4 ms·

Its nice to see that Stripe wishes competitors well when all Balanced tried to do was promote their brand.

shaathman 13y ago
This statement fully captures the stark difference between Stripe and Balanced. Stripe is led by engineers who want to improve the payments infrastructure. Balanced is led by businesspeople who want to hit it big. Stripe just so happens to be a business as well. Nothing wrong with either, but that should point you toward which company has the developer's true interests at heart :) Hint: It's Stripe.
- steveklabnik 13y ago
  Bias alert: I have a Stripe account, but not a Balanced account. I think it's disingenuous to not suggest that Balanced doesn't 'have the developer's true interests at heart.' They've been really pushing the hypermedia API stuff, which is technologically exciting, as well as doing the whole 'open company' thing, which is taking the concept open source to interesting places.
- corin_ 13y ago
  I don't know anyone who works at either company so maybe one of them is full of nasty people who hate their customers and one is full of lovely people who don't care about making profit - but that's very unlikely. Much more likely is that they both want to maximise their profits, they both understand that offering a good service to their customers is the way to do this, and both approach this in different ways. And frankly the fact that a Stripe employee said a nice thing about them as opposed to "fuck them use Stripe" doesn't give any clue on the subject, it just says this person is a.) polite and b.) not an idiot.
- sjtgraham 13y ago
  Why do you have such a simplistic binary view of the world (hint: the world isn't like that), and why the sock puppet account? (hint: you're a shill)
  - pc 13y ago
    Agreed; this direction is unseemly. Let's just focus on the products.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
zende 13y ago
I'm sorry if we gave you that impression. All three founders have engineering degrees. I built the original version of the product, was the second engineer at Milo.com, and wrote DDoS prevention software in college. Mahmoud built high-frequency trading systems for Wachovia Securities and built Milo.com's matching and categorization system. Jareau studied Electrical Engineering at U Penn, built GPS enabled devices in college, and wrote Milo.com's original systems to interact pull in data from retailers. Even our General Counsel codes. He studied Symbolic Systems and wrote some of our internal reporting systems in Python.
- johncoogan 13y ago
  I fail to see how this addresses the idea that Balanced was "promoting their brand." Was anyone questioning the engineering talent at either company? Stripe wrote this blog post to promote their brand, Balanced let potential customers know that they have similar functionality. Both companies, in my opinion, offer extremely high-quality services (I have used both in production) and have great engineering talent. I do not think we should knock either company for "promoting their brand", it's important that potential customers (read: HN users) are able to make informed decisions. I think zende, pc, and the original blog post all do a good job of articulating the features available through their respective APIs.
  - nayefc 13y ago
    I agree. I'm starting to look at Balanced differently now.
    - jacobolus 13y ago
      He clearly intended to answer this guy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5827717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5827717
- tnorthcutt 13y ago
  You just did it again! spoiledtechie opinted out that a Stripe employee wished you well, while you only promoted your own brand, and your response was to prattle on about how qualified the founders are and basically list your resumes. Oh, and your lawyer codes too! What fun!

This statement fully captures the stark difference between Stripe and Balanced. Stripe is led by engineers who want to improve the payments infrastructure. Balanced is led by businesspeople who want to hit it big. Stripe just so happens to be a business as well. Nothing wrong with either, but that should point you toward which company has the developer's true interests at heart :) Hint: It's Stripe.

steveklabnik 13y ago
Bias alert: I have a Stripe account, but not a Balanced account. I think it's disingenuous to not suggest that Balanced doesn't 'have the developer's true interests at heart.' They've been really pushing the hypermedia API stuff, which is technologically exciting, as well as doing the whole 'open company' thing, which is taking the concept open source to interesting places.
corin_ 13y ago
I don't know anyone who works at either company so maybe one of them is full of nasty people who hate their customers and one is full of lovely people who don't care about making profit - but that's very unlikely. Much more likely is that they both want to maximise their profits, they both understand that offering a good service to their customers is the way to do this, and both approach this in different ways. And frankly the fact that a Stripe employee said a nice thing about them as opposed to "fuck them use Stripe" doesn't give any clue on the subject, it just says this person is a.) polite and b.) not an idiot.
sjtgraham 13y ago
Why do you have such a simplistic binary view of the world (hint: the world isn't like that), and why the sock puppet account? (hint: you're a shill)
- pc 13y ago
  Agreed; this direction is unseemly. Let's just focus on the products.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]

zende 13y ago

I'm sorry if we gave you that impression. All three founders have engineering degrees. I built the original version of the product, was the second engineer at Milo.com, and wrote DDoS prevention software in college. Mahmoud built high-frequency trading systems for Wachovia Securities and built Milo.com's matching and categorization system. Jareau studied Electrical Engineering at U Penn, built GPS enabled devices in college, and wrote Milo.com's original systems to interact pull in data from retailers. Even our General Counsel codes. He studied Symbolic Systems and wrote some of our internal reporting systems in Python.

johncoogan 13y ago
I fail to see how this addresses the idea that Balanced was "promoting their brand." Was anyone questioning the engineering talent at either company? Stripe wrote this blog post to promote their brand, Balanced let potential customers know that they have similar functionality. Both companies, in my opinion, offer extremely high-quality services (I have used both in production) and have great engineering talent. I do not think we should knock either company for "promoting their brand", it's important that potential customers (read: HN users) are able to make informed decisions. I think zende, pc, and the original blog post all do a good job of articulating the features available through their respective APIs.
- nayefc 13y ago
  I agree. I'm starting to look at Balanced differently now.
  - jacobolus 13y ago
    He clearly intended to answer this guy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5827717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5827717
tnorthcutt 13y ago
You just did it again! spoiledtechie opinted out that a Stripe employee wished you well, while you only promoted your own brand, and your response was to prattle on about how qualified the founders are and basically list your resumes. Oh, and your lawyer codes too! What fun!