Venmo Five Years Ago

#1

Post by mnewberg » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 2:49 PM UTC

Re: Venmo Five Years Ago

#2

Post by josephpmay » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 5:03 PM UTC

For those who are older, Venmo is used today probably more than cash by college students (for things like paying a friend back, paying membership dues, paying to get into a party, etc.)

Re: Venmo Five Years Ago

#3

Post by paxtonab » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 5:13 PM UTC

I'm really surprised that Venmo started as an SMS service, not a mobile app. It blows me away that the product has been around for that long and evolved to the point that it's at now. Funnily enough this is also how Shazam started.

I think it really speaks to the execution aspect of a startup - be good at doing 1 thing, create a committed user base and then scale. According to the article Venmo's target audience was originally college kids who didn't have cash on hand to pay food trucks... Now they're doing $700mm in transactions.

Re: Venmo Five Years Ago

#4

Post by bigdubs » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 5:15 PM UTC

josephpmay wrote: post #2

For those who are older, Venmo is used today probably more than cash by college students (for things like paying a friend back, paying membership dues, paying to get into a party, etc.)

venmo is used more than cash by my late 20 and early 30 friends as well.

Re: Venmo Five Years Ago

#5

Post by RankingMember » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 5:19 PM UTC

josephpmay wrote: post #2

For those who are older, Venmo is used today probably more than cash by college students (for things like paying a friend back, paying membership dues, paying to get into a party, etc.)

I'm weird but I feel like cash is superior for those applications and doesn't require me to hand my credit card number out to yet another company.

Re: Venmo Five Years Ago

#6

Post by mlrtime » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 5:21 PM UTC

It is spreading like a virus (in a good way) in corporate as well. We use it to pay each other for lunch. I now use it to pay my cleaning lady.... I'm glad to support something that isn't paypal. Hopefully Venmo stays small and lean.

Re: Venmo Five Years Ago

#7

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 5:21 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Venmo Five Years Ago

#8

Post by dplgk » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 5:21 PM UTC

bigdubs wrote: post #4

josephpmay wrote: post #2

For those who are older, Venmo is used today probably more than cash by college students (for things like paying a friend back, paying membership dues, paying to get into a party, etc.)

venmo is used more than cash by my late 20 and early 30 friends as well.

What are the 30's people using it for?

Re: Venmo Five Years Ago

#9

Post by aaronmacy » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 5:24 PM UTC

mlrtime wrote: post #6

It is spreading like a virus (in a good way) in corporate as well. We use it to pay each other for lunch. I now use it to pay my cleaning lady.... I'm glad to support something that isn't paypal. Hopefully Venmo stays small and lean.

PayPal owns Venmo.

Re: Venmo Five Years Ago

#10

Post by pkamb » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 5:25 PM UTC

> It was riding the twitter wave in letting you interact with handles (usernames) over SMS.

I'm curious, were any of these SMS service comparies successful as interactive SMS services?

It seems like most of the services like Twitter, Venmo, etc. "started" as SMS services but quickly moved to apps once the iPhone appeared. And only then did they blow up. But maybe I'm wrong about that. What does Twitter/Venmo non-notification SMS usage look like today?

Are there any big/popular interactive services today that are mainly accessed by SMS?