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The Next 1,000 Start-Ups

braintreepayments.com

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Re: The Next 1,000 Start-Ups

#61

Post by rkalla »

There are multiple aspects to payment processing with basic payment processing and integration being the minimum -- Stripe currently has the most beautiful story here.

Things get more complex on the back end of the payment being processed at scale, namely fraud detection and risk mitigation. This is where some of those behemoths in the industry actually shine more.

Stripe passes the risk directly through, you are on your own.

For a lot of folks here working on startups with their first few-hundred customers, that isn't the problem -- the problem is accepting payments and getting back to work. I don't see anyone beating Stripe in that game.

For the folks that have huge customer bases, mitigating risk and dealing with fraud is a much more frequent/costly problem and having a processor help out there is why companies like PayPal (and BrainTree?) are still in people's vocabulary even though a good majority of their experience on the front-end suck.

This is one of those problems that doesn't matter to you at all, until it does... then it is a huge nightmare and you scramble around looking for a solution and suddenly realize why "everyone doesn't just use Stripe" -- or some equally hot new processing startup.

Re: The Next 1,000 Start-Ups

#64

Post by julien_c »

enraged_camel wrote: post #57
kami8845 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thought of "middlebrow dismissals" came to mind when I saw the ensuing discussion. Now I don't think I fully understand what is meant by the term. Further googling didn't bring up anything else, but if it's meant that I simply dismiss what Braintree is offering here, that is completely false. I welcome it. It's a good move. What I found issue with, and discussed at length was the wording of the post. It's not cha…

>>The thought of "middlebrow dismissals" came to mind when I saw the ensuing discussion. Now I don't think I fully understand what is meant by the term It's a spin-off from the term "highbrow", which means "intellectually stimulating". http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/highbrow A middlebrow dismissal means you are giving it only a half-thought before dismissing it, as opposed to critically thinking about it from multiple…

Why middlebrow then, and not lowbrow? Honest question, from a non-native speaker.

Re: The Next 1,000 Start-Ups

#65

Post by callmeed »

rkalla wrote: post #61

There are multiple aspects to payment processing with basic payment processing and integration being the minimum -- Stripe currently has the most beautiful story here. Things get more complex on the back end of the payment being processed at scale, namely fraud detection and risk mitigation. This is where some of those behemoths in the industry actually shine more. Stripe passes the risk directly through, you are on…

I'm not sure I agree with you. I've had to deal with plenty of fraud issues.

How is Stripe passing the risk on any more than other processors? [1] The end-result of fraud (at least, the kind I'm familiar with) are chargebacks. Those are going to fall back to you regardless of who your payment processor is.

We've had major fraud issues on our system which is powered by BrainTree. When you hit a certain chargeback rate, you basically get a call from the underwriting processor/merchant who says "Get your crap together or get lost".

PayPal is a slightly different animal IMO.

https://stripe.com/help/disputes

Re: The Next 1,000 Start-Ups

#66

Post by natep »

julien_c wrote: post #64
enraged_camel wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>The thought of "middlebrow dismissals" came to mind when I saw the ensuing discussion. Now I don't think I fully understand what is meant by the term It's a spin-off from the term "highbrow", which means "intellectually stimulating". http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/highbrow A middlebrow dismissal means you are giving it only a half-thought before dismissing it, as opposed to critically thinking about it from multiple…

Why middlebrow then, and not lowbrow? Honest question, from a non-native speaker.

I first saw the term middlebrow in that thread, and I'm still not sure how i feel about the term, but "lowbrow" refers to completely non-intellectual things, and would not appeal at all to someone that values intellectual thinking. I hadn't heard the term until that comment thread, but apparently it has its own Wikipedia page, and has been around since 1925.

Re: The Next 1,000 Start-Ups

#67

Post by olalonde »

minhajuddin wrote: post #44
djb_hackernews wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don't understand why people get offended when someone tries to find a motive behind something “So, what’s the catch - is this just a marketing promotion.” There’s no catch, no strings attached, no BS -- we just want to do our part to give back to the community that made us successful and this is our way of paying it forward. Clearly Braintree wants us to think they are doing it to do 'their part'. Pointing out that…

> Pointing out that this might not be true shouldn't offend you.

Speaking for myself, I'm offended by such comments not because they aren't true but because yes, they do offend my intellect and waste my time. We all know that Braintree and Github are not charities, let's talk about something interesting instead.

Re: The Next 1,000 Start-Ups

#68

Post by [deleted] »

kami8845 wrote: post #47
pdog wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another "middlebrow dismissal", voted to the top of the thread. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4712867 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4692794 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4718083 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4723926 The first point is plainly false. Braintree isn't "suffering." The third point is true, but cynical and obvious. Is it really surprising that you probably won't change payment proc…

The thought of "middlebrow dismissals" came to mind when I saw the ensuing discussion. Now I don't think I fully understand what is meant by the term. Further googling didn't bring up anything else, but if it's meant that I simply dismiss what Braintree is offering here, that is completely false. I welcome it. It's a good move. What I found issue with, and discussed at length was the wording of the post. It's not cha…

[deleted]

Re: The Next 1,000 Start-Ups

#69

Post by klynch »

scottkrager wrote: post #59
caitlins wrote: post #13

Earlier 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

What about existing startups using braintree that haven't hit that level yet?

The idea behind this offer is to help launch more startups. If you are a pre-revenue start-up or just started to collect fees for your product, then shoot us an email at accounts@braintreepayments.com, and we're happy to help.

Re: The Next 1,000 Start-Ups

#70

Post by kami8845 »

[deleted] wrote: post #68
kami8845 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thought of "middlebrow dismissals" came to mind when I saw the ensuing discussion. Now I don't think I fully understand what is meant by the term. Further googling didn't bring up anything else, but if it's meant that I simply dismiss what Braintree is offering here, that is completely false. I welcome it. It's a good move. What I found issue with, and discussed at length was the wording of the post. It's not cha…

[deleted]

>It certainly doesn't cost 50,000$ to switch payment providers. Your argument is therefore invalid.

Well, I certainly do apologize for "offending your intellect" and "wasting your time".

But you seem to be missing that Braintree doesn't cut new startups a check over 50k. It's only the fees that are waived for the first 50k in revenue.

As someone below calculated, new startups save about ~3k by signing up for this promotion. And yes, after a couple months of working on a code base, breaking your payments code apart just to fit the new API cant VERY quickly cost your 3k in dev cost. Half an hour payment downtime because you didn't plug things together just right? There go a few more k in revenue.

And also if stating such isn't the deepest of insights, I don't really see a problem with that. You certainly felt that it wasn't a problem to state that startups can save 50k by signing up with Braintree, even though that is not only completely insane by any standard, it's also easily dis-proven by reading the above article.

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