41–50 of 172 posts
He's getting 80% of the gross = 48,000/month. That's impressive income, half a million a year for what amounts to a good idea implemented at the right time. I love reading stories like this, and it demonstrates that there are still many opportunities out there. I don't understand some of these comments which seem to resent his success or belittle his company as "not a unicorn". That's good money, he works for himself…
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How can such an app compete against Stripe’s very own Terminal? Don’t this guy’s customers know that an official option exists? https://stripe.com/terminal
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Stripe is kind of analogous to a utility company here. They're an upstream provider. They don't care about what "infrastructure and resources" you've built. If you break the terms of service, they will cut you off, just like if you don't pay for your gas/electric you will quickly find yourself with a non-functional home, regardless of how fancy it is.
Yeah I mean to build out whatever necessary to move away from Stripe and process payments internally.
Not to say this app isn’t valuable, because it is, but that you don’t just build your own payment processor.
It's interesting how a common tenet of startups is "build products, not features" -- and yet here's a very clear example of a "feature" that can be very successful.
Well, isn't that advice also mostly given to founders aiming to create a potential ≈unicorn and not a lifestyle business like this? Don't get me wrong, what this guy has done is impressive. Growing a company while staying profitable all the way, and being able to support himself is great. I would switch places with him (ex post facto) in a heart beat. But still, this company will probably never be bought by anyone (b…
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>but with cheaper processing fees What? The product's page says it charges 1% + whatever Stripe charges ("generally" 2.9% + $0.3). A quick search says that Square charges 2.6% + $0.10 per in-person transaction. Seems like that this product is more expensive than Square.
Ah, good find! The article claims > The app collects a 1% service fee on every single charge. Per your comment, this is indeed a more expensive Square. Square already does Card Not Present transactions. The question then is why do people choose to use this?
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Yeah I mean to build out whatever necessary to move away from Stripe and process payments internally.
That requires orders of magnitude more capital/work than what got the app to where it is. At that scale whatever this app already has built is irrelevant. Not to say this app isn’t valuable, because it is, but that you don’t just build your own payment processor.
It's interesting how a common tenet of startups is "build products, not features" -- and yet here's a very clear example of a "feature" that can be very successful.
Well, isn't that advice also mostly given to founders aiming to create a potential ≈unicorn and not a lifestyle business like this? Don't get me wrong, what this guy has done is impressive. Growing a company while staying profitable all the way, and being able to support himself is great. I would switch places with him (ex post facto) in a heart beat. But still, this company will probably never be bought by anyone (b…
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At first glance, Terminal looks like it still needs some level of integration and development work. It's not a ready-to-go, install-the-app-and-process-payments solution.
Terminal is really for people like this guy. For folks who want to sell/distribute integrated POS systems e.g. Shopify.
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Ah, good find! The article claims > The app collects a 1% service fee on every single charge. Per your comment, this is indeed a more expensive Square. Square already does Card Not Present transactions. The question then is why do people choose to use this?
Sounds like his app is for people who already are using stripe (existing online store, etc) and want to start using Stripe for in-person too.
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Good for him for getting paid now. But that margin is too fat to go unchallenged. Market forced and competition will grind that 1% down quickly.
The margin might be ample, but the fact that it adds up to only $60K per month might not attract much competition. This is no unicorn, it pays the bills for a couple of families.