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Stripe’s new funding round values company at $35B

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Re: Stripe’s new funding round values company at $35B

#131

Post by adventured »

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #100

Before stripe, I used paypal and it was sooo painful! There are so many terrible APIs out there that waste so much time needlessly. Then I found stripe. What a treat. Everything was documented and the documentation itself was both readable and didn't go in endless circles like the paypal ones. The error messages were helpful. And every api endpoint had an example, which is hugely helpful: HUGELY! All the other API de…

> Before stripe, I used paypal and it was sooo painful!

Almost no matter what Stripe does from here, that they disrupted the PayPal monster (and the rest), will always reserve them a place in my developer heart. It really was an atrocious experience; there's pre-Stripe and post-Stripe.

Re: Stripe’s new funding round values company at $35B

#132

Post by GordonS »

nickjj wrote: post #66
scrollaway wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP but I've used the Stripe API extensively (I know it nearly end to end due to implementing one of the framework client libraries) and to me the parts that come to mind if I think "bloat"/"unintuitive" are SKUs, Coupons, and most likely what GP is talking about the new payment intent APIs, even though I don't think there's a real way you could implement them any better given the PSD2 requirements. By far Stripe…

> ... most likely what GP is talking about the new payment intent APIs, even though I don't think there's a real way you could implement them any better given the PSD2 requirements. Yes, definitely this. Payment intents is so much more complicated and convoluted than the previous "Charges" API. Stripe went from one of the easiest bits of my app to develop to one of the most difficult, to the point where I'll admit it…

Yep, I came across the Payment Intents stuff - holy crap, it's complicated, and the documentation actually isn't great - it's good for details of API calls and such, but not for explaining what the hell you actually need to do, and why.

I also upgraded our Stripe API version recently, as a result of the new SCA regs - the whole experience was really frustrating! It felt like it should have taken me 4 hours max (test time inclusive), but it ended up taking me 5 days - the docs were just... not good.

This all seems very un-Stripe like, and TBH has me a little worried.

Re: Stripe’s new funding round values company at $35B

#134

Post by taurath »

ravenstine wrote: post #82
pc wrote: post #54

[Stripe cofounder] Thanks to everyone here who took a chance on us in the beginning and shared helpful feedback over the years! How to serve startups/developers more effectively at scale is still the main thrust of our product focus. We've fixed and improved a lot of things since we launched here in 2011, but we also still have a lot of work to do. (Both "obvious things we want to fix" and "new functionality we want…

Besides your product, I thank you all at Stripe for setting an example of what real API/SDK documentation is.

Its the basis upon which I form my opinion as to what "good docs" look like. It makes you incredibly spoiled when trying to use some of Stripe's competitors.

Re: Stripe’s new funding round values company at $35B

#135

Post by sureshv »

acchow wrote: post #87
seansmccullough wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally consensus is a recession is going to happen in the next year or two, and the next good time to IPO won’t be for several years after it that.

Visa IPO’d during the Great Recession in 2008.

Visa's underlying fundamentals didn't change due to a recession.

Re: Stripe’s new funding round values company at $35B

#136

Post by hkarthik »

spencerwgreene wrote: post #38

> Founded in 2010, Stripe is middle-aged by Silicon Valley standards, but Mr. Gaybrick and Stripe president John Collison said it had no plans to go public. Why doesn't Stripe want to become a public company?

Stripe is trying to capitalize for a capital intensive endeavor: Stripe Capital.

An IPO would have been one way to fund it, but likely would have involved a lot of financial scrutiny along the way, which would probably distract them from the main point of raising the funds.

A bold move which will hopefully work out for them and not overvalue the company before they attempt to go public later on.

Re: Stripe’s new funding round values company at $35B

#138

Post by hbbio »

pc wrote: post #54

[Stripe cofounder] Thanks to everyone here who took a chance on us in the beginning and shared helpful feedback over the years! How to serve startups/developers more effectively at scale is still the main thrust of our product focus. We've fixed and improved a lot of things since we launched here in 2011, but we also still have a lot of work to do. (Both "obvious things we want to fix" and "new functionality we want…

Thanks @pc for the last words!

I built opalang.org many years ago - introducing a mix of functional programming, strong static typing for the web, fixing the independence mismatch between client/server/db etc. in 2009, and although we were not able to make it a big success, I'm still spending all my time in this area and am convinced that there is a lot to fix.

Re: Stripe’s new funding round values company at $35B

#139

Post by dymk »

Apocryphon wrote: post #107
BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? They look like they're on a fast path to disrupt like all of banking! The banking industry has to be bigger than the bed and breakfast advertising industry.

Not to mention they are more regulatory compliant, and so likely deal with fewer lawsuits and have to spend less on lobbying.

> Not to mention they are more regulatory compliant

Source?

Re: Stripe’s new funding round values company at $35B

#140

Post by jeffnappi »

Stripe has made building payments related products fun for me when previously I had suffered through working directly with banks and various poorly designed gateways. Stripe is still the gold standard to me when it comes to developer APIs, documentation, and smart iteration. Kudos to everyone at Stripe!
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