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Stripe isn’t a platform, it’s a mouse

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Re: Stripe isn’t a platform, it’s a mouse

#41

Post by idlewords »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #19
dfabulich wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you're looking for beyond what PayPal offers. You say you "just want a payment system that works and does not take exorbitant fees" but you also say that PayPal "just works," which seems to satisfy your requirements. So, can you elaborate more on what you want? Do you feel that PayPal is taking exorbitant fees? What would make a "just works" system better than PayPal? Does Stripe "just work" for you…

PayPal's APIs, SDKs and documentation are leagues below Stripe's. It's simply much more of a pain to work with. And if you are using PayPal for a SaaS, it quickly becomes clear that it's not the intended use case (every payment has the option to "print a packing slip", for example).

I agree with all this, and would stress the particularly painful point with PayPal is testing.

Re: Stripe isn’t a platform, it’s a mouse

#43

Post by littleworld »

Stripe’s trajectory seems limitless - what can’t they do next? I love them as a company and their people are driven, smart, and kind.

However, the grip they have over the Internet keeps increasing. Whether they eat into your product or increase your fees it seems inevitable given a lack of competition. The PayPals / Braintrees, Adyens, etc are just not innovating at the same rate.

Even their largest customers likely feel "too integrated" and have minimal leverage as Stripe continues to dominate whatever it chooses. I hope before long there is a solid challenger to keep them in check, but I don't have my hopes up.

Re: Stripe isn’t a platform, it’s a mouse

#44

Post by nowherebeen »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #39
nowherebeen wrote: post #2

Yup. That’s why I feel a little bit uncomfortable being their customer. You can tell their end goal is to become the e-commerce platform for everyone. It might sound great for customers until they aren’t.

Businesses are there to make money for their shareholders. If the best way of doing that is to become a monopoly and squeeze customers, then that's what they'll do. I'm not sure what the author is complaining about. Why wouldn't Stripe expand into every available niche it can reach and "nibble" customers for every cent it can? What kind of board meeting would that be: "we've identified an opportunity here, but we've…

I don't agree he is complaining. He is simply pointing out something that others might have missed. He is merely making an observation.

Re: Stripe isn’t a platform, it’s a mouse

#45

Post by rabenbru »

the_gipsy wrote: post #37
edwinwee wrote: post #32

Edwin from Stripe here. At first, I think I agree with the title (the article itself, not so much). Stripe isn't really a platform. It's a platform of platforms. The three products linked to in the article, Invoicing, Payment Links, and Capital, were three of the most requested features from our users. So we built them. And platforms use all of them to provide these services to their users. Invoicing's smart dunning…

> Stripe isn't really a platform. It's a platform of platforms. See? It's not a pyramid. It's an inverted funnel!

hilarious. thank you

Re: Stripe isn’t a platform, it’s a mouse

#46

Post by askl56 »

the_gipsy wrote: post #37
edwinwee wrote: post #32

Edwin from Stripe here. At first, I think I agree with the title (the article itself, not so much). Stripe isn't really a platform. It's a platform of platforms. The three products linked to in the article, Invoicing, Payment Links, and Capital, were three of the most requested features from our users. So we built them. And platforms use all of them to provide these services to their users. Invoicing's smart dunning…

> Stripe isn't really a platform. It's a platform of platforms. See? It's not a pyramid. It's an inverted funnel!

It's a trapezoid!

Re: Stripe isn’t a platform, it’s a mouse

#47

Post by barrkel »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #29
jmull wrote: post #23

Uh... not sure I want to learn from the perspective of someone who thinks torture -- literal torture -- is the solution to a problem, even if it's a mouse.

Yeah, what the fuck? Their decision to let the cat play with the mouse over an entire day startled me when I first read it, and then bringing it up again later in the article as one of the only solutions for dealing with a mouse really threw me out of the article.

It's hard to tell ahead of time. When I was a kid, our cat would immediately chew the head off mice.

We lived in a cottage. During the winter, when there were mice in the house, you might hear one rustling around the grill (I think that's a broiler to Americans) of the electric cooker, eating crumbs and whatnot. The easiest way to catch these mice was to put the cat up on the counter then rattle the grill pan around until the mouse jumped out, whereupon the cat pounced.

My sympathy for the mice was limited. Finding mouse droppings in your breakfast cereal, your bread nibbled into, footprints across your butter, etc. gets old pretty quickly, and we were poor. The nearest shop was 2 miles away, and we couldn't afford a car. Mouse traps didn't catch all the mice.

Re: Stripe isn’t a platform, it’s a mouse

#48

Post by pavel_lishin »

barrkel wrote: post #47
pavel_lishin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, what the fuck? Their decision to let the cat play with the mouse over an entire day startled me when I first read it, and then bringing it up again later in the article as one of the only solutions for dealing with a mouse really threw me out of the article.

It's hard to tell ahead of time. When I was a kid, our cat would immediately chew the head off mice. We lived in a cottage. During the winter, when there were mice in the house, you might hear one rustling around the grill (I think that's a broiler to Americans) of the electric cooker, eating crumbs and whatnot. The easiest way to catch these mice was to put the cat up on the counter then rattle the grill pan around…

I'm perfectly fine with letting cats take care of mouse infestations, but it sounds like the humans caught the mouse, and then gave it to the cat to play with like a toy:

> Strategies were formed. Glue traps were laid. Bait was provisioned. And then, surely enough, the mouse was caught.

> Having caught the mouse, the question became what to do about it. Due to the host of frustrations and problems that the mouse had caused for the inhabitants of the house, everyone agreed on a solution: let the cat handle it. And so, for what seemed like an eternity, the cat went to work on the mouse, slowly torturing it limb-by-limb. This went on for at least a day, probably longer.

Re: Stripe isn’t a platform, it’s a mouse

#49

Post by rorykoehler »

harrisonjackson wrote: post #38

When I saw payment links had launched my first thought was, "Wow I bet there are a lot of little guys that have built or are building similar products on top of stripe" As far as "being a mouse" goes, I think payment links has to be the absolute lowest hanging fruit. It will be interesting to see how much Stripe backs into Shopify's offering - all their hosted checkout pages and customer portals start to overlap with…

I thought about building it as an indie hacker project.

Re: Stripe isn’t a platform, it’s a mouse

#50

Post by marcus_holmes »

nowherebeen wrote: post #44
marcus_holmes wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Businesses are there to make money for their shareholders. If the best way of doing that is to become a monopoly and squeeze customers, then that's what they'll do. I'm not sure what the author is complaining about. Why wouldn't Stripe expand into every available niche it can reach and "nibble" customers for every cent it can? What kind of board meeting would that be: "we've identified an opportunity here, but we've…

I don't agree he is complaining. He is simply pointing out something that others might have missed. He is merely making an observation.

True, I guess. Though he definitely doesn't think mice are good things to have around ;)
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