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WePay's (YC S09) next chapter

blog.wepay.com

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Re: WePay's (YC S09) next chapter

#61

Post by bspn »

austenallred wrote: post #30
craigkerstiens wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a solid outcome, but with nearly 80m (publicly) raised, likely not a giant return based on those numbers and length of company existing. Some may have done quite well, but plenty of unclear details. There are many notable home-runs for all players involved, FB, Whatsapp, etc, but those are often the exception. This isn't to say it's a bad acquisition or should be dismissed as a failure. It just re-iterates th…

A $220m+ acquisition is absolutely a home run, and likely a win for all involved, even with $80m raised. FB and WhatsApp are once-in-a-decade type returns. In baseball parlance perhaps a World Series winning grand slam or a perfect game. You needn’t exit for $19B for it to be a great outcome.

For the founders this represents a very nice exit but for investors, not so much. It obviously depends on when they entered, but later stage investors aren't likely to be making much (if anything) off the exit. Getting money back from a struggling investment is always nice, but I doubt the VCs will be touting this as one of their success stories in the quarterly report.

Re: WePay's (YC S09) next chapter

#62

Post by JonFish85 »

craigkerstiens wrote: post #27
tommynicholas wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sources say it's north of a $220m acquisition - I mean I know that's not a home run but I'm also pretty certain it's not a nothing outcome at all.

That is a solid outcome, but with nearly 80m (publicly) raised, likely not a giant return based on those numbers and length of company existing. Some may have done quite well, but plenty of unclear details. There are many notable home-runs for all players involved, FB, Whatsapp, etc, but those are often the exception. This isn't to say it's a bad acquisition or should be dismissed as a failure. It just re-iterates th…

If "the number" is, say $220m, it could be a number of things. If it's cash today, others have done the math on how things could get divvied up.

The "top line" number can mean a lot of things though; it almost certainly includes the assumption of hitting several targets, some of which are reasonable and some are probably stretches. It's also a very real possibility that the "real" cost that Chase paid was just the right amount to make the common stock evaporate; investors get their money back such that $0 is split amongst common stock. Employees then are given a sheet to sign saying that their stock in WePay is now worth $0, but here's an offer for Chase stock vesting over 4 years.

Anecdata, for sure, but most of the deals I've seen have been something like this. The top-line number is all well & good, but the real dollars people extract from it are invariably less (again, just in the limited set of things I've seen). I'm sure there are exceptions (I bet the Instagram folks did just fine). But if I had to make a guess, it'd be that the founders will come out with a good chunk of cash, and employees will get a job at Chase out of it (with the valued employees getting a nice bonus at the "new car money" level)

Re: WePay's (YC S09) next chapter

#63

Post by toastking »

roymurdock wrote: post #60
gk1 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was fairly clear. Chase wants to get into the fintech space so they acquired WePay.

Is there a a good definition for companies in the "fintech" space? Is it anyone building a product that lets consumers/enterprises receive and send payments over mobile/desktop/internet rather than physically going into a branch? Curious as it seems to me (uninformed) that basically all banks already have fintech offerings and are built around networking and payments technology at their core.

I think fintech (like "edtech") is a little bit nebulous. I would say anything involving handling money is fintech. So stuff like Venmo or Robinhood. I would even go so far as to say certain data science companies are fintech in that their offerings cater to financial institutions.

Re: WePay's (YC S09) next chapter

#64

Post by toastking »

Kiro wrote: post #44
cmer wrote: post #17

I had breakfast with Bill a few years ago in Palo Alto. It was clear pretty quickly that WePay wasn’t a good fit for us, but he still managed to navigate me through the competitive landscape and helped me figure out which product was right, pitfalls to avoid, regulations, etc. He even offered his help for the future, even though we were giving him zero business. I’m writing all this because I left with the feeling th…

What's with the PS? Did he tell you that or are you saying he shouldn't waste his newfound riches on bitcoin? Seems really out of context otherwise.

Maybe they just assume that all discussions on HN lead to bitcoin given a sufficient time scale.

Re: WePay's (YC S09) next chapter

#65

Post by brianwawok »

quuquuquu wrote: post #59
pc86 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested in seeing the median salary, I imagine that's quite a bit lower.

I completely agree, I bet you have 100 people making 10m+ per year, and 20,000 staff and interns at the back office in New Jersey making 45,000 maximum, hired from SUNY schools. What do you think of my estimation?

You can find salary info for gs grads right out of college.

Hint: its a lot more than 45k

Re: WePay's (YC S09) next chapter

#66

Post by Nemisis7654 »

Kiro wrote: post #44
cmer wrote: post #17

I had breakfast with Bill a few years ago in Palo Alto. It was clear pretty quickly that WePay wasn’t a good fit for us, but he still managed to navigate me through the competitive landscape and helped me figure out which product was right, pitfalls to avoid, regulations, etc. He even offered his help for the future, even though we were giving him zero business. I’m writing all this because I left with the feeling th…

What's with the PS? Did he tell you that or are you saying he shouldn't waste his newfound riches on bitcoin? Seems really out of context otherwise.

I believe he's referring to the statements made by Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on bitcoin: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/12/jpmorgan-ceo-jamie-dimon-rai...

> It's just not a real thing, eventually it will be closed,

> Dimon also said he'd "fire in a second" any JPMorgan trader who was trading bitcoin, noting two reasons: "It's against our rules and they are stupid."

Re: WePay's (YC S09) next chapter

#67

Post by csomar »

brianwawok wrote: post #65
quuquuquu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree, I bet you have 100 people making 10m+ per year, and 20,000 staff and interns at the back office in New Jersey making 45,000 maximum, hired from SUNY schools. What do you think of my estimation?

You can find salary info for gs grads right out of college. Hint: its a lot more than 45k

Care to share the source/link for such info.

Re: WePay's (YC S09) next chapter

#68

Post by csomar »

cmer wrote: post #17

I had breakfast with Bill a few years ago in Palo Alto. It was clear pretty quickly that WePay wasn’t a good fit for us, but he still managed to navigate me through the competitive landscape and helped me figure out which product was right, pitfalls to avoid, regulations, etc. He even offered his help for the future, even though we were giving him zero business. I’m writing all this because I left with the feeling th…

I'm not sure what the PS has anything to do with the comment? I don't like these kind of "hints". If you have something interesting to share, please do. Some on Hacker News are definitively into bitcoin/blockchain stuff. So your info will be valuable.

Re: WePay's (YC S09) next chapter

#69

Post by pc86 »

brianwawok wrote: post #65
quuquuquu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree, I bet you have 100 people making 10m+ per year, and 20,000 staff and interns at the back office in New Jersey making 45,000 maximum, hired from SUNY schools. What do you think of my estimation?

You can find salary info for gs grads right out of college. Hint: its a lot more than 45k

For IB, sure. But are most GS employees traders? It looks like most of the support staff is in the $20-30k range[0], which includes help desk and the like. Even certain analyst positions seem to be in the $45-50k range. On page ten of ascending salaries I've just barely passed $60k.

My point is that while the "average" compensation may be $400k, that's going to account for a very small percentage of the employees. The median is probably well below $100k, dependent largely on just how many support staff there are compared to traders. And even the traders who only last a year or two before getting fired will probably only make $100-150k.

[0] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Goldman-Sachs-Salaries-E280...

Re: WePay's (YC S09) next chapter

#70

Post by jdmichal »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #35
kevinr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zelle is not really the same thing as what WePay does. Zelle is peer-to-peer payments, competitive with Paypal, Square Cash, Venmo, etc. (P2P is a term of art in the industry; it's not P2P in the Bittorrent sense. :) WePay is about providing payments infrastructure to marketplaces and crowdfunding platforms (Lyft, GoFundMe, etc.). WePay are competitive with Stripe's Connect product (disclaimer: my employer). Braintre…

Zelle is more than that: Zelle is a new interbank network for free and instant money transfers that avoids the Federal Reserve ACH system that PayPal, SquareCash, etc use which takes 24-36 business hours for money to move. I'm surprised that Zelle is moving so slowly - it's a great selling point for a bank/CU. Alas, the system doesn't allow for non-personal payments, so the banks want to preserve their commercial pay…

Zelle is not new. Zelle has existed as clearXchange since 2011. The Zelle branding is new as of 2016, but the underlying service has not changed. Most of the participating banks individually branded the service prior to the Zelle rebranding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClearXchange

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