pitdesi

"Rabois says that Square’s merchants now represent 10 percent of the transactions in the Visa/MasterCard world."

This is either a) completely untrue, or b) a clever play on words (I don't know what "Square's merchants" means)

800k card readers shipped is significant and would be about 10% of the total companies that take credit cards, but the vast majority of those with readers are not actually companies (I have gotten several of them in the mail... saying "card readers shipped" is like AOL talking about how many CD's or disks they gave out in the 90's)

There are ~56Billion visa/mc credit and debit card transactions per year, if anyone was interested. (taken from Visa/MC 10-k's)... and a total of $3.5Trillion in transaction volume

I don't know Amit personally but have interacted with him a bunch because he's a customer, and he is a really awesome guy.

If you are in Chicago and South Asian, I'm hosting an event next Thursday where we'll be doing cheek swabs: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=160586174028348

If in New York, there is an event next Friday: http://brownbones.eventbrite.com/

Randy Pausch, another tremendous person who died too young of pancreatic cancer, had some recommendations: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/

I'm surprised at how sad (devastated?) this news makes me. I use Apple products now, but I am not at all a fanboy of the company and for many years defended the other side. I really hate the proprietary nature of many of their products and only use them if there is nothing else equivalent in the "open" world. That I own a few Apple products speaks volumes in itself.

But Steve has been an inspiration for the past decade or so. Brilliant, passionate, energetic, and visionary in a way that no one else can ever be.

I don't believe any company in history has had the 10 year record of Apple in the 00's. He's a genius in technology and business... but you can't study him like any other company. Case studies on Apple don't work. Because other companies don't have Steve.

Sidenote: You know he had a profound impact when the news of his departure slows down HN this much. R.I.P.

I think the world has changed drastically in the past few years...

I can provide perspective from working for a startup in SF in 06-07 and a startup in Chicago now... In Chicago noone thinks you're unemployed if you say you work for a startup. That was the case a couple of years ago, but with Groupon and a TON of other companies that just isn't the case. The difference is just that more people are doing startups in SF vs. consultants/bankers/fortune 500 workers... Go to a bar here and girls think it's so damn cool that you are running a startup (apparently girls are obsessed with all things geek - http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20110924/ISSUE03/3092...).

Re: the coffeshop thing- just by chance (ie we didn't know this going in and it is NOT the startup hub area within Chicago), within 3 blocks of FeeFighters office are: 37signals, SproutSocial, Threadless, Crowdspring, and several other startups. I don't see how it helps us significantly to bump into them (though we have helped our neighbors when they've had merchant account issues). Many people think it is a wasteland anywhere not the valley but I have seen that not to be the case here, in New York, and even in Pittsburgh.

So what is the difference between here and there? The largest differentiator I've noticed between the valley and elsewhere is funding. We raised most of our money in Chicago from VC's we really like, but could have raised easier on the west coast. A lot of top VC's prefer to have you close and told us flat out they would fund us if we moved there. We had term sheets dependent on us being in Austin, SF, and LA. I don't think it has had an effect one way or another on our business thus far.

Startups need money, and often flock to where it is. Things are changing all over the place though (Rich people in Chicago all of a sudden want to fund startups, will be interesting to see if that continues post-Groupon IPO)

It also depends on your type of business. If you sell mainly to startups, you should probably be in the valley.

Great idea. Here's how we market our website, may be helpful: http://feefighters.com/blog/how-to-market-your-website/

You have no idea how much I would love to! It's a tough problem to solve, but the internet as a whole is getting there with crowdsourced review sites.

I think Google is actually the most poised to solve this problem at the moment, and I'm interested/excited to see how the Trusted Stores thing they announced today http://www.google.com/trustedstores/ plays out. Certainly a step in the right direction.

Interesting sidenote on that... When the BBB contacted us the first time, they referenced that they searched through their records and couldn't find a company named xpay... pretty funny that they didn't realize that xpay was a pseudonym (even though I made that explicit in the blogpost)

They also spelled my name incorrectly (2 different ways!). A classy organization all around.

You are totally correct, although it depends wildly on who your customer is (IE older people grew up trusting the BBB, younger folks don't care). We had an internal argument about whether doing this was the right thing or not for our business. I did it against the wishes of some other FeeFighters because I believe it's the right thing to do (I HATE scams like these so much), but it did mean that we had to take their symbol off our site and suffer whatever consequences come with that.

When we do focus groups or usability tests with small businesses, they always look at the BBB ratings of the credit card processors on our site. However, I think with our new product Samurai (for online payments - http://samurai.feefighters.com) we'll have a more savvy crowd who doesn't care too much about the BBB.

For those of you who aren't too familiar with FeeFighters - our original product is comparison shopping for credit card processing. A good chunk of our customers are e-commerce businesses, startups, and other "sophisticated" merchants, but we also have a bunch of mom and pop shops (of every sort) who care about stuff like the BBB.

As it turns out, in the couple of months since we had to take the BBB logo off, we have seen no difference whatsoever in our conversion stats.

Saying that you want to use our service helps us know that it is worth our while, yes... but in terms of issues, there are a few things:

The overarching theme is that the payments industry is much more complicated than it seems to the layman. There are a ton of players that you have to interact with, and they are a different set from country to country.

The payment systems are surprisingly different on the backend in each country. The US is large enough where it makes sense for us to create integrations into all of the different backends to work with all banks/processors. To do it in smaller countries might not make as much sense. We have to tread carefully because we need to ensure that our partners are great. That is something we can do in the US because our partners are a known quantity. Not the case for us abroad.

We also want to be able to provide adequate support. There is even a timezone hurdle. We provide phone support and it would suck to get calls at night.

Another part is just honestly the US market is so large and we still have room to grow here and add awesomeness that it is hard to prioritize going somewhere else. That being said, we are pursuing it because there is OBVIOUSLY a huge need there. We are still in beta so we're still working on the core product. Simultaneously we're working out a solution for the EU (difficult) and Canada (not as difficult).

Other issues include taxes, currency and currency risk, taking payments, etc. There's a lot to think about there. We really want to do it, but to do it right requires a lot of thought, and we just haven't done it yet.

If you have connections to folks that can help, please drop me a line (email in profile)

BTW, if you are interested in geeking out about how processing works (in the US), here's an ebook: http://feefighters.com/ebooks/what-is-credit-card-processing...

We are trying to get Samurai (http://samurai.feefighters.com) into Europe. We don't have a firm timetable just yet though. If you'd like to be notified when it happens, please enter your email address here: https://docs.google.com/a/transfs.com/spreadsheet/viewform?h...

You got it. We don't handle the recurring stuff for you, but we give you back a token that lets you bill your customer cards on a recurring basis. We have other customers who are doing this on their own.

US/Canada, startups and non-startups. 2/3rds of our businesses are online (mostly startups), 1/3rd brick and mortar. I don't have a better breakdown than that at my fingertips.

Average size of our customer is fairly large, skewed by several large customers. We have a lot of startup customers. The ones that are a challenge to get underwritten are typically marketplace businesses of some kind (you sell something, a third party gets paid for it and you take your cut). We have a bunch of them as customers but some are a challenge to get underwritten (fraud reasons/banks are stupid about it).

We are totally upfront and transparent and never post anonymously btw. Our business name is actually Transparent Financial Services!

EDIT: removed so as to not hijack another announcement. Was not the intention, just wanted to offer something people thought was useful.

Count me in the group that finds $250 to be a steal for this sort of thing. Your mission page is spot on.

The amount of time/headache it takes to brand a startup should not be underestimated. I think that the logos are fine to get started quickly but probably would all need to be changed in the long run, but no big deal, you've provided a decent enough starting point where it doesn't look shitty atleast and can allow someone to build their product while still having a decent looking thing on their site.

We spent several WEEKS of all hands on deck and lots of $$$ (Well over $10k for the domain name, banners, stationery etc) as a company rebranding from Transparent Financial Services (http://transfs.com) to FeeFighters (http://feefighters.com). Had we started with something better than transfs from the beginning we wouldn't have had the problem (btw, it's still a pain in the ass because google apps doesn't let you change your name, so we still only have a duct tape solution where our google apps are still @transfs and I occasionally still send an email from @transfs - embarassing!). Plus, we lost all the google juice we'd built up over that time (which was considerable - TransFS was a PageRank 5 site and FeeFighters had none).

At that point (post-funding), our time and pagerank were a lot more important than the money.

More on our rebrand that might be useful to people (you now have to pay to see the video but can download the audio and read transcript for free): http://mixergy.com/sean-harper-feefighters-intervie/

FeeFighters use and like Expensify: http://expensify.com

I wholeheartedly agree that NYC is no threat to Silicon Valley. That being said, for my individual startup, why the hell should I care if there is a microprocessor company, network equipment provider, computer company, etc etc etc? I can't think of very many of the hot startups discussed on this forum where it matters to have those things in the vicinity.

I think the point is that some businesses make more sense in New York - some businesses really need rapacious dealmakers and not fierce coders/nerdy visionaries.

Dating has changed a lot, even in the past couple of years. Being part of a startup is cooler now, everywhere. Geek is in.

See: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20110924/ISSUE03/3092...

This article doesn't make any sense... This is NOT the future, Self-scanners have been around for a long time and have never caught on anywhere to my knowledge.

Self-scanners have been around for several years. Market District in Pittsburgh had them in 2005 when I lived there (http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/09/01/review-grocery-stor...). They never caught on, and ultimately the company stopped using them in 09 (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09226/990741-28.stm note: this article doesn't provide any details).

The problem is theft prevention and time. Every so often (appx every 10 customers), they would randomly check every item on your receipt. You think you're done, but you aren't, they need to check every item on your receipt.

The thing that IS potentially a game changer in this regard (which the article doesn't mention) is RFID. With RFID combined with Google Wallet, the theft prevention problem can be solved much easier (ie alarm goes off if you are stealing)

+1 on the importance/usefulness of the 500 family. TK nailed it with the N:N model.

A complaint that I've heard is that 500 is too big and that Dave has spread himself too thin. I couldn't disagree more... Dave has made himself and his connections available to us far more often than I would've expected, given the fact that there are some 165 startups (I've shared a meal and/or drink with Dave 3 times in the past month, despite living in Chicago)

FeeFighters wasn't incubated at 500startups, but Dave/500 invested in us and we're a part of the family despite being based in Chicago. The email list and camaraderie are super useful to all, and getting more useful all the time... Need beta customers who will put up with a rough product? No problem. Need an expert in ___? I bet there is someone on the list who fits the need. I know there are plans afoot to even further increase the usefulness of the family.

If you are lucky enough to get an offer of investment from 500, take it. Not for the money, but for the family.

Awesome. We will be adding Samurai in the near future, but aren't there yet. If anyone wants to contribute, drop me a line

https://samurai.feefighters.com/developers

Yup, it's a wrkinprogress ;)

We just launched into public beta. We aren't charging anyone because we know there are rough edges on our site.

Thanks! I will give a shoutout to the guys who helped us with the video: http://demoduck.com. They were a joy to work with.

Yup... our backend allows for that but we haven't built the connection to any foreign platforms just yet.

PayPal does NOT have single rate pricing. AmEx is 3.5%... See the disclosures at the bottom of the page here: https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/website-payments-pro

That being said, we'd love to do that but you need to be of a certain size to negotiate with AmEx. Working on it.

Also - we are keeping the same rate for international credit cards, which is something that the other guys don't offer.

That is a completely fair question.

If you use Recurly/Spreedly/Chargify/CheddarGetter, you still need a gateway and merchant account. Samurai is both.

Braintree does recurring billing, but doesn't do a great job at it. It also could turn out to be cheaper than it would at Braintree. Braintree charges $20 extra per month for the vault plus $0.01 per card PER MONTH. https://samurai.feefighters.com/pricing

From our perspective - we really really want to be international.

We would LOVE to deal with non-US companies and people and hope to do so soon, but for our particular business it's a bit hard right now. Creating relationships with credit card processors we trust (and that you should trust) is really hard.

Another part of it is honestly just that the US market is so big and we have room to grow here, and it's not as easy as it seems - For example, we have phone and chat support during normal US business hours. I don't know what we'll do when we have European or Asian customers. Other issues include taxes, currency and currency risk, taking payments, etc. There's a lot to think about there. We really want to do it, but to do it right requires a lot of thought, and we just haven't done it yet.

Thanks, I didn't think of that. Clarification noted above.

Another question is on recurring billing: At this point, we've we are making a conscious decision that recurring billing logic should be outside of the gateway... none of the gateways handle it particularly well and it is actually kind of a tricky problem. We are working on getting samurai connected to recurly, spreedly and chargify, all of which are good for that.

Re: Terms. We added them in yesterday but it hasn't been deployed yet... you'll see them soon. In the meantime: http://feefighters.com/terms-of-service