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How not to get acquired

blog.gittip.com

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Re: How not to get acquired

#31

Post by jusben1369 »

whit537 wrote: post #8
mvkel wrote: post #6

The lesson learned here isn't that FeeFighters fucked up their acquisition. It's that you should be especially wary building businesses that depend almost entirely on another startup. Put another way, you should only use services that are pretty obviously going to stay around and aren't just a few years old with no solid track record. A service may be perfect for your business to hook into, but is it really realistic…

Yeah, no kidding. I ended up with a merchant account with fusty old FirstData out of the ordeal. I look at FirstData and their portal, www.mymerchantoffice.com, in a whole new light now. It may suck, but I can expect it to suck consistently for years to come. It also feels now like I should be vaulting cards with multiple vendors to avoid a single point of failure. As mentioned I went with Stripe, who are similarly g…

Shameless plug for Spreedlycore.com where you can vault your cards separately and work with all the gateways listed here. This is an extreme example (gone into limbo in this case) but one of the motivations for our offering. You could have migrated to Stripe/Braintree etc via a config change.

Re: How not to get acquired

#32

Post by whit537 »

startupstella wrote: post #21
whit537 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you shed any light on the future of FeeFighters and Samurai? How can users get their data out?

Alas, I cannot although I wish I could. I was not interested in working for a big company post-acquisition...hence the name "startup stella." I do hope the guys respond as we always respected the HN community and depended on it greatly. Whatever happened, hopefully the situation can be rectified.

Thanks for weighing in, Stella. I've just heard from Sheel via email with an apology, and now I've just gotten off the phone with Sean. He apologized for the support requests that have been dropped during the transition to GroupOn. At his request, I've removed the "Reflection" part of my piece, which admittedly engaged in unfounded speculation. I apologize.

I'd also like to apologize to Sean and the team for not trying harder to contact them personally. For example, there is an email address and other contact info listed for Sean on the FeeFighter's About page (I had been looking at the Samurai About page):

http://feefighters.com/about

I believe that Sean and his team are making a good-faith effort to integrate FeeFighters with GroupOn. I've suggested to him that bringing back the three advertised support channels could be a good next step to maintain trust (the toll-free number, the Campfire chatroom, and the ZenDesk).

I freely admit that I've tried to "make lemonade" from what otherwise was a bad situation for Gittip, by publishing this piece and submitting it to Hacker News. I appreciate Sean for calling me and working through the issue together at a personal level. I have no hard feelings towards him and his team, and I wish them all the best as they try to tame the complexity of a significant acquisition, for which, in the end, they are to be congratulated.

Re: How not to get acquired

#33

Post by jmathai »

polyfractal wrote: post #30
whit537 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, no kidding. I ended up with a merchant account with fusty old FirstData out of the ordeal. I look at FirstData and their portal, www.mymerchantoffice.com, in a whole new light now. It may suck, but I can expect it to suck consistently for years to come. It also feels now like I should be vaulting cards with multiple vendors to avoid a single point of failure. As mentioned I went with Stripe, who are similarly g…

Braintree is pretty great, I like working with their API and customer service (always ready and willing to talk on the phone, which is great). Avoid Authorize.Net like the plague. Horrifically bad XML API that will make you want to claw your eyes out.

But it'll be a horrifically bad XML API for years and years :)

Re: How not to get acquired

#34

Post by 1123581321 »

startupstella wrote: post #18
1123581321 wrote: post #13

I heard a FeeFighters employee speak last year and she recommended objectivism (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged) as a good philosophy for entrepreneurs, saying it worked for FeeFighters. When I heard they sold, I assumed that the deal was bad for FeeFighters customers because FeeFighters staff were so compassionless due to their philosophy. Unfortunately, it seems that I was right.

yep I'm the only woman who was at FeeFighters and I respect Ayn Rand but I've never said anything about objectivism publicly...in fact, I would never recommend any philosophy for entrepreneurs as it is in fact, against my philosophy. So maybe you're getting me confused with someone else?

Apologies, but I believe you did recommend Atlas Shrugged to a room full of entrepreneurs and students. I shouldn't have read so much into your recommendation but I am still not surprised by the sale and the results of it.

Re: How not to get acquired

#35

Post by tzs »

polyfractal wrote: post #30
whit537 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, no kidding. I ended up with a merchant account with fusty old FirstData out of the ordeal. I look at FirstData and their portal, www.mymerchantoffice.com, in a whole new light now. It may suck, but I can expect it to suck consistently for years to come. It also feels now like I should be vaulting cards with multiple vendors to avoid a single point of failure. As mentioned I went with Stripe, who are similarly g…

Braintree is pretty great, I like working with their API and customer service (always ready and willing to talk on the phone, which is great). Avoid Authorize.Net like the plague. Horrifically bad XML API that will make you want to claw your eyes out.

Where is there XML in Authorize.Net's API? Here's how you charge a card using the AIM (Advanced Integration Method) interface (Perl sample code):

    my $post_values	= 
    {
        "x_login"			=> "API_LOGIN_ID",
        "x_tran_key"		=> "TRANSACTION_KEY",
        "x_version"			=> "3.1",
        "x_delim_data"		=> "TRUE",
        "x_delim_char"		=> "|",
        "x_relay_response"	=> "FALSE",
        "x_type"			=> "AUTH_CAPTURE",
        "x_method"			=> "CC",
        "x_card_num"		=> "4111111111111111",
        "x_exp_date"		=> "0115",
        "x_amount"			=> "19.99",
        "x_description"		=> "Sample Transaction",
        "x_first_name"		=> "John",
        "x_last_name"		=> "Doe",
        "x_address"			=> "1234 Street",
        "x_state"			=> "WA",
        "x_zip"				=> "98004"	
    };
    my $useragent	= LWP::UserAgent->new( protocols_allowed => ["https"] );
    my $request		= POST( $post_url, $post_values );
    my $response	= $useragent->request( $request );
That's just a straightforward form post to a CGI. Result is a line of CSV data. No XML in sight.

Does the non-AIM option (I forget what it is called) use XML?

Re: How not to get acquired

#36

Post by jusben1369 »

whit537 wrote: post #32
startupstella wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas, I cannot although I wish I could. I was not interested in working for a big company post-acquisition...hence the name "startup stella." I do hope the guys respond as we always respected the HN community and depended on it greatly. Whatever happened, hopefully the situation can be rectified.

Thanks for weighing in, Stella. I've just heard from Sheel via email with an apology, and now I've just gotten off the phone with Sean. He apologized for the support requests that have been dropped during the transition to GroupOn. At his request, I've removed the "Reflection" part of my piece, which admittedly engaged in unfounded speculation. I apologize. I'd also like to apologize to Sean and the team for not tryi…

I worry that this sentence: "I freely admit that I've tried to "make lemonade" from what otherwise was a bad situation for Gittip, by publishing this piece and submitting it to Hacker News." is perhaps the most important here. It wouldn't be such a big deal if this was a rant against an established brand like a large technology company. But to target individuals and name names - only to then do essentially a complete 180 after one phone call - is problematic and perhaps everything that's wrong with the power of forums like this and twitter.

Re: How not to get acquired

#38

Post by pavel_lishin »

polyfractal wrote: post #30
whit537 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, no kidding. I ended up with a merchant account with fusty old FirstData out of the ordeal. I look at FirstData and their portal, www.mymerchantoffice.com, in a whole new light now. It may suck, but I can expect it to suck consistently for years to come. It also feels now like I should be vaulting cards with multiple vendors to avoid a single point of failure. As mentioned I went with Stripe, who are similarly g…

Braintree is pretty great, I like working with their API and customer service (always ready and willing to talk on the phone, which is great). Avoid Authorize.Net like the plague. Horrifically bad XML API that will make you want to claw your eyes out.

I used Authorize.net at a previous employer, and don't remember the API being too terrible. We wrote a wrapper for it, and forgot all about it until we needed to add features.

Re: How not to get acquired

#39

Post by pavel_lishin »

whit537 wrote: post #32
startupstella wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas, I cannot although I wish I could. I was not interested in working for a big company post-acquisition...hence the name "startup stella." I do hope the guys respond as we always respected the HN community and depended on it greatly. Whatever happened, hopefully the situation can be rectified.

Thanks for weighing in, Stella. I've just heard from Sheel via email with an apology, and now I've just gotten off the phone with Sean. He apologized for the support requests that have been dropped during the transition to GroupOn. At his request, I've removed the "Reflection" part of my piece, which admittedly engaged in unfounded speculation. I apologize. I'd also like to apologize to Sean and the team for not tryi…

> I'd also like to apologize to Sean and the team for not trying harder to contact them personally.

That sounds like an odd thing to apologize for. You should not have to dig up personal contact information to get minimal customer service.

Re: How not to get acquired

#40

Post by programnature »

jusben1369 wrote: post #36
whit537 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for weighing in, Stella. I've just heard from Sheel via email with an apology, and now I've just gotten off the phone with Sean. He apologized for the support requests that have been dropped during the transition to GroupOn. At his request, I've removed the "Reflection" part of my piece, which admittedly engaged in unfounded speculation. I apologize. I'd also like to apologize to Sean and the team for not tryi…

I worry that this sentence: "I freely admit that I've tried to "make lemonade" from what otherwise was a bad situation for Gittip, by publishing this piece and submitting it to Hacker News." is perhaps the most important here. It wouldn't be such a big deal if this was a rant against an established brand like a large technology company. But to target individuals and name names - only to then do essentially a complete…

And he removed the big name-calling rant section after the phone call... the one set off by a loss of 51 dollars. Looks more like a publicity stunt rather than righteous outrage.
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