

Show HN: Finally, You Can Accept Pre-Orders after Kickstarter with Celery - cktsai
https://www.trycelery.com

======
beaumartinez
The name "Celery" made me think of the task queue[1]. In both cases though
it's a very random name.

[1] <http://www.celeryproject.org/>

~~~
asksol
The logo looks almost identical to the old celery (task queue) logo. Not sure
how the word "celery" relates to payments, but the name of the task queue is
not random: rabbits like celery (rabbitmq.com).

~~~
beaumartinez
Ah, I can see that now. I know nothing about rabbits; maybe carrot (queuerot?)
would have been a better choice.

~~~
asksol
carrot was already in use. I like Celery, we have no plans to change the name

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chrisacky
For anyone curious, here is a sample/demo page after creation.

<https://www.trycelery.com/p/my-first-product>

It looks solid.

I see that you mention that you have had quite a lot of press coverage for
this.. by the "As Featured In".

I can't find any related articles though and I'd be interested in reading them
:)

<https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=link%3Atrycelery.com>

Plus site:techcrunch.com trycelery.com doesn't work, and neither can I find
any articles on BetaBeat, Forbes or the NYT?

If you are truly backed by YCombinator (which I have no reason to doubt), I'd
have expected to be able to read some coverage?

~~~
podingx
Hey Chris, I'm one of the guys who worked on it. The company name is under
Airbrite. We built an e-commerce API and Celery is powered off of it.

~~~
bobwaycott
That is very misleading marketing speak, to the point of lying. You (or your
copywriter) just killed Celery's credibility.

~~~
podingx
Point noted and we'll be fixing this. Thanks for the input.

------
qeorge
I'm missing something. Can you explain this to me as if I were five? I'm
really gun shy with anything involving my customers CC data, and I suspect
others are too.

Some of my concerns:

1) Authorize now but only charge when actually shipping is standard Visa
policy. Doing it any other way is not allowed. Your system seems like a
workaround for that, which raises my alarm bells.

2) To be clear - you are storing the credit cards in your vault (not Stripe's
vault), and then running them through your Stripe account later as normal
transactions? And this is cool with Stripe/Visa?

3) What do you mean PCI compliant? Do you think you are, or are you being
regularly audited? Where are your servers? Credit cards are serious business;
we need to know.

4) I'd expect a _ton_ of chargebacks. How are those handled? What do the
chargeback fees look like?

5) Is this Amazon Payments without the branding?

I want to love your product, but I wonder these things. Please help me
understand!

~~~
podingx
In the case of pre-ordering, Celery doesn't make any authorizations/holds upon
the creation of the order. We use Stripe to make sure the card is valid and
the charge is processed at a later time.

Celery does not store the credit cards and all payment information transferred
is encrypted with SSL. The cards are held within Stripe's vault. Each seller
uses their own Stripe token.

The chargebacks would affect the seller, since the payments are linked to
their Stripe account. It's important that seller is able to actually ship the
item if they decide to charge the buyer. Otherwise, they would need to refund
or risk getting hit with chargebacks.

~~~
qeorge
Whoa - you need to make it clear that I have to bring my own Stripe account.
Nowhere is that mentioned on your page. So the 256-bit encryption you're
touting on your homepage is really _Stripe's_ 256-bit encryption? Not cool.

Is the "Embeddable Checkout Overlay" really Stripe Checkout too? Which of your
features are you actually providing and which are really Stripe?

Right now this looks like a simple wrapper around Stripe Connect that waits X
days to bill, plus a basic Bootstrap template you can use. What am I missing?

~~~
podingx
Thanks for the questions. We're working to update the FAQ and site to make all
of this more clear. My personal belief is that there's more to commerce than
just payments (order management, inventory management, analytics, supporting
web and native mobile/tablet apps, etc). It may look simple now, but these are
the types of challenges we're in the process of tackling.

------
bossx
Sounds like <https://www.shopstarter.org>

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smallegan
One of the main reasons I feel comfortable about using Kickstarter is the fact
that I know my funds won't get released to the company/person unless enough
people "fund" it. Once enough people back it then I'm not as worried about
losing my money (probably more psychological than anything) because I feel
like there would be a huge uproar if someone tried running off. This doesn't
really seem to give me as the "pre-orderer" any security. Also...who really
loves Celery?

~~~
podingx
75% of Kickstarter funded campaigns don't ship on time (research by Ethan
Mollick from UPenn). Since my money is committed, I'm not sure if that gives
me comfort either :)

Personally, I feel better knowing that I won't be charged at all until the
item is shipped. And in the worst case, I would request a refund or issue a
chargeback if I felt the seller was being "sketchy".

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dchaos628
This is awesome! I've been waiting for a solution like this

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shurcooL
I'd like to know the following: can't you already do this with Stripe? They
seem to use stripe as their backend, so how is this different than me doing
this with stripe on my own (i.e. collect charge tokens, charge later)? Or do
stripe's tokens expire after a short period of time, I haven't looked into
that yet.

I genuinely want to know because I'm potentially interested.

~~~
shuzchen
No, you can create a customer token and that token will forever refer to the
credit card details the user entered. The only way you could consider that
they "expire" is if the card as-entered expires, or if the user cancels that
card. But even in this case your token still works, it just points to data
that isn't valid anymore.

Unless celery does anything else on top of this (auto notifies customers if
the cc expires in the interim, provides them a way to update details without
you needing to do anything) then I don't see any compelling reason to use it.

------
_fs
Is it me, or is the grammar on this page very confusing. I had to reread
sentences multiple times to understand their meanings. I understand it's a
marketing page, but it seems like the author is more focused on dropping
buzzwords instead of explaining the product

~~~
itafroma
The only place I see a grammar faux pas is in this sentence (emphasis mine):

> Spend less time _on_ tracking down lost orders and focus on building great
> products.

It should be "Spend less time tracking down..."

The bigger issue is that nearly every sentence breaks in awkward places due to
the layout of the site.

Examples:

    
    
      Safely hold payment information  
      without charging until you're ready
      to ship.  
    

"until you're ready to ship" is a singular concept and should be on the same
line.

    
    
      Our checkout design is responsive
      so your product sells itself on any
      desktop, mobile, or tablet device.
    

Same: "any desktop, mobile, or tablet device" should be on the same line.

    
    
      Allow purchasing directly on your
      site with an embedded checkout
      overlay that’s elegant and secure
    

"an embedded checkout overlay" should be on the same line.

Similarly, none of the emphasis phrases should start halfway through a line
and break:

    
    
      take pre-
      orders in person
    

is hard to read even though it's a key point.

------
generalpf
Maybe I'm the odd man out, but I am so sick and tired of company names that
are absolutely unrelated to their purpose. Celery? Seriously? If you're not a
fresh vegetable delivery service, GTFO.

~~~
pshih
I moonlight to pay the bills by delivering fresh vegetables.

------
niftylettuce
easily sell swag on Celery with <https://teelaunch.com/> \-- simply send us
your XLS/CSV of orders and we'll take care of the rest.

~~~
unreal37
So I can launch a t-shirt business in the next 10 minutes? Cool. I just might.

~~~
niftylettuce
that is correct

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masonhensley
Is there a demo/ sample page of the product?

~~~
podingx
We're working with Boosted Boards to help them with their pre-orders:
<https://www.trycelery.com/p/boosted>

~~~
elliottcarlson
So this seems to go against what I read earlier where charges are only made
when the item ships - but it seems the Boosted Board takes a $200 deposit
instead of just saving your card for the full amount?

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Ralz
I'm a bit confused but is this the same concept as shopstarter.org that was
posted here a week or two ago?

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sbassi
Why US/Can only? I'd need something like this for Argentina.

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hemishare
Awesome!

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thoughtcriminal
Not so much emphasis with Kickstarter please. A lot of people won't go the
Kickstarter route (non-US residents being among them). Being able to take pre-
orders is the magic words, and won't alienate prospects.

