> PayPal started by paying people to sign up. Their viral growth came from essentially bribing users with $10 to join and $10 for each referral. That’s not inno

> PayPal started by paying people to sign up. Their viral growth came from essentially bribing users with $10 to join and $10 for each referral. That’s not innovation — it’s buying market share with venture capital. Traditional banks used to give out toasters. My credit union gave my kid a piggy bank and regularly offers referral bonuses. Paying people to sign up is an advertising expense. Having a useful product is what keeps people around. Spending the advertising budget to get users before the product is ready to keep users and provide a return is a pretty easy mistake for lots of products. If this was the biggest dirt they decided to write about, I don't think they dug very far. I think PayPal avoided getting banking or money transmitting license for quite some time, which would be more in line with the title of the article. There's lots of reports of at least untransparent, if not unfair account closures and it's credibly claimed that PayPal does not return account balances in a timely fashion in these cases either. Similar with the amazon complaint. There's got to be something better to complain about that they invested investor money in building a business that needed continual invesment until they found their niche.