Please fix headline to:
"Braintree Waives All Fees On First $50k in Transactions For Next 1,000 US-Based Startups"
Might be a good idea to do this always, just a little thing to acknowledge the other 95% of the world..
The Next 1,000 Start-Ups
31–40 of 84 posts
Re: The Next 1,000 Start-Ups
#32This is classic competition at work. Along comes Stripe that forces companies that are not asleep, like Braintree, to compete on price or innovation or some other axes.
When I was doing research on this for my startup a few months ago, we found that Braintree easily beat Stripe on price. This is just icing on the cake. Braintree's not as glamorous (I think), but if you're doing a large number of transactions, Stripe's 2.9% + 30¢/transaction is quite high.
Don't the rates match for Braintree & Stripe now?
Re: The Next 1,000 Start-Ups
#33This is classic competition at work. Along comes Stripe that forces companies that are not asleep, like Braintree, to compete on price or innovation or some other axes.
When I was doing research on this for my startup a few months ago, we found that Braintree easily beat Stripe on price. This is just icing on the cake. Braintree's not as glamorous (I think), but if you're doing a large number of transactions, Stripe's 2.9% + 30¢/transaction is quite high.
Don't the rates match for Braintree & Stripe now?
Re: The Next 1,000 Start-Ups
#34A cute marketing trick. No you're not doing this just because you want to "help new startups". That's a nice way of rationalizing it, but really 1) Braintree is suffering from the competition, especially on HN, Stripe is loved like no other 2) They're not giving away 2 million dollars. With so many startups failing to ever generate significant revenue, I wouldn't be suprised if less than 10% of companies that are the…
I think you are getting downvoted because your comment embodies the easy snark that is REALLY hurting this community. IMHO, seeing that your comment is currently at the top tells me we still have room for improvement.
I don't think anyone is deluded into thinking this is a charitable gesture, certainly not on hackernews, so I am confused why you spent so much time to (in an agitated way) make it seem like Braintree is pulling one over us.
Re: The Next 1,000 Start-Ups
#35A cute marketing trick. No you're not doing this just because you want to "help new startups". That's a nice way of rationalizing it, but really 1) Braintree is suffering from the competition, especially on HN, Stripe is loved like no other 2) They're not giving away 2 million dollars. With so many startups failing to ever generate significant revenue, I wouldn't be suprised if less than 10% of companies that are the…
Also, vendor lock-in with a payment processor is pretty strong. Kudos to Braintree for supporting portability, but you're still locked to an API unless you want to re-code everything.
In other words, the first $50k is free, and then you're tied intimately to BT's API. The path of least resistance is to just keep going with them. You're making money. They're making money. Everybody wins. I don't think this is a bad thing, it's just not all charity.
All that being said, if they announced this 4 months ago when I was migrating my payment system over to Stripe, I'd have been all over it. BT seems awesome and this is a great deal. Stripe won based on price[1], but $50k free really tips the scales on that.
1. http://agileleague.com/2012/08/migrating-away-from-authorize...
Re: The Next 1,000 Start-Ups
#36Please fix headline to: "Braintree Waives All Fees On First $50k in Transactions For Next 1,000 US-Based Startups" Might be a good idea to do this always, just a little thing to acknowledge the other 95% of the world..
Agree. It should be at the top not at the bottom of the post. Cruel tease to many who'll see this.
Re: The Next 1,000 Start-Ups
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is this getting downvoted? It's cynical, but definitely a legit and structured response.
Out of the 19 comments in this thread, 3 were by 3 distinct Braintree employees. In all of my time reading HN, I don't think I've ever seen so many employees of a company post in a single thread. I'm not really surprised there's a few initial downvotes for negative responses. I initially wanted to ask the downvoter to explain their reasoning, but decided not to as it would probably just read "people reading this resp…
I downvoted you because I dislike that attitude that is prevalent here... "You're not our preferred vendor so this is a cheap attempt at getting our business!".
If you think this is spam, flag it as so, but it's annoying to me that the crowd has favorites, and when those favorites have promotions people glow about how great they are, but if the competition does something similar it's an evil attempt to gain market share. We know this is marketing, no one is being duped. (Disclaimer, I'm a Stripe user!)
Re: The Next 1,000 Start-Ups
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey, it's Caitlin from Braintree. Yes, this is literally the next 1,000 merchants who signup through this page: https://www.braintreepayments.com/next_thousand_startups
The "instant signup" page says I have to wait one day for underwriters to assess the app, is that normal?
Most applicants will be approved instantly. There are some circumstances, such as the specifics of your business model, that may require a brief manual review. At most this will take 1 business day, but many reviews will be much quicker.
The good thing about doing this upfront is that you don't have to worry about running into any issues (like unexpected shutdowns) as your processing ramps up.
Re: The Next 1,000 Start-Ups
#39A cute marketing trick. No you're not doing this just because you want to "help new startups". That's a nice way of rationalizing it, but really 1) Braintree is suffering from the competition, especially on HN, Stripe is loved like no other 2) They're not giving away 2 million dollars. With so many startups failing to ever generate significant revenue, I wouldn't be suprised if less than 10% of companies that are the…
I think you are getting downvoted because your comment embodies the easy snark that is REALLY hurting this community. IMHO, seeing that your comment is currently at the top tells me we still have room for improvement. I don't think anyone is deluded into thinking this is a charitable gesture, certainly not on hackernews, so I am confused why you spent so much time to (in an agitated way) make it seem like Braintree i…
I tried to clearly differentiate on what I think about the offering (beneficial to the community) and how they worded their announcement (misleading).
Yes, I realize the majority of my message was spent in negativity. That is something, I, myself am working on.
>I am confused why you spent so much time
I enjoy the discourse on HN. It's good practice on how to express oneself (especially seeing as how English isn't my native tongue) and I enjoy the upvotes from people who I consider peers in the tech community (who there's very little of where I currently live)
Re: The Next 1,000 Start-Ups
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of the 19 comments in this thread, 3 were by 3 distinct Braintree employees. In all of my time reading HN, I don't think I've ever seen so many employees of a company post in a single thread. I'm not really surprised there's a few initial downvotes for negative responses. I initially wanted to ask the downvoter to explain their reasoning, but decided not to as it would probably just read "people reading this resp…
I downvoted you because I dislike that attitude that is prevalent here... "You're not our preferred vendor so this is a cheap attempt at getting our business!". If you think this is spam, flag it as so, but it's annoying to me that the crowd has favorites, and when those favorites have promotions people glow about how great they are, but if the competition does something similar it's an evil attempt to gain market sh…
I think my initial post is being misunderstood. That's probably my own fault. I like what Braintree is doing here. I don't like how they've worded it. It's as if they think their customers are dupes, stupid enough not to see that they're not actually spending millions of dollars on the startup community.
Would you ever see such marketing BS come from Stripe? Not in a million years. And that's why I originally wrote the reply.