

Stripe raises $18 million from Sequoia - zds
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-09/stripe-said-to-get-funding-valuing-online-payment-startup-at-100-million.html

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pc
Hey -- just want to say thanks to the people on HN who've given us feedback
and encouraged us along the way. We're building Stripe for the kind of people
who read Hacker News, and the suggestions we've received here have generally
been the most useful feedback we've gotten anywhere.

So, thanks. We're pretty excited about the next few years.

~~~
jmitcheson
Please use the funding to expand to other countries!

~~~
chrismiller
Seriously please come to Australia!

I have a project ready to go (with the exception of billing). It is almost
impossible for an Australian business to easily accept credit card payments in
USD.

I have looked at Saasy.com but the lack of data portability makes it an
unattractive option.

~~~
garazy
PayPal really is the only solution unless you can get the one bank in
Australia to let you open a USD account, you'll also need a modem to check
your balance with them online.

This is a good thread [http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-
australia/brows...](http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-
australia/browse_thread/thread/dcc079980b68741d) about the complexities in
setting it up in Australia and unfortunately I suspect Stripe will consider
the risks outweigh the benefits of providing this sort of functionality in oz.

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pclark
I love their name and I especially love their (old?) logo:
[http://www.crunchbase.com/assets/images/resized/0012/7313/12...](http://www.crunchbase.com/assets/images/resized/0012/7313/127313v2-max-250x250.png)

~~~
aquinn
I'm sure Deutsche Bank were less enamoured with it.

<http://www.tt-orchestra.de/images/logo_deutschebank.png>

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staunch
Congrats guys!

There's a lot to like about Stripe, but my absolute favorite under-appreciated
thing is their name and domain name.

Hard to quantify just how much it helped, but I seriously doubt they would
have had quite this trajectory with a name like Chargerly.com or even possibly
Stripe.io.

~~~
alapshah
Square seems to do ok ($2Bn valuation) not owning square.com (their domain is
<http://squareup.com>)

~~~
staunch
<http://www.square.com/> seems to go to Squareup.com now. They're probably
working on acquiring it.

My point is mostly just about the name though. Square is an amazing name.
Imagine if _they_ had been called Skware or Swipify?

I think you're better off being called Square and having Squareup.com for a
while than settling for Swipify.com.

That is what Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter, Square, and many others have done.

Bad: Poor name + poor domain.

Good: Great name + poor domain.

Best: Great name + great domain (Stripe).

~~~
joelg87
I have to agree with this.

We started out as bfffr (name and domain) and quickly changed to Buffer
(domain bufferapp.com).

It's tempting with things like Forrst and Dribbble around though :) (I still
love both these startups)

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Xixi
Awesome product, brilliant people, answered all my emails in less than 15
minutes...

I so much want to become a customer that I'm seriously considering
incorporating ShiningPanda LLC (or C-Corp) somewhere in the United States for
this sole purpose. And probably dissolving ShiningPanda SAS (French
equivalent, more or less, of a C-Corp) to reduce the costs, as SAS are pretty
expensive to keep around, and it would become largely pointless.

Do someone have experience with such an endeavor? The part that I can't seem
to figure out is how to pay foreign people, living abroad, from an American
company. All the while avoiding double taxation.

If someone have references toward a good lawyer / accountant / tax lawyer to
figure out all that... My email is alexis dot tabary at shiningpanda dot com

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olivercameron
One thing that YC drills into you is to not settle for B or C class talent.
You just have to look at Stripe's team overview to see how talented this
company is: <https://stripe.com/about>

Stripe is a lesson on how to build a company from the ground up. Surrounding
yourself with incredibly intelligent people tends to have an outcome like this
(both product and valuation). Congrats guys!

~~~
erikpukinskis
Am I the only one who finds the language "C class talent" really distasteful?
I feel like it's worse than referring to your employees as "human resources".

I understand the importance of passing on people who are a close-but-in-the-
end-imperfect fit for your organization. But using the concept of class and
grading people from A to F just makes my skin crawl, and it makes me want to
avoid any company or organization who things about people that way, YC
included.

Am I the only one?

~~~
byrneseyeview
I would find it unpleasant to be called "C-class talent," but I'd also find it
unpleasant to get a C. In both cases, that would prompt me to either step up
my game or reconsider my priorities.

People are unequal, and in a business context, that means some people are
worth less than others. You can grade them on a curve, but that just means
we'll all learn that a "B" means you're a failure, and that really good
companies are only recruiting among As and A+s. Differences in ability can't
be fixed through semantics.

~~~
monsterix
On the other hand we've have noticed people branded as C-class talent kicking
ass of A and A+s too, haven't we?

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TomGullen
We're in the UK, and would love to move away from Paypal. Please come to the
UK!

~~~
klaut
Another vote for Stripe coming to UK :)

~~~
mbesto
Yes please :)

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kareemm
First reaction: "Good, maybe now they will expand to Canada!"

:)

Congrats gang. I'm sure it's only partially a manpower issue with
international expansion - dealing with institutions only moves so quickly.

~~~
bkorte
Totally thought the same thing.

~~~
stanmancan
Yup, same here!

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blantonl
$18 million - Wow! Congrats to the Stripe team!

This definitely draws a line in the sand for the online payment provider
process. Looks like Paypal has been served.

Disclaimer: my business is a huge Paypal user, but we've been actively looking
at Stripe and put in our plans for 2012 to begin to transition to them.
Exciting times!

~~~
Newgy
Actually, Authorize.net has a lot more to fear from Stripe. Can't wait to
switch!

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RexM
I love stripe. I got everything setup and accepting payments this morning for
a side project in less than 20 minutes before I had to leave for work... It's
such a joy to use.

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Dexec
I've always been extremely bullish on Stripe, so it's good to see this
reaffirm my beliefs. Any investor would be crazy not to get in on this.

Proud to see more Irish founders succeeding in the US, and as I know they'll
be reading here: good job guys, keep it up.

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yesimahuman
Congrats guys! I just want to say that I _love_ Stripe. You are really
changing the game. I love that you are focusing on developers.

I wonder what might happen down the road when users make mistakes that put
themselves in PCI compliance violation (like posting a form to their server
with input names, thus sending the card info). What kinds of effects could
this have on the business, their image, and the customers?

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ChadMoran
Stripe is a great example of proper developer experience joy. Good job guys!

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bmaeser
this is good news. i hope stripe uses this opportunity and expands to europe
asap.

congrats to the stripe folks!

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bostonvaulter2
The $100 million valuation doesn't seem _too_ high to me. Especially
considering the huge potential market.

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moses1400
Woo! Go Stripe! We use them on CloudContacts and love it.

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rabidonrails
We've been using them since they were /dev/payments...best decision of our
lives.

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mshafrir
Thanks to Stripe, I think that we'll start seeing a lot more weekend/hobby
projects that charge for their service.

(And I think that's a good thing.)

~~~
rpbertp13
Quite likely. I think Sequoia's bet goes hand in hand with the trend as of
late of 'democratizing' programming and CS education (Stanford online classes,
Udacity, Codeacademy and others). More and better programming means more
projects and more demand for payment platforms like Stripe.

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ashhimself
I can only hope your service comes to Australia soon. If you ever need
Australian beta testers please let me know.

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mekarpeles
Congratulations guys, great work on Stripe and awesome + superb customer
service

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kamikazi
Someone pls come to India. There is a serious need for good payment processor
out here. Anybody who comes up with even half-decent solution wins 75% of mkt-
share by default without any sales/mktg/BDM efforts.

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kimura
If only stripe was around a couple of years ago, we wouldn't have found
ourselves locked down with BOA. Having to pay $500 termination fee sucks.

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tacheshun
Good job, guys! Congrats! Please, come to Europe soon!

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RegEx
I'm about to use Strip for an upcoming project due to the wonderful things
I've heard about it on HN. I'm looking forward to giving it a go!

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ssx
Is Techcrunch pissed they didn't break this story?

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cwilson
I hope you guys are considering offering payments for marketplaces now as
well. Congrats!

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alexwolfe
Such a great service, it puts Auth.net to shame. Well done guys, congrats.

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markbao
Congratulations to the Stripe team!

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propercoil
wow nice :)

