
Braintree Buys Venmo for $26.2 Million - dcosson
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/16/payments-start-up-braintree-buys-venmo-for-26-2-million/
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mmalik
What I love about Venmo is that they took payment processing and aggressively
went after a niche - 'spotting' or paying back a friend for cash - tailoring
the app to that unique experience. Good job Venmo!

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Hovertruck
Very glad to see this. Venmo is possibly the most useful app on my phone, and
one of my favorite products.

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tzaman
Is it just me or is the number kinda low, based on Venmo's success so far (and
the financial predictions)?

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SatvikBeri
There have been several "pay-your-friends" apps that achieve a lot of success
for a while because they're free, then lose all momentum when they start
charging. I'm not sure if Venmo is in the same boat, but it seems possible.

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drumdance
I remember waaaaay back in the day when PayPal was called Confinity and they
were doing this for PalmPilot. They pivoted and the rest is history.

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frankdenbow
Smart move, Venmo has a pretty solid product. Congrats to their team!

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ivankirigin
Congrats Iqram, Kortina, and team!

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kortina
Thanks, Ivan. For those who are wondering, the Venmo apps aren't going away:
<http://bit.ly/bt-venmo>

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fredsters_s
Interested in revenue vs exit valuation... Can you say anything about it? The
margins must be phenomenally low if the valuation was only 10% of what you
process _yearly_...

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rdl
If you process $260mm and charge 0% it's not really fair to view $26mm as a
10% revenue multiplier.

(Even for the small part of their business funded by credit cards, there's a
$500 per customer lifetime exemption, and 3% minus higher fraud rate and
2-2.5+% CNP processor and interchange still puts their revenue at less than a
small team's salary with 100% credit cards, and probably less than $100k/yr
revenue on credit cards overall.

They're obviously being bought for team, technology, and growth potential;
current customers are just traction, not revenue.

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acabal
That's nice, but calling Braintree a startup is quite a stretch. (The article
doesn't, it's just the HN headline.)

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untog
Judging by the URL, I think the article _used_ to call it a startup and was
then edited.

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jmccaffrey
Congrats! I went to school in Philadelphia, I think Kortina paid for
cheesesteaks at a hackathon once..

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kortina
That's a tradition--we'll be doing the same at pennapps again in a few weeks.

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gustaf
Massive congrats guys! :)

