Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 332 posts

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#291

Post by astrange »

log4shelled wrote: post #117
dang wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the main result of the post, then it's a reductio, because YC funds competitors all the time and would never turn down an innovator for anti-competitive reasons—only because they thought it wouldn't be a good investment at that moment. Anything else would both be bad for YC's business and against its principles ( https://www.ycombinator.com/principles/ ). Of course it still happens that YC turns down good c…

Creating a cartel is "bad for business"? Are you sure about that?

Every member of a cartel is motivated to defect, yes. The hiring cartel Facebook broke wasn't for business reasons, it was because Steve Jobs was mad about recruiters calling his people.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#292

Post by thrwn_frthr_awy »

tptacek wrote: post #268
thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment was more about what are all the different ways post can be ranked higher/lower. I trust Dan that the two things I mentioned they don’t do, but is there anything else like keywords/hosts that if yc members knew would give them an edge.

There is no reason to believe anything like that is happening. We do well enough on HN that Dan called us out downthread, and certainly there are no secret tricks we're using --- short of "not having our friends vote us up when stuff of ours gets submitted". I think this is pretty much just conspiracy theories. The discussion here is pretty unproductive. You're free to simply disbelieve Dan; that's a coherent perspec…

You are quite defensive and I’ve never said I didn’t trust Dan but you keep saying it.

Because you knew enough about HN that this conversation is “unproductive” doesn’t mean it is unproductive to others. My comment got a lot of upvotes. Maybe that means the knowledge you have isn’t as wide spread as you think it is.

Also I recommend you compare Dan’s responses in this thread to your own. A very different tone—one that is “more productive” than how you’ve chosen to respond.

My entire point was more information could a. Prevent these posts in the future and b. Help to others understand the dynamics when a post like this is made. What is wrong with this? Jeez... was my initial comment that offensive to you?

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#293

Post by ceocoder »

jgrahamc wrote: post #245
dreamcompiler wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That you can write well outside of blogs is evident from your posts. You obviously put in a lot of time sweating how to write before you joined Cloudflare, and that makes your blog posts a joy to read. The Geek Atlas is one of my favorite books by anybody, BTW.

That's very kind of you. I am glad you enjoyed my book.

Well, in case if this matters at all. I truly enjoy how you ‘eastdakota and ‘Kentonv engage with this forum - whether things are going well or not, I’ve come to expect a level of honest, direct and transparent dialog from you all. Oh and you are a really good author - truly enjoyed your book.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#295

Post by Rudisimo »

joshstrange wrote: post #279
nkmnz wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insightful. Would you mind talking about where you move your payment processing?

CardConnect [0] is what I'm going to use. They aren't as flashy as Stripe but they support everything I need: * JS/Web tokenization (via iframe + postmessage) * iOS/Android SDK to work with an array of in-person readers * Apple and Google Pay support * And then all the API endpoints to charge a card, create a customer, etc that you would expect [0] https://cardconnect.com/

This is a weird coincidence, but it made me chuckle nonetheless.

(CardConnect) Bolt[0] is a thing, which seems to have launched in 2017[1].

[0]: https://cardconnect.com/bolt [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20170406214956/https://cardconne...

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#296

Post by joshstrange »

Rudisimo wrote: post #295
joshstrange wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CardConnect [0] is what I'm going to use. They aren't as flashy as Stripe but they support everything I need: * JS/Web tokenization (via iframe + postmessage) * iOS/Android SDK to work with an array of in-person readers * Apple and Google Pay support * And then all the API endpoints to charge a card, create a customer, etc that you would expect [0] https://cardconnect.com/

This is a weird coincidence, but it made me chuckle nonetheless. (CardConnect) Bolt[0] is a thing, which seems to have launched in 2017[1]. [0]: https://cardconnect.com/bolt [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20170406214956/https://cardconne...

Haha, when I first saw "Bolt" I thought "Hey that's a CardConnect thing!" because I've integrated with it before and will be using Card Connect's Bolt again for this project. I scoured the Card Connect website to make sure it wasn't some kind of partnership and it's not the same thing (not saying you said it was or thought it was, I thought it might be at first).

I can say that Bolt is pretty easy to work with from my experience. I have a wired Bolt reader (IPP320) sitting next to me as I type this (I've worked with it through my employer) and a wireless/BT VP3300 in my bag (which is what I'm going to use for my food festival stuff).

Nothing beats Stripe's docs and the community around it (both in info/SO-answers and in things like SDKs) but CardConnect and Bolt are easy enough. That said I wish their onboarding was streamlined. I had to be in 4-5 meetings with them before I got credentials to start coding and I'll have to be in a few more before I go live. I think you can use their UAT or similar without an account but I wanted to make sure they'd accept me before I started working on it. Super nice people, it just doesn't compare to a few clicks with Stripe and boom, you are off to the races.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#297

Post by TheFlyingFish »

ummonk wrote: post #271
dang wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only ever heard of tens of thousands of views. Maybe it breaks 100k sometimes. I mean, we don't track who clicks on what links, but we do track HN page views and you can't click on what you don't see. So, millions of views from an HN post is off by two orders of magnitude. Unfortunately! (or maybe fortunately)

Wow, I would have assumed it's significantly higher than tens of thousands of views, given how often websites get hugged to death. I guess people really skimp out on hosting plans.

Or have an unfortunate habit of hosting their sites on mind-numbingly inefficient architectures. E.g. vanilla Wordpress seems to run 500-1000ms TTFB on a standard shared hosting plan.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#298

Post by eagleinparadise »

danielvinson wrote: post #183
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #79

I was at Stripe a few years back and I don't remember Bolt coming up as a competitor, ever. Stripe was more worried about Paypal and Adyen. One thing to keep in mind - all companies at this size have a corp dev function. Over the past decade, they've likely spoken to several hundred companies and patrick has probably personally spoken to over 100 about an acquisition and looked at some of their data. Anyone who looks…

Not related to your actual point, but I researched corporate boards a few years back and found many instances of people on boards of two direct competitors. In fact, I found a couple of companies with CEOs who also served on the board of a competitor. This was going through maybe a few hundred large corporations, so I’d have to assume it’s incredibly common.

I haven't studied this in depth but I recall that there's a book out there that sort of blasts the management consulting industry. How a lot of corporates will hire the same consulting company such as McKinsey to learn what their competitors are planning/how they are performing. IIRC

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#299

Post by anurag »

dang wrote: post #184

His claims about HN are false. Short version: his post was 2+ hours later than Stripe's, not an hour earlier, and fell in rank because users flagged it, not because moderators did anything (which I suppose is what his mafia/mob language was intended to imply). The longer version is going to involve a tedious barrage of links, but I want this to be something that people can check for themselves if they care to. Quotin…

Thank you for being transparent. This is a good behind-the-scenes look and I'm sure everyone would love to see more posts from you on this topic.
Post reply on HN