out, but it's just interesting to understand why it's like that and specifically, why we can't try to make the geography more diverse, at least within EU? https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/lago/jobs/RvvzKuM-sr-back-end-ruby-engineer https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/lago/jobs/RvvzKuM-sr-b...
- paxys 2y agoBecause it isn't worth it for a company to set up a new registered entity, find a payroll processor and deal with a whole set of federal/state/local employment laws and tax laws just for a single employee.
- gpjt 2y agoNot from Lago, but from my own experience I'd guess it's due to the requirements to set up payroll in different countries. If you hire someone, even as a remote worker, in a particular country, you need a payroll processor to make sure the employee is paid with the correct tax deductions, pay those taxes to the local government, and so on. You also need to make sure that you comply with local labour laws. Doing all of that is far from trivial, so there's a high cost to taking on your first employee in any given country. Intuitively you might think that the EU, with all of the freedom of movement laws, might make this unnecessary, but it doesn't. At least as far as I know, it's no easier for (say) a German company to hire someone in Italy that is is for them to hire someone in Japan.
- gpjt 2y agoAlso worth noting that while there are "Employer of Record" and "Professional Employer Organisation" businesses who essentially have branches with payroll etc all set up in a bunch of countries, and can hire people there and act as the nominal employer while the employee actually works for another company, but at least the last time I looked they were very expensive -- at around thousands of $/€/£ per employee per month.
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- djbusby 2y agoAnyone have an actual Stripe Payments alternative? I'm stuck on PayPal since Stripe doesn't want to work with us, only with our closed source competition.
- angulardragon03 2y agoYou could try https://mollie.com https://mollie.com (Disclaimer - I work there)
- kennydude 2y agoLoads exist in the marketplace just each with pros/cons and a likely harder to work with API
- cheema33 2y agoLooks very interesting. We are small shop and self-hosting is not an issue. This neatly fits a requirement we've had for quite some time.
- szundi 2y agoAaaaand it’s gone.