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Gumroad raises $7 million from KPCB

venturebeat.com

11–20 of 67 posts

Re: Gumroad raises $7 million from KPCB

#11
post #5

What is Gumroad's competitive advantage? It doesn't look like it's its technology but its brand.

Gumroad's advantage is the obnoxious ease of use compared to similar players in the space. For anyone currently using Paypal, Amazon or Google's comparable services, Gumroad's simplicity makes it a no-brainer.

Re: Gumroad raises $7 million from KPCB

#16
post #2

For anyone that doesn't recall, this was how Gumroad started: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2406614

Just love the way he said how he got early access to Stripe: "I'm friends with one of the founders + I asked repeatedly." :)

Most importantly he has used access to a key service early and executed it all very well. Congratulations & all the very best Sahil!

Re: Gumroad raises $7 million from KPCB

#17
Question to Sahil or anyone with more context. Where is success coming from? I'd love to learn.

What we see here is a beautifully executed very clever idea - which we all (as hackers we are) project into "this should be succesful" and then we see KPCB throwing $7M at it - so it all makes sense and we are happy as hackerdom is victorious.

However, what I'd really like to learn is where success if coming from in this case. ie., who is using this today? Who specifically this is being helpful to?

Is it TONS of small transactions, or have you found a high-priced vertical willing to pay your 30% cut?

I mean, how is growth looking like today? $7M is a lot of money!

Just asking because I am really interested in the details - since we all know that a "great idea" is not enough - there must have been a lot of dirty and beautiful tricks to get traction - and that's the part that is interesting!!

Re: Gumroad raises $7 million from KPCB

#18
post #8
post #5

What is Gumroad's competitive advantage? It doesn't look like it's its technology but its brand.

Brand and product simplicity, elegance of implementation. What is Dropbox's competitive advantage, or Instagram's?

Dropbox and Instagram both have much stronger network effects.

Re: Gumroad raises $7 million from KPCB

#19

Very cool. Hopefully, they'll be more successful than Flattr.

Totally different model, as a side note Flattr (died/failed/didn't succeed) due to absolutely terrible product marketing and doing ludicrous things like an invite-only beta. They had a huge chance and screwed it up, from what Sahil has done so far I don't think he'll make the same mistakes, he doesn't seem so short sighted.

Re: Gumroad raises $7 million from KPCB

#20

Why would they need money for growth? They use Stripe and host on the cloud. If they aren't profitable now why would they be at 10x the size?

The difference between small business and a startup is that small businesses scale linearly while startups scale exponentially. And organic growth is usually more linear-ish. The investment makes in exponential.
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