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IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

indiehackers.com

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Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#171

Post by sanswork »

throwaway88744 wrote: post #135
sanswork wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it sound like he's murdering people to get ahead not that he is targeting a social network with content that is generally relevant and popular. The anything in this case is focused promotion.

> You make it sound like he's murdering people You are putting words into my mouth. He clearly wrote: > I've made a ton of submissions in the past 8 months and experimented with various combinations of stories/titles that the HN audience might like, without always being successful. (Probably one out of every 4-5 submissions turned into an angry mob haha) 20%-25% of his submissions made readers angry. Nevertheless he…

Given the number of posts on HN these days that seem to spur a mob of angry people I'm not even sure 20-25% is a bad figure.

You said he's willing to do anything when what you meant was he is willing to work on optimising his work to better appeal to a specific target community. How does that negatively impact there community exactly?

My sense of ethics precludes me from creating a temp account to mask my own identity while attacking someone else online so I guess you're right that our ethics differ.

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#172

Post by eon1 »

daveheq wrote: post #159

Hacker: "a person who uses computers to gain unauthorized access to data." This word is not a good connotation, and a company that's an online/mobile payment gateway buying a company with "hacker" in its name that doesn't seem to understand the definition of the word "hacker" doesn't look good. It wouldn't matter to me what IndieHackers did, I would have passed them up just because they use a nefarious word in their…

Technically such a person should be called a cracker, no? A hacker is just someone who hacks on things. Where is this pop definition from?

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#173

Post by mezod »

chatmasta wrote: post #84
georgiecasey wrote: post #3

didn't see this one coming! major congrats to Courtland. just a thought on the power of Hacker News to get noticed by 'players'. surely Patrick Collison heard of Courtland/Indiehackers and Patrick McKenzie through browsing Hacker News? so it's not all procrastination posting here

It's definitely not procrastination posting. I've formed valuable relationships from people who have reached out after a comment I wrote. Aside from that, commenting on HN is a great way to practice my writing skills, which I rarely get to use since my day-to-day work consists largely of programming. The community here is invaluable in that it provides an audience for your writing, so long as you are willing to fit y…

i just wanted to say that this was so well written it hurts

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#174

Post by edem »

daveheq wrote: post #159

Hacker: "a person who uses computers to gain unauthorized access to data." This word is not a good connotation, and a company that's an online/mobile payment gateway buying a company with "hacker" in its name that doesn't seem to understand the definition of the word "hacker" doesn't look good. It wouldn't matter to me what IndieHackers did, I would have passed them up just because they use a nefarious word in their…

I don't know where did you get that quote from but it describes "crackers". This is what hackers are all about: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#175

Post by hsod »

I've been reading HN for 5 or 6 years and this feels very strange to me. From the comments in here by the principles it kind of seems like Stripe is doing IH a favor. A few things that stick in my craw:

1. This seems like it would be damaging to IH's brand image (since it will now be perceived as a PR arm of Stripe, and it's all about independence)

2. Stripe's stated goal here is simply to ensure the success of IH in order to drive more people to start companies. That's not exactly compelling on it's own, and with (1), even less so.

3. IH was apparently very big on financial transparency, yet the principles are being decidedly opaque about financials in this thread.

Are these types of deals common? Does Stripe own any other media companies?

[note: these are just my thoughts. i don't think i'm entitled to any further explanation nor do i think anything nefarious is going on.]

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#176

Post by mezod »

fpgaminer wrote: post #55

Congrats to csallen. This makes me ... feel weird. Not sure what it is exactly. Let me explain. I'm an aspiring indie hacker. Currently soaking in the relaxation of a much needed sabbatical following my previous 8 year long employment (what a ride that was). When I'm ready, I'm going switch gears and devote myself to starting a bunch of small "indie hacker" type projects. I've been on HN for quite awhile now and I al…

the word is "betrayed". And you are not alone in feeling in such way. IH outright lost its essence and what gave sense to it.

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#177

Post by toomuchtodo »

fictioncircle wrote: post #167
toomuchtodo wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stripe markets to tech companies. Tech companies typically have very strong margins, and are therefore less price sensitive. Ergo, Stripe survives on businesses that print money. Not everyone can afford an iPhone, but Apple still is filthy rich from the people who can.

Once you hit $20 million in sales ($300-400k), the difference gets very noticeable vs. paying one internal IT and a couple security consultants to audit the work.

I don't disagree; its no different than AWS: once you get big enough, its time to roll your own or bring it in house. Until then, lots of money to be made selling shovels.

No one looks at their SMB customers and says "To hell with that market, they'll just leave once they're big enough!" The market for people building from scratch is enormous.

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#178

Post by robryan »

posguy wrote: post #145
pc wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main thing we can do is free up Courtland to spend more time on it rather than having him sell ads. We're also going to invest in it so that his brother, Channing, can join him. On top of that, we expect that there'll be some Stripe users who'd benefit from discovering it earlier in their lifecycle and getting advice and feedback from other community members. Most people building a business on Stripe are doing it…

Quick question about Stripe, how do you plan to retain customers long term? I ask this as a person who has moved a couple businesses off Stripe, pricing & corner cases like easy debit support are the main two motivational factors. For example, Centurylink lets you pay online via debit card with just the card # alone. No CVV, address, expiration date, etc. For low fraud industries, this is a way to leverage very cheap…

I think Stripe would be offering much better deals for high volume. With Stripe you are also paying for what they have built on top of just accepting the payment. If you are high volume and willing to use a no frills provider it doesn't surprise me that you would get a better deal.

We use PIN, a Stripe clone, for some currencies where they could offer us a better rate/ settlement. For our primary AUD transactions we are just using a bank on a much better rate.

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#180

Post by fratlas »

hsod wrote: post #175

I've been reading HN for 5 or 6 years and this feels very strange to me. From the comments in here by the principles it kind of seems like Stripe is doing IH a favor. A few things that stick in my craw: 1. This seems like it would be damaging to IH's brand image (since it will now be perceived as a PR arm of Stripe, and it's all about independence) 2. Stripe's stated goal here is simply to ensure the success of IH in…

Re: point 2; I can see why Stripe would believe this. I personally have read/been inspired by IndieHackers, and I'm looking at starting a SaaS and Stripe is definitely my billing software of choice.
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