Why GEMM is at the heart of deep learning - <AUTHOR> http://petewarden.com/2015/04/20/why-gemm-is-at-the-heart-of-deep-learning/ <comment><USER2> Fotran can be a pain to write, but it can lead to very efficient programs, especially with the incorporation of advanced math kernels like ATLAS or MKL. Of course, CUDA will lead to 10x-40x boost in GEMM performance in certain algorithms as well. If you have a very matrix heavy hot loop, or could possibly represent an algorithm as a matrix operation [1], it might be worth your time to write some modern Fortran [2].

[1]: [http://kukuruku.co/hub/algorithms/using-the-quick-raise- of-m...](http://kukuruku.co/hub/algorithms/using-the-quick-raise-of-matrices- to-power-to-write-a-very-fast-interpreter-of-a-simple-programming- language?ModPagespeed=noscript) [2]: [http://fortranwiki.org/fortran/show/Fortran+2008](http://fortranwiki.org/fortran/show/Fortran+2008)

<comment><USER3> 1\. ATLAS hasn't had great performance in ages because it explores the wrong parameter space. OpenBLAS or MKL are much better choices and don't need autotuning.

2\. You can call these libraries from any language, so Fortran offers no advantage there.

3\. Fortran performance is similar to C and C++ (assuming use of restrict where needed).

4\. CUDA will _not_ lead to 10-40x boost unless your CPU implementation is garbage. The realistic standard is about 2x when normalized by Watts; see the Green500 for example. The 2x also holds for price when using server-grade parts (like Tesla), but GPUs come out further ahead if you buy consumer grade. Note that you still have to pay to buy and power a host, and that GPUs are a lot less versatile in terms of problem size/turn-around time and workload. They have their place, but evaluate your workload carefully before concluding that the cost proposition favors GPUs.

<comment><USER2> 1\. I certainly did not mean to imply that ATLAS or MKL were the best CPU linear algebra libraries out there. Thanks for pointing out OpenBLAS and offering that comparison.

2\. If I were to run a highly iterative algorithm, say with 100,000 or more iterations, would the memory marshaling not be significant? Or would it be unnoticeable since I would be using these libraries anyway? I also personally find the array notation and slicing to be quite nice.

3\. The use of "restrict" is nice. I was not aware of that feature. Looking at this reference [1], it seems that Fortran basically does the equivalent of automatically using "restrict".

4\. According to NVIDIA [2], cuBLAS outperforms MKL by 6x-17x (it seems MKL is catching up since I last checked). Is this misleading by NVIDIA? What is your expectation for a reasonable execution speed increase? The fixed-cost efficiency and variable-cost efficiency are good points to bring into the discussion. Your point about carefully evaluating workload is also a good one. I don't want people to think that throwing an algorithm into CUDA will magically speed up the overall program. Network I/O, disk I/O, and device (GPU) I/O are all important bottlenecks to consider.

[1]: [http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~blynn/c/ch05.html](http://www-cs- students.stanford.edu/~blynn/c/ch05.html)

[2]: [https://developer.nvidia.com/cuBLAS](https://developer.nvidia.com/cuBLAS)

<comment><USER3> 2\. Most languages have a way to store raw arrays that can be passed directly to the numerical routines. If you have to marshal, then it depends on the problem size and amount of work done in the numerical routine.

3\. Yes.

4\. NVIDIA has a track record of misleading comparisons. They cleaned up their act in the these CUDA-7 benchmarks: [http://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallelforall/cuda-7-release- can...](http://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallelforall/cuda-7-release-candidate- feature-overview/) in response to this G+ discussion [https://plus.google.com/+JeffHammondScience/posts/G1MzHqZaxy...](https://plus.google.com/+JeffHammondScience/posts/G1MzHqZaxyz) . Thanks to Szilárd Páll for calling attention to this discussion and to Mark Harris for updating the plots. Note that this should not be interpreted as "MKL/Xeon is catching up" but rather that performance comparisons are sensitive to the details of the experiment and it can be hard to recognize the consequences of biased configurations. Better normalization and standards for comparison can help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should use FFT's for the convolution, see [http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.5851](http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.5851)

Also, while the original Blas was in Fortran, you probably want OpenBlas, which is in C. Or maybe Intels MKL.

<comment><USER5> FWIW, FFT-based convolutional methods aren't better for a lot of common sizes (including a bunch of AlexNet/VGG/GoogLeNet sizes). [http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.7580](http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.7580) has a pretty thorough evaluation of im2col + gemm vs fused gemm (cudnn) vs fft.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the article tip hadn't seen it. But I don't agree with your conclusion. In fig 1-6, you should look at the last column. Because really the other channel numbers are quite low. Knowing that, the space domain algo, only really has a chance at 3x3 filters which is quite small.

And since they claim fbfft was even faster than cufft, the situation should look even better for fft.

EDIT: And they are about tied in the 3x3, 64 case.

<comment><USER6> The current trend in convolutional neural networks seems to be moving toward _more_ convolutions with _smaller_ kernels. This year's second-place ILSVRC winner (VGG) is essentially a giant stack of 19 convolution layers with super tiny kernels, sandwiched between nonlinearities and pooling. "To reduce the number of parameters in such very deep networks, we use very small 3×3 filters in all convolutional layers" [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.1556.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.1556.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oops! The "A x B = C" figure is exactly backwards. A matrix with shape (r, k) times a matrix with shape (k, c) should return a matrix with shape (r,c). The figure incorrectly claims that a matrix (k,m) times a matrix with shape (n,k) returns a matrix with shape (n,m), which is only true if all of these numbers are equal (eg. square matrices).

Kind of an embarrassing typo for an article that is essentially about matrix multiplication.

Here is a corrected (transposed) version of that figure: [http://i.imgur.com/Bo6CJCv.png](http://i.imgur.com/Bo6CJCv.png)

Edit: It looks like every figure in the article suffers from this problem. I know FORTRAN matrices store each column contiguously in memory, but whether a matrix is accessed like * (ptr + r * ncols + c) or * (ptr + c * nrows + r) is (in my opinion) a low-level detail and shouldn't affect our thinking about how multiplication works.

<comment><USER7> Either I'm missing something here or the article is correct. Generally, the first dimension of a matrix corresponds to the rows and the second dimension to the columns. So in the original figure, A is m x k, B is k x n, and C is m x n, and this seems right. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_%28mathematics%29#Size](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_%28mathematics%29#Size)

<comment><USER8> I think the author revised the figure(s) between the time of the parent comment (by gcr) and your comment. At least, the A * B = C figure's filename seems to imply a revision [1].

EDIT: yep, the figures were revised. Compare the corrected version [1] vs the original [2].

[1] [https://petewarden.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/gemm_correcte...](https://petewarden.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/gemm_corrected.png)

[2] [https://petewarden.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/gemm.png](https://petewarden.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/gemm.png)

EDIT 2: I completely missed that the author put a notice (about having revised the figures) at the bottom of the post.

<comment><USER9> Yes, that was my screwup, sorry for any confusion! Despite multiple linear algebra courses, working in 3D graphics for a decade, I haven't internalized the basics of matrix notation. It doesn't help that my usual sandbox (Eigen) is column major by default, which is the wrong in-memory order for my raster- image trained brain to visualize. Funnily enough, I find tensor notation a bit easier, despite being less familiar.

<comment><USER8> No worries. Also, I found the article very interesting and informative. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Being computationally limited by GEMM is both a benefit and a pitfall. The operation itself is highly parallelizable and typically compute-bound (as opposed to memory-bound). As a result, advances in GPU performance will translate into improvements in GEMM. However, it also means that algorithmically you're limited by the hardware. GEMM is an _extremely_ mature so algorithmic improvements are unlikely. Instead, any algorithmic improvements would likely stem from replacing GEMM with a more tailored, specialized operation.

<comment><USER6> Different parts of the computation are bound in different ways. The "rule of thumb" for AlexNet-derived networks (with conv layers followed by fully connected layers) is that 95% of the computation time is spent in the conv layers, but 95% of the parameters are stored as the weights of the FC layers. I imagine the later stage could be memory-bound and the former stage is CPU- bound.

Not sure if this holds true for other NN structures like GoogLeNet or the weirder recent fully convolutional networks.

</comment></comment><comment> bra-ket great writeup!

in general, to make deep learning faster avoid using backpropagation

<comment><USER11> What else do you use to train the network?

<comment> bra-ket random matrices + svd: [http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/egbhuang/](http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/egbhuang/)

<comment><USER6> I would be very interested to see if this approach outperforms more conventional deep networks trained with backpropagation.

It's important to note that (from what I understand) this paper seems to focus on building _single-layer_ NNs, which are quite different from the behemoth AlexNet that this article focuses on.

<comment><USER12> Very early on, people experimented heavily with non-gradient based optimization (genetic algorithms and the like) to optimize neural networks, but the results were rather poor.

For very large parameter spaces, gradient based optimization is really the only game in town. There's also lots of clever tricks (gradient clipping, momentum, adagrad, etc) that are involved in optimizing the convergence.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kandi launches cheapest electric cars in the US, starting at $12,999 – Electrek - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2020/07/30/kandi-cheapest-electric-cars-us/ <comment><USER2> Cheapest car in the USA period? I think it is a thousand bucks cheaper than the next closest.</comment>


Your SaaS product is too cheap if you never lose customers because of pricing - <AUTHOR> http://blog.close.io/your-saas-product-is-too-cheap-if-you-never-lose-customers-because-of-pricing <comment><USER2> Almost all conversations about pricing make the same mistake: they assume that we all have the same goals. Your goal might be to squeeze as much money out of your customers as you can. That's totally fine, and completely ethical, but it's not my goal. I'm guessing many people are similar to me.

I want my business to be profitable. I want to get rich off of it. But I want my customers to get even richer. I want to know for a fact that I'm leaving money on the table for my customers to capture for themselves. I suspect that in the long run this will actually be a good business decision (happier customers now = more word of mouth) but even if it isn't, I still think it's the right decision for me. That's why I don't raise my prices.

<comment><USER3> This reminds me of a bit of an epiphany I had back in University. At the time, groups in our class were playing some sort of national business simulation game. I was sure that I had optimized my business to produce the 'best' widget at the lowest cost in a market dominated by other high quality widgets. Week after week, my business' position grew worse.

Finally, I spoke to my teacher who had a very simple message (paraphrased, it was ~7 years ago):

"Its not about having the best product, its about finding the untapped segment of the market," he said.

After that, I reoriented my business to attack a segment of the virtual market that was not being heavily targeted. That very week, my company made a complete turn-around.

In other words, I created a product that was well adapted for a specific segment of the market.

In the context of the linked article, I think the message is that there is an equilibrium between value provided by a service and the price at which people are willing to pay. If your product is worth more to your users than you are charging them, then you have not optimized this equilibrium.

Now, IF you are able to offer your service at a cost that is significantly lower than what your target customers are willing to pay, there is a strong likelihood that competition may try and capture some of this margin.

This does not at all violate the equilibrium principle because as new, lower- cost providers arrive, the price-point for users will naturally be lowered.

<comment><USER4> SimCountry?

<comment><USER3> I honestly can't remember the name, but it was not SimCountry. I hardly remember the game, only the realization that you can either try and outdo competitors face-to-face or simply go where they aren't and capture the value from underserved segments of the market.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like Capitalism / Capitalism 2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While the title sentence can be true under steady-state conditions, it's not true for virally growing startups. Growth depends on customers recommending the product to their friends. For example, if raising prices by 10% cuts your monthly viral spread coefficient by 10%, it will cut your market share by 90% after 22 months.

(I'm working on a simulation engine for this kind of stuff.)

<comment><USER7> "(I'm working on a simulation engine for this kind of stuff.)"

How do you calibrate it for a specific market?

<comment><USER6> There's no silver bullet. Version 1 will at least let you capture your assumptions about how you think your market works and how your product will get traction in it. As you gain experience in the market, you'll be able to refine the model and make better comparisons among alternative growth strategies.

Eventually I'll try to curate a library of market models and startup plans that did or didn't work in them.

<comment><USER7> But what drivers do you model? Consumer behavior and preferences, or just abstract business metrics? I.e.: do you put into your model what is typically an indicator on a dashboard - TLV, retention rate, etc, or do you derive a model of your customers from past data and build scenarios of changes in customer behavior?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "A high price point is a bounty on your head" \-- a serial entrepreneur friend of mine.

As SaaS businesses, our fear is that all this uncaptured downmarket demand will create a competitor where none may even exist currently. These potential competitors also have an advantage. You've proven the market for them, and they can expend fewer cycles building their SaaS by simply copying the useful features you've already built.

We all know the standard advice here. Find those features or capabilities that don't provide much value to these downmarket customers, then introduce lower price points with pared-down versions of your SaaS.

But this article suggests another approach, and I like it: instead of paring down features, find out what potentially new features add value for your downmarket customers. Build them. Bring their value received up to your price point, instead of bringing your price down to their value.

This may be hard to do in practice, but it's an interesting idea.

<comment><USER9> Absolutely. Finding that sweet spot in pricing is essential.

One issue I find is when people don't differentiate _enough_. For example--I may have a blackboard killer CMS, but if I don't have any kind of differentiation from blackboard, I'm only competing on price. And, if I introduce new features but never show HOW these help the consumer, they won't value it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This isn't _wrong_ per se, but it doesn't feel like solid advice to me; I think it's just skipping past a lot of nuances that are really pretty important.

Like: extracting the maximum possible money out of your customers is kind of a shitty goal for a business, as they go. It's not exactly pushed here, either, but it's not identified and discarded.

There's a price point where customers will be feeling pained and possibly taken advantage of, but still recognize the value of the product to them is such that they will still pay. This is not a sweet spot, I think; it's an opportunity for your competitors.

Hustling to add value instead of cutting prices is a good point, but "how do we change our product to add more value to our customers?" is a non-trivial question, though. The default gut responses are usually wrong, and end up increasing value to some customers at a cost to others; more features but severely increased complexity; sometimes broadening the potential target market at the cost of lower value (or a steeper learning curve) for the current user base.

Finally: customers even in a fairly narrow niche are diverse. You may settle on pricing that works great for healthy businesses, but which will force struggling businesses to reluctantly forgo your service, even when they need it the most.

A business relationship is a relationship between people or groups thereof, in the end, even if a numbers game is involved to maintain business health.

</comment><comment><USER11> Maybe mine is too expensive because I have a hard time gaining paid customers.

([http://wakatime.com](http://wakatime.com))

btw, your blog post really hits the mark.

<comment><USER12> Not sure what type of service this is, my proxy at work blocks your site as "Suspicious"

<comment><USER13> Odd, hosted on Amazon and running Bootstrap w/ no weird JS plugins aside from Olark. Maybe some other not-so-legitimate websites are running on the same server?

<comment><USER11> Only one site hosted on that ec2 instance. It's a false-positive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What about price discrimination? Micro-economics 101 says using price discrimination is a good way to reduce consumer surplus, so a blanket "don't have low prices" is all very well, but you could have say, a small- business/home tier and get more money overall.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point and I'll go back and clarify in the post :)

I do think you want multiple pricing tiers. The question here is what's your baseline?

Most SaaS startups start way too low. And once they get even a little tiny bit of push back they go back to their pricing tiers and lower them again.

That's a deadly pricing strategy and I wanted to call it out in this piece :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My company's product is by a fairly significant margin the most expensive out of the competition, and we've refused to budge -- and I'm fairly certain the company wouldn't be alive and growing if we'd started out with lower pricing. It's also somewhat satisfying to see the competition slowly raise their prices. And yes, the hardest part that we are constantly working on is raising the value.

</comment><comment><USER16> i've read a number of comments here who think the goal is to "extract the max dollar figure from customers". and they make that sound so negative. well, the truth is that with that extra money, we hire engineers to improve our software faster so that we can deliver more value to our customers and be more competitive in the marketplace.

our customers need to give us money to keep us in business and so that we continue to add value. if i took the least amount of money from them, i'd be doing them a disservice because they'd adopt my products, i'd fail them after a few years due to a lack of innovation, and then they'd be forced to go through a painful switch to a new platform.

so yes, we do want the max amount of revenue. we want it so that we're paid and satisfied, so we can hire more engineers and acquire more customers, and give them the value and innovation they need over they years.

</comment><comment><USER17> I find this really interesting. On one hand EC2 performance sucks to the bottom if you are running on the t1.micro instance (I have tried above medium once and it wasn't much better either).

DO ([https://www.digitalocean.com/](https://www.digitalocean.com/)) really catches my eyes. The whole "SSD", "512MB" at $5 per month is a bargain. If you are running low traffic website (assuming you will not post your article on HN yourself), $5 per month is absolutely enough for personal blog. If you run a Persona IdB that way, it's only $60 + $50 (an IO domain can be as cheap as that plus tax on gandi, which comes with 1 year of SSL/TLS cert).

I really wonder how much profit they can make out of this kind of bargain.

1\. maintenance cost is high

2\. staff cost is high

3\. disk failure is frequent

4\. power usage is high

<comment><USER18> You can configure a $5/m DO instance to handle the front page of HN if you know what you're doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I ran into the "your product is too expensive" recently, which in turn also led me to find out that my pricing model was all wrong (I target freelancers and usage of my product is limited enough that it doesn't make sense to have a monthly plan).

To a degree I'll be lowering my prices based on customer feedback, but also because the goal is to meet the customer's reality (not just my own). I think this is important for a lot of new SaaS businesses to consider as we move to a more niche-based market: is my offering matched to my customers reality?

A friend shared a nice little anecdote about this the other day: [https://soundcloud.com/khuram-malik-3/pricing-by-peter- druck...](https://soundcloud.com/khuram-malik-3/pricing-by-peter-drucker)

<comment><USER20> I think one of the problems with building software for freelancers is you are targeting both $5/hour Elance and $100/hour 'ninja' workers. In the case of Proper (nice landing page btw!) both may have the same usage but will get a different value out of it - meaning you can't charge them both the same price. One way you could get around that in you product offerings is to offer more features in the higher plans than just more usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The title of this post should be Adobe's slogan.

Here's an example... If I call AT&T right now, or my cable company and say that I want to cancel service to switch to a cheaper company, all of a sudden they will offer me a lower price to keep me from leaving. The ol' a customer is cheaper to keep than to acquire mantra I suppose...

What these people (and you) don't understand is that if you (or AT&T) called me out of the blue and said, hello sir, we've noticed that today makes your 5th year as an AT&T customer, we'd like to take $50 off your bill every month from now on(which is the offer they give me when I threaten to leave) I would be ecstatic.

\- As a satisfied customer I would be shouting your name from the mountain top.

<comment><USER22> I wonder if it would work. Rather than 2 year discount upfront, do it on the back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The same also relates to poker: if your bluffs are never called, you're playing too tight.

</comment><comment><USER24> "We often advice SaaS startups to raise their prices."

I don't normally pick people up on spelling, but that really grates - the word you want is advise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed! Thanks. You can tell I'm not a native speaker/writer. Making these kind of writing mistakes way too often (and some of them still show up even after having other look over it) :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Good old Rollercoaster Tycoon economics!

"Your guests are commenting that the park entrance fee is very cheap, maybe you should consider raising the price!"

</comment><comment><USER26> This is on point. Bjoern's Compass will hopefully allow us to set more market- driven pricing models.

<comment><USER27> Yes, among other things we benchmark your profit margin, ratio of CLV/CAC, Retention and Churn. Those indicators can help experiment on pricing more effectively.

<comment><USER28> Interesting. Can you share a link?

<comment><USER27> compass.co

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I guess will see if that strategy works or not - Logmein will be a perfect case study. Years of free service - now its paid or use something else.

<comment><USER13> I've only found large enterprise IT support and cold-callers from 'Microsoft' who are wanting to 'remove the virus from my machine' use LogMeIn. TeamViewer seems to be the flavour of choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> wow! you are charging $59/user/month for a contacts app. Good luck with that.

</comment><comment><USER31> Jew the Jews before the Jews Jew Joo.</comment>


Show HN: HireBae - <AUTHOR> https://m.me/hirebae <comment><USER2> Just like me, if someone else is wondering what this is then [1].

[1] [https://botlist.co/bots/2433-hirebae](https://botlist.co/bots/2433-hirebae)

<comment><USER3> Oh thanks, the creator probably forgot to put context in his title... apparently there was too much stuff there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> very slow</comment>


For Starters, We Could Use a Right of Recusal - <AUTHOR> http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/07/for-starters-we-could-use-right-of.html <comment><USER2> I strongly dislike like the way this article implies men are the only perpetrators of sexual harassment and women are the only victims, but fundamentally the idea of corporations allowing for the idea that we can be biased and need to recuse ourselves because of our weaknesses is a good one.

<comment><AUTHOR> It would be interesting to know why you think that. IIRC, I talked about "if you are a victim of sexual harassment" and carefully avoided gendering that part. As best I could, I framed it as "Currently, men are primarily the ones in positions of power and we currently have a climate that is actively vilifying men in general and I would like to not see us keep going down that road." Given that I am advocating we not go down a route of witch hunts actively looking for men to accuse, I don't see how I could have written that part without gendering it at all.

So specifics as to why it sounds that way to you (or anyone who felt it sounded that way) would help me improve my writing.

Thanks for commenting.

<comment><USER2> Cool to talk to the writer directly. You're first selected quote is indeed not gendered. I could not find your second quote. Perhaps that is from another piece you wrote?

The article overall is very gendered: 14 instances of the word "woman" nearly all in the context of women being victims, none as perpetrators, and no mention of men as victims.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for replying.

The second one is not a quote. It is more like a TLDR of the overall article.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The End Is Nigh For The Apple v. Samsung Trial - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/24/the-end-is-nigh-for-the-apple-v-samsung-trial/ <comment><AUTHOR> In contrast with what most believed to be a long journey, the jury is said to have reached a verdict.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you commute with a mid-sized pet? - <AUTHOR>

In a crowded and dangerous city with heavy traffic. Any cycling tip? Alternative? My bike commute is 20min, walking would take 45min.<p>Let's exclude subway and cars. <comment><USER2> Get a three-wheel bike with the two wheels and a basket in front (which will also discourage people from calling it a tricycle ;)) and put your pet carrier in the basket, or just the pet if it has good instincts to stay close to you. They're sort of expensive, you can get a three wheeler with a bicycle on the back for under $1k but if you want the steering wheel at the back then look for '3 wheel dutch bicycle' \- it's a design that's very popular in the Netherlands and there's one US company that either imports or manufactures them, albeit at considerable cost.</comment>


Play pewpew in your address bar - <AUTHOR> http://glench.com/hash/

<comment><AUTHOR> [DISCLAIMER] OP is not the creator</comment>


If Van der Waals was a neural network - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cerebralab.com/If_Van_der_Waals_was_a_neural_network <comment><USER2> Thanks for writing this. This topic is something I've been thinking about alot lately too. There are so many incredibly important real world consequences of this worldview. I think you made a great choice focusing on one as tangible as healthcare.

I really hope your post generates much discussion in the nerd/tech/science community. I also hope this will give me the kick in the ass I need to write my own blog post about this topic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks,

I'm afraid it didn't get much traction, which is to be expected considering how lengthy and hard to read it was.

But I do encourage to write your own piece on the subject, at the end of the day that's the only way you can slowly bring ideas into the zeitgeist.</comment></comment>


Show HN: An Open-Source Solution to Expensive Textbooks - <AUTHOR> http://www.textyard.com/blog/an-open-source-solution-to-expensive-textbooks/

<comment><USER2> I have no idea what textyard is. There is no link to the site. Please add a link on the blog in your own interest.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point-- I've updated the post to give an inline link to textyard.com. I'm not trying to promote TextYard anymore, but if this helps clarify to people what you can do with the data then it's definitely beneficial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice work Ben. Bet it felt good to get that shipped!

</comment><comment><USER4> Good job, guys!

</comment><comment><USER5> :)</comment>


Python Patterns needs your help - <AUTHOR> http://matthiaseisen.com/pp/suggestions/

<comment><USER2> You might want to check the permissions on the form:

"You need permission This form can only be viewed by users in the owner's organization. Try contacting the owner of the form if you think this is a mistake. Learn More."</comment>


Safely deploy your Django app in less 1 minute - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@yask123/safely-deploy-your-django-app-in-less-1-minute-c1d67faad628 <comment><USER2> "Safely" download and run a script as root. Watch as it "safely" destroys existing nginx configuration and replaces it with one that statically maps to `/home/ubuntu/jeequery/staticroot`. Yeah that won't even work.

If you want to safely deploy Django, _learn_ how to deploy Django.

A tutorial explaining what it's installing, how it's installing, how to keep it updated, where it's configured etc takes 20 minutes and leaves the reader safe. This is a broken script that pulls people into performing some of the worst possible security practices.

TL;DR Avoid this article to stay safe.

<comment><USER3> Any article that you recommend ? Better yet, how to safely UPDATE/UPGRADE python/django project ?

<comment><USER2> The Django docs aren't a bad place to start for first time deployments. The problem is there are architectural decisions to be made.

I think anybody sane would recommend a virtualenv for all but the smallest projects (unikernel deployments) but what WSGI server? UWSGI's emperor mode is awesome for many sites but is another layer of configuration. UWSGI (sans emperor) and Gunicorn are both good point and shoot. Both need keeping alive (eg systemd).

Once you've picked your WSGI server, read _its_ documentation and try deploying. It's usually about then when you realise the other server might be better for you, or why storing your configuration in a database might make more sense. There are limitless choices here that are only apparent to the person behind the project.

As for updating, that's more about automated testing and having a staging server (VM) to test on than any secret sauce. It's hard to do well manually.

<comment><USER3> Virtualenv always makes sense.

Yeah, uwsgi is where it's at. Even serves static files, so it's possible you won't even need nginx.

On updating I think:

1\. remove from load balancer 2\. update/upgrade/restart (hopefully it's already tested) 3\. readd to load balancer</comment></comment></comment></comment>


In-N-Out Burger's Six Lessons For Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/05/24/in-n-out-burgers-six-secrets-for-out-and-out-success/

<comment><USER2> Discussion already underway over at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=624701></comment>


ECommerce to sell DIGITAL GOODS getting 100% of incomes - <AUTHOR>

There are an eCommerce platform called UniverDox where any author or rights holder can self-distribute (sell, promote & share) their digital goods, spread their events and interact with their followers getting 100% of the incomes generated. www.univerdox.com <comment><USER2> I'm using this ecommerce platform and seems a powefull tool for sell Digital goods with NO COMISSIONS</comment>


Stripe's new funding round values company at $35B - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/fintech-company-stripe-joins-silicon-valley-elite-with-35-billion-valuation-11568912443?mod=rsswn <comment><USER3> [Stripe cofounder]

Thanks to everyone here who took a chance on us in the beginning and shared helpful feedback over the years! How to serve startups/developers more effectively at scale is _still_ the main thrust of our product focus. We've fixed and improved a lot of things since we launched here in 2011, but we also still have a _lot_ of work to do. (Both "obvious things we want to fix" and "new functionality we want to build".) I always appreciate hearing from HN users (even if I don't always have time to respond): email@example.com.

For anyone thinking about what they should work on: I started building developer tools when I was 15 and "tools for creation" is still, IMO, one of the most interesting areas to work in.

<comment><USER4> Besides your product, I thank you all at Stripe for setting an example of what _real_ API/SDK documentation is.

<comment><USER5> > I thank you all at Stripe for setting an example of what real API/SDK > documentation is.

It's not just their documentation, Stripe's versioning, backwards compatibility support, and fast improvements probably make it the single best API I've ever worked with.

I have new projects that use the latest and greatest Stripe API and features, but also older projects that use their 5 year old APIs, and both work without a hitch.

<comment><USER6> > It's not just their documentation, Stripe's versioning, backwards > compatibility support, and fast improvements probably make it the single > best API I've ever worked with.

I completely agree - I consider Stripe the gold standard for an API. Best I've ever used.

<comment><USER7> Now if the fee was under 3% instead of being the very same price as Paypal, that would be a nice welcome bit of competition.

<comment> forgot-my-pw Their newly announced corporate credit card has good benefits (US only): [https://stripe.com/en-ca/corporate-card](https://stripe.com/en-ca/corporate- card)

At least you get some cash back from expenses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Before stripe, I used paypal and it was sooo painful! There are so many terrible APIs out there that waste so much time needlessly.

Then I found stripe. What a treat. Everything was documented and the documentation itself was both readable and didn't go in endless circles like the paypal ones. The error messages were helpful. And every api endpoint had an example, which is hugely helpful: HUGELY! All the other API developers out there can learn from this: you can't underestimate the value of having a working example. Not only that but the testing is much easier in stripe, and there's no need for a bunch of seperate accounts and sandboxes that don't make sense.

Oh and did I mention that the variables describe themselves: the first 3 or 4 letter of an ID says what it is (subscription or etc). Genius! It's little things like this which make Stripe stand out orders of magnitude above the rest of all the APIs in the world.

I hope you guys rule the marketplace for payment processing and wish you all the success you deserve.

Stripe's success in payment processing sends a clear signal to the Paypals and API developers of world: If you're producing an API that sucks, it creates an opportunity for someone else to come eat your lunch. :)

<comment><USER9> Paypal also came out and said they will no longer refund seller fees when a customer is refunded. Before, they used to just keep the $0.30, but now they will keep the 2.9% as well. More the reason to switch to a new processor like Stripe.

<comment><USER10> > More the reason to switch to a new processor like Stripe.

For a lot of merchants it's not a matter of switching to Stripe.

It's using Stripe but also including PayPal as an option because a huge percentage of buyers want to use it to pay for things -- especially 1 time purchases of digital goods.

About 40% of my course sales are through PayPal.

By the way if anyone reading is curious, that new PayPal refund policy goes into effect October 11th 2019 (you probably got the User Agreement email to notify you of this too if you're a merchant).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I remember when we launched our Japanese tea service [1]: we wanted to switch to Stripe so badly that I was emailing them at the very least once a month, until we made it in their beta program. I'm not sure the youngest remember what the payment landscape was before Stripe, but it wasn't great. Stripe lifted the whole industry up from mediocrity.

Around 10 years ago I had the pleasure of setting up payments with a French bank: instead of a web API we had to use an opaque binary installed on our server. In terms of setup it took many weeks and several in person meetings to get approved. There was a (big) setup fee and a (not so small) monthly subscription. And then of course transaction fees.

In Japan for startups targeting foreignland it was even worse: only PayPal supported payments in anything other than JPY! [2] Interestingly it seems that with Stripe Japan everything coming from outside of Japan goes through USD. I have many customers being charged in EUR, and on our end we of course get JPY. So I would expect an EUR/JPY transaction to occur in the middle, yet oftentimes the USD/EUR exchange rates ends up leaking on our customer receipts... I wonder how it works behind the scene...

[1] [https://tomotcha.com](https://tomotcha.com) for those interested.

[2] Maybe banks were offering this service directly, but for what was only an experiment at the time, I was expecting the setup cost to be prohibitive (at least in time, if not in money).

<comment><USER12> "Wasn't great" is an understatement! I dealt with it as a developer both in New Zealand and the Uk and it was outright terrible. Oh, you didn't apply for a merchant account 6 weeks ago...yeah, you're not gonna go live this month. You just go right ahead and book in a meeting with you bank manager and get down on your knees to plea for an account.

<comment><USER13> I know right?

But I thought I would just set up stripe here in NZ just now and it was... wonderful! I just needed to offer business info and it's ... done? There is nothing else to worry about?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You know you have a killer product when your customers will literally fly half way around the world just to use it.

When I started my company (since acquired) in 2012, Stripe was so game changing I flew from Australia to the US to open a bank account so we could use it. While we could incorporate in the US online, we had to turn up in person at a bank to open an account.

The only alternatives in Australia at the time were PayPal, which had outrageous fees and a terrible experience for recurring SaaS billing, or a merchant account with a bank which was going to require a $30k deposit.

It cost me $750 to incorporate a US entity, $1250 for airfares and hotel (oh to remember SF was that affordable!!). I stayed at Hotel Whitcomb, which conveniently has a Chase branch right next door, and 1 day later we had a US bank account and could turn on our Stripe integration. We didn't look back.

I love Stripe Atlas, because I intimately relate to the problem, and wish we had it in 2012.

<comment><USER15> Ha! Glad you were able to find a way. We _still_ think it could be easier, even with Atlas and Australia support now. Would you be up to chat more? firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Stripe has made transactions for my SaaS business so painless. I recently learned that I have customers with different currencies and it's not even something I had to consider or account for. Yeah their API is a little bit... bloated for simple needs since they're covering for many different use-cases, but their superb documentation, clean dashboard UX, and relatively low fees really make the value offering huge.

Overall I'm really not surprised at the valuation. Stripe is one of the best products/services out there.

<comment><USER15> We do want to optimize for those simple needs. Which parts do you think are bloated? Would love to hear how we can de-bloat. (Feel free to email me at email@example.com too.)

<comment><USER17> Not OP but I've used the Stripe API extensively (I know it nearly end to end due to implementing one of the framework client libraries) and to me the parts that come to mind if I think "bloat"/"unintuitive" are SKUs, Coupons, and most likely what GP is talking about the new payment intent APIs, even though I don't think there's a real way you could implement them any better given the PSD2 requirements.

By far Stripe has the cleanest experience of all. I wish you'd treat your APIs more like amazon treats theirs though, that is to say: _no_ private internal- only APIs; I should be able to reimplement the Stripe Dashboard in my own app if I so wanted (just like how the AWS console only uses public APIs). That'd also make for some cool potential projects like a Terraform plugin for Stripe.

Feel free to reach out if you like, email on my profile.

<comment><USER10> > ... most likely what GP is talking about the new payment intent APIs, even > though I don't think there's a real way you could implement them any better > given the PSD2 requirements.

Yes, definitely this.

Payment intents is so much more complicated and convoluted than the previous "Charges" API. Stripe went from one of the easiest bits of my app to develop to one of the most difficult, to the point where I'll admit it even temporarily killed my motivation to work on my app solely due to Stripe's API. I stopped working on the checkout process just to take a break and work on other parts of the app and it pains me to think about even touching the checkout flow again even though I know I have to in order to release my app.

For any real app that's beyond the most trivial case you're likely going to be stuck using the "manual" payment intents workflow. Just figuring out which method to use was a huge ramp up of difficulty vs the old Charges API.

I went as far as even emailing their support for advice and even they weren't able to give me a straight answer. Their primary advice was to recommend not using it and instead use their new Stripe-hosted checkout system (which will not work for most people since it's so limited) or continue using the old Charges API and lose out on payments due to authorization issues that will come with not being able to deal with the new user verification strategies that are required by some banks and cards.

Like you I have no idea how to implement it any better, it's just the reality of the situation of the world we live in today but the bar has certainly been raised to consider accepting payments with Stripe now.

<comment><USER18> Yep, I came across the Payment Intents stuff - holy crap, it's _complicated_ , and the documentation actually isn't great - it's good for details of API calls and such, but not for explaining what the hell you actually need to do, and why.

I also upgraded our Stripe API version recently, as a result of the new SCA regs - the whole experience was _really_ frustrating! It felt like it should have taken me 4 hours max (test time inclusive), but it ended up taking me 5 days - the docs were just... not good.

This all seems very un-Stripe like, and TBH has me a little worried.

<comment><USER15> Hrm, I've seen most who migrate spend a similiar time to your estimate. I know you've already migrated, but I'm really sorry it took that long, and I'd really like to hear where we can improve the docs. Would you mind emailing email@example.com (and feel free to CC firstname.lastname@example.com).

<comment><USER19> [Not the GP, but 100% in agreement with them, except that we abandoned updating our integration.]

 _I 'd really like to hear where we can improve the docs._

IMHO, the fundamental problem is that as the data model and API have become more complicated, the explanatory documentation has become less coherent. It feels like jumping around a Wiki now.

More specifically, we couldn't find anything to show us the big picture of how SCA _actually works_ with Stripe's system. We also couldn't find useful end- to-end walkthroughs with code samples to learn by example, hence my suggestion in the other comment you replied to. Lacking a frame of reference from one source or the other, all the detailed documentation about Stripe.js and APIs doesn't help very much, because you don't know what you need to look up in the first place or how anything fits together.

This was compounded in our case because after spending considerable time swapping messages with Stripe support, in which we did explain that we'd read all of your documentation and we did also describe our (very simple) existing subscription set-up process in terms of specific Stripe.js and API calls, the responses were just boilerplate references to documentation pages we'd already read. Of at least five different people from Stripe who replied to me over more than two weeks, not a single message mentioned any specific function in Stripe.js or the API or any specific webhook, despite several explicit requests and sending specific details on that level from our side at Stripe's request.

To put this in perspective, please consider that when we first integrated with Stripe, it took one Stripe.js call, usually one API call and one webhook to tokenize card details, set up a Customer and Subscription with that card, and then act on each successful payment. I wrote that code myself in less than an hour, and I think it was described start-to-finish on no more than two or three pages on Stripe's documentation site.

At the risk of making this comment antisocially long, but with the suspicion that we have not been the only ones following this path, I'll describe what happened this time instead. The first of several links I was sent by Stripe support in one of those emails went to a page about saving card details for later ([https://stripe.com/docs/payments/cards/saving-cards-after- pa...](https://stripe.com/docs/payments/cards/saving-cards-after-payment)). Within just the first step of that page, there are at least six different concepts we hadn't previously used in our integration that were mentioned, most of them without any sort of introduction, definition or link. Some of these are clearly very important concepts in SCA world, like a new PaymentIntents API and distinguishing on-session from off-session payments. OK, so we need to learn about those. Off we go to the API documentation, where we do find PaymentIntents, which in turn refers us immediately to the PaymentIntents API explanatory page ([https://stripe.com/docs/payments/payment-intents/creating- pa...](https://stripe.com/docs/payments/payment-intents/creating-payment- intents)). This gives us a general idea of what PaymentIntents do (remember, when we integrated before, you didn't even have concepts like Invoices in your API) but then starts talking about manual and automatic confirmation. So before we've finished reading the introduction on that page, we already have two more new concepts, and there's a third link to a comparison between them, but that refers to one-time payments and we're trying to set up a subscription, so now we're jumping context and don't know whether what we're reading is actually relevant to our use case or not.

That last paragraph could continue for literally several more days of finding our way around, often going in circles. We'll later be confused by the difference between PaymentIntents and SetupIntents, several similarly named but apparently quite distinct functions in Stripe.js v3 that might replace the old call to create a token, the difference between a source and a payment method, which actions happen synchronously and which are or might become asynchronous in the new world of PaymentIntents and SCA, and many other such questions. We'll also wonder how any of this fits in with things like Dunning, which was the other big improvement we had hoped to make back when we first started reading about the latest APIs and contacted Stripe support for advice. One important thing you'd notice by the end of the story is that at no point did we ever discover what triggers step one on that very first documentation page to start with — is it a replacement for the old tokenization using Stripe.js, a replacement for the old Customer.create API call, something we have to do in addition to those things at some point?

This comment is already far longer than I had intended, but I hope that gives you some idea of how the current documentation and support systems are not working as well as they used to, from the perspective of a long-time Stripe merchant just trying to update their integration to the new APIs to maintain the equivalent of functionality we already had.

If I were tasked with improving the docs then I would start with an exercise to identify all of the explanatory pages for the new PaymentIntents API, SCA migrations, Dunning, and anything else related. Then I'd get someone, preferably someone who doesn't already intimately understand how SCA works and Stripe's API, to go through and highlight every concept or technical term that hasn't yet been explained before it's used. I suspect that would identify many points of potential confusion, but with several recurring themes. Next, I'd take a step back, look at how SCA works, look at how the Stripe data model and new APIs work, determine which are the foundational concepts that keep coming up but haven't been explained first at the moment, and then write a one-page introduction to the big picture and how these concepts fit together. _That_ is the key page that is completely missing at the moment. And then ideally, I'd go from there straight to the kind of walkthrough mentioned elsewhere, showing how to set up a subscription or a one-off charge using the new Stripe.js, APIs and webhooks with reference to the main concepts from that overview page. From that starting point, there is a frame of reference, and the more detailed explanatory pages and full API specs might make more sense to someone starting an integration essentially from scratch with little prior knowledge.

<comment><USER10> I'm glad I wasn't the only one who had issues with the "support circle".

Usually Stripe is on the ball but I dunno, I had a very non-productive back and forth with them. Non-productive in the sense that it took a long time to get anything that was in response to my initial email and that in the end I didn't learn anything I didn't know before I sent the first email.

Their first couple of replies just tried to get me to use their hosted checkout even though I mentioned needing coupon codes early on which is not supported by that. I also included a super detailed explanation of my workflow (bullet points, using headers, in depth break down of everything) and it was clear their hosted checkout was no way possible to use -- not even the automatic payment intents was viable due to the lack of validation I had to do server side when using automatic PI. Manual PI with a million hoops to jump through or forfeiting sales with Charges was the only option.

It really felt like the support person didn't read the request. It felt like they skimmed it for 5 seconds for keywords (or maybe this was algorithmic) and then made a copy / paste suggestion from a script just to make sure they hit a daily quota of "emails answered". It took a number of these until I started to get responses back from someone who sounded like they read the initial email.

I'm thankful Stripe exists but the worst possible thing you can ever do in support besides ignoring a customer is having the customer spend 45 minutes writing the most detailed request for help possible and then getting a canned response that was already deemed not able to be used in the original email that was sent. It's just in your face proof that support didn't even read it. Then you have to spend 5 back and forth emails over a week just repeating what you wrote in the first email.

I wish multi-billion dollar companies hired support people who cared as much about the company as the CEO. I guess this is why solo devs and smaller teams tend to offer the best support -- simply because the person answering emails is the person running the business or is massively invested in it.

<comment><USER15> Not good. Sorry about that. Could you forward me that support thread (email@example.com) and I can look into what went wrong?

<comment><USER10> I just want to follow up with after emailing edwin, I was put in contact with someone who is on a different level than the support team I've talked with originally.

We got in touch late Friday so a resolution wasn't made (not enough time), but it's clear he spent more than 1 minute skimming the support message and it felt like he really put in serious effort to help me in my specific situation. I think everything will be crystal clear in the end after a couple of emails (and these aren't just repeating emails, it's to deal with moving forward with new info after implementation).

I wish this type of support was the default. It never would have happened without this post on HN happening. There's a lot of value in having in depth emails about specific problems because it leads to documentation improvements that benefit everyone (plus it makes your paying customers happy on the spot because they got help using your product).

<comment><USER19> Interesting comment. I hope it works out for you.

I wonder whether that might also be what the last person from Stripe support meant when they mentioned sending us to some sort of specialist. Unfortunately by that point we'd already spent more than two weeks going back and forth with numerous people replying but no actionable advice, so we declined and made other arrangements. However, I did also send them some notes similar to my comments here, so perhaps the negative experience in our case could at least be helpful for improving their documentation for others in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A lot to live up to, but those Collison brothers are hella ambitious and execute like champs, the whole team at stripe is seriously world class. No surprise here and incredibly well deserved. Keep up the good work folks.

</comment><comment><USER21> Before we start piling on about whether or not its _really_ worth 35B just keep in mind how private companies are valued. Someone paid a lot of money for a chunk of stripe so thats what its "worth".

Personally I think stripe is close to worth - as another commenter put it - half of goldman sachs. The recent launch of loans, credit card issuing, etc are all bets or exercises that put stripe in an incredible position to build platforms for financial capabilities.

<comment><USER22> What about Stripe versus Adyen or Square?

<comment><USER23> Does the existence of other financial firms make Goldman Sachs worth any less? I don't think it does.

We're used to winner-take-all when it comes to these unicorns, but I'm not convinced it will stay that way. With many of these service niches, there's a ton of money to be made and enough needs / feature differentiation for competition.

<comment><USER24> Not the parent poster but I don't think that's what they were going after. I think they were asking whether the valuation is fair relative to other companies that are operating in a very similar space with similar ambitions. GS is an investment bank. A fairer comparison would be SQ, PayPal, Adyen or First Data.

Square's market cap is $25B today on the public markets with a 2019 estimated net revenue of $4.5B and almost $100B in transaction volume. I don't have any insight into Stripe's numbers, though I'd guess it's probably not 40% more than that? Willing to be surprised of course, it's a great company.

The real question being asked here is: "Is Stripe's valuation likely to hold up when they go public one day?"

<comment><USER22> Exactly. I've really liked Patrick Collison in interviews and I've long admired their API documentation. Square Capital was first to offer loans to SMBs that amortize over the transactions so Stripe isn't the first mover there. Some bigger companies like eBay and Burberry have chosen Adyen as a payment solution and I think Booking uses Braintree? Are there reasons outside of costs to choose Adyen or Braintree over Stripe?

Can Lyft develop their own payment tech because they only transact in the US and Canada, and global transactions are where things get complicated?

I like most things about Stripe, but Shopify is also growing like crazy, has an awesome founder, and provides the only alternative to Amazon right now and is valued at $35B.

<comment><USER24> > Are there reasons outside of costs to choose Adyen or Braintree over Stripe?

IMO costs are the worst reason to pick one of these providers at scale. They're all operating with a very similar cost basis, so you know they can each more or less match eachother, and if you come in with sufficient scale they'll offer custom pricing. Their costs are determined by the payment networks and their ability to mitigate risk and fraud. Stripe got a rep for being willing to match anyone even if they lost money in the process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I quite like Stripe - but them forcing the recent switch to Checkout V2 has me a bit miffed.

Previously it was super simple to add dynamic card payments to a site - <USER2> drop the JS in, make a call to your server and then call Stripe from your server. Done. And it's all done in a popup on the same page (so no context switching UX for the user).

Now it seems they've killed the simplicity of that in favour of a more PayPal- like experience - where the user gets pushed out to the Stripe website to checkout. And it becomes more complex to implement too - due to everything being async and webhook based. At this point I think Paypal might actually be easier to implement for a certain class of simple one-off payments (although their sandbox servers are cripplingly slow).

I'm a little bit skeptical of this change because I think it's partially a strategic play by Stripe (with the smokescreen of SCA-compliance + Apple Pay support) to become more of a user-facing online "wallet", rather than just a behind-the-scenes payment processor.

<comment><USER15> A wallet isn't the intent. It's almost the opposite!

If you remember the previous version, your customers used their saved card within Checkout. The new version of Checkout lets your customers use whatever payment method is easiest for them, and wherever it is. That's why we're big fans of things like Apple Pay (some have seen a conversion increase of 250%!), local bank payments in Europe, or even saved cards in Chrome (rolling out now).

From its inception, Checkout was designed to be the fastest way to accept payments, and I think it's now faster (and _even faster_ for customers). You can just drop in a single line of code—and that code doesn't have to be server-side. :)

<comment><USER26> But the whole question of "which payment method do you want to use?" is unnecessary complexity if they're sitting there with a card in their hand. Wouldn't it be better to let the front end service handle that question, and then use the appropriate Stripe APIs in the front end?

The whole revelation of stripe was that if a customer was sitting there with a credit card, they just put it there into the same screen and it was done. It was the other crappy products that forced you out into a merchant gateway then back again

I'm never going to send retail customers out a payment gateway with someone else's brand/colors/html, mostly because it's just too confusing to introduce more concepts at that critical stage when they're about to actually make the payment

<comment><USER19> _I 'm never going to send retail customers out a payment gateway with someone else's brand/colors/html, mostly because it's just too confusing to introduce more concepts at that critical stage when they're about to actually make the payment_

This is one of the concerns we have with SCA. By the nature of the additional authentication steps, they are necessarily hosted off-site in some situations. Handing your customer off to some other service in the middle of your payment flow and hoping they make it back is the only choice you have. It seems likely that this will reduce conversions, just as anything else that lengthens or complicates the payment flow usually does. What we don't really know yet is how much difference it will make in practice.

<comment><USER25> _This is one of the concerns we have with SCA. By the nature of the additional authentication steps, they are necessarily hosted off-site in some situations._

Is this a necessity though? Couldn't they just enter the 2FA code in the same manner that they enter their card details on the merchant site? i.e. After entering their card details, it will just prompt them for more info if necessary.

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure exactly what PSD2 requires in this respect without checking it again, but in practice I think all of the major schemes for card payments that actually exist do work that way, so it's probably beyond the ability of any service like Stripe to avoid at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Anybody who doubts whether Stripe is worth $35B just needs to read this comments section

I don't think I've seen a unicorn get this much love from developers

<comment><USER28> Developer love isn't everything. There are some projects on here that just as much dev love, but are not even able to fund a single person. There are also quite a few products I've used that have an amazing API but an otherwise awful product.

Yes, dev love is a big part of what allowed Stripe to become stripe, but it's probably not a good indicator whether Strip is worth $1B or $10B or $35B.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Founded in 2010, Stripe is middle-aged by Silicon Valley standards, but Mr. > Gaybrick and Stripe president John Collison said it had no plans to go > public.

Why doesn't Stripe want to become a public company?

<comment><USER30> Generally consensus is a recession is going to happen in the next year or two, and the next good time to IPO won't be for several years after it that.

<comment><USER31> ... which has absolutely nothing to do with going IPO, since they would cash out/in and get access to stockholders money at the exact day of their IPO, not "next year or two".

If you do not need to raise money there are limited reasons to go public, however you have much stricter reporting requirements, and general things you cannot do anymore since you are publicly traded, not to mention hostile takeovers, etc. Dell's story is a great example why you want to go public / go back private.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2013/10/30/you-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2013/10/30/you- wont-have-michael-dell-to-kick-around-anymore/)

<comment><USER32> > which has absolutely nothing to do with going IPO

Sure it does. You can't do an IPO in a day. A company starting the process now risks having the recession start before the IPO goes live.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Only ~10% of the world's GDP runs through the Internet right now, Stripe is working to raise that number and I fully support them. Their brand, their message, their product is stuff I study as I work on my own projects.

I feel this valuation is well-deserved. I rarely feel that way nowadays. This company will be around and still relevant a decade from now. I'd love to see them challenge the dinosaurs in the financial sector.

</comment><comment><USER34> Stripe is cool -- I use it every day -- but is it really worth, oh, half a Goldman Sachs?

I dunno man.

<comment><USER35> A couple thoughts on why this isn't a fair comparison:

\- Goldman is profitable but the employees extract most of it via compensation.

\- Goldman has to rewin their business every year. Very little recurring revenue and they are one recession from imploding.

\- You can't really compute valuation on a very small investment. It's not like the entire float is trading, and the small investment (relative to valuation) can have all kinds of liquidity preferences and special rights.

<comment><USER36> I think your third point supports the OP original point. Stripe probably isn't "really" worth that much now.

EDIT: wanted to mention that my impression is that they're a great company, just not worth $35B.

<comment><USER35> They are great. Don't undersell the benefit of recurring revenue. Compare the valuations of credit card companies vs GS too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I use STRIPE as my payment Processor for my 1 man shop. They are great. Stupid simple. They even offered me a cash advance. All i need now is for stripe to be my bank to keep all my money in there and pay my business bills from it. One stop shop to run my business, would be great! What would even be more useful to me then lending me money, is if they help me build my v2 and take a slice from my business. Finding engineers is hard and very expensive for a small online business like mine.

<comment><USER38> What do you feel like you need if Stripe gives you capital for your future receivables for you to go hire more engineers?

<comment><USER37> They offered me capital. I'd prefer Stripe engineering in exchange for equity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Adyen seems to have higher revenue, a faster growth rate, and stronger overall financials. By nearly double.

They're at $25b.

How is $35b justified?

<comment><USER40> The culture and product are exceptional. In the long run I think they will outcompete rivals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> At Producteev, my old start-up, I implemented the payment system using Paypal, omg, it was so hard, and so painful for the following reason: \- poor documentation \- I never knew how to get an up to date documentation \- very slow api and website \- very hard to understand the meaning of the undocumented data etc.

Once, my co-founder @Ilan Abehassera sent me a link to an article about Stripe on Techcrunch:

I signed up to Stripe, within minutes I was able to charge my own credit card through a CURL bash call, everything was clear, recurring payment perfectly handled, discount, etc etc. And this was at the very beginning of Stripe. Then I had to come up with why we should quickly switch from Paypal to Stripe.

Anyway, very good memoery, you definitely set the standard for how an API should be designed and I can't thank you enough for that!

</comment><comment><USER42> Well-deserved. One of the best dev platforms in existence right now with a clear value prop that is perfectly executed on at 100%.

I'm excited to see what the future holds for them.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wonder how Square missed the boat so hard with a developer payment API. I know they have one, but of course never hear about anyone using it.

<comment><USER43> I have no idea. I kept hammering them on this for years until Stripe came and ate all their lunch. And only THEN did Square release an API.

</comment></comment><comment> the-trev-dev We implemented stripe as an add-on a little more than 6 years ago and left it mostly untouched. After some recent TLC we now facilitate $100 million a year through Stripe. Our next hurdle is trying to integrate Stripe terminal for thousands of customers but $300 a pop is a tough sell.

<comment><USER15> For huge Terminal device orders like that, we can help with a volume discount. Just email in to firstname.lastname@example.com with how many you need (feel free to CC me at email@example.com).

(BTW, if you didn't see, we have a $59 device too. We're also working on supporting more.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's not that I don't like Stripe, but was it really so difficult to process payments before? When I start working with online payments in 2007/2008 we had multiple easy to use solutions for processing at least credit and debit cards.

You could have a test account in less than an hour, and be ready to process real transactions in less than a week.

Stripe has plenty of competition, most of which have been around longer. You could argue that Stripe have a better API and that certainly has value.

</comment><comment><USER45> Stripe is one of many services I would like to use but can't because they simply don't work in my country. I understand it can get somewhat complicated due to legalities I probably don't understand (or maybe the market is too small to even bother). But if your Navy can go through the country I live in, could you folks (in general and not directed at anyone) please try a little harder?

<comment><USER15> Where do you live? Our roadmap—literally—is quickly expanding to many more countries (we just launched in 8 new countries last week). And this new funding round will be put to use for that. :)

<comment><USER45> I wasn't expecting a reply, but it was nice to get one. I was just venting my frustration.

Panama, Central America. I signed up for the email notification - years ago :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Your competitor Adyen sits a few streets away from me in Amsterdam. Seems like a very thriving and interesting market you both operate in.

Congrats and best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER47> Well deserved. They are actually trying to do good + interesting scaling challenges by enabling small business all over the world.

</comment><comment><USER48> Please allow international, independent charges/transfers. This is a huge pain point in our Stripe experience.

<comment><USER15> We announced a beta for this last week! You can send money to 45 countries. (We're turning this on for businesses in the US first, and we're working on more countries soon.) [https://stripe.com/connect/payouts#request- invite](https://stripe.com/connect/payouts#request-invite)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Stripe has made building payments related products fun for me when previously I had suffered through working directly with banks and various poorly designed gateways. Stripe is still the gold standard to me when it comes to developer APIs, documentation, and smart iteration. Kudos to everyone at Stripe!

</comment><comment><USER50> > [Chief Product Officer] Mr. Gaybrick and Stripe president John Collison said > it had no plans to go public.

How's that possible? At this valuation they aren't looking at acquisition, right? VC aren't investing to the tune of $250mm (in this round alone) without an exit strategy, right?

What exit strategy if not IPO?

<comment><USER32> They're not _ruling out_ an IPO in the future. They just don't have plans to do it right now.

I have no plans to buy ice cream, but that doesn't mean I'll _never_ buy ice cream. In fact, it's highly likely I _will_ buy ice cream _at some point_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Here's their original Hacker News post, which is always a fascinating read: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3053883](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3053883)

</comment><comment><USER35> Great company but it's too hard to infer value from such a small investment.

<comment><USER52> Not really. Some people infer value without any investment -- only based on P&L and year-over-year growth. (Stripe is consistently making money, after all)

<comment><USER35> That's not what the listed valuation is based on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Why is Stripe still private?

<comment> babl-yc There's two main incentives to go public: raising money and liquidity.

They don't need to tap public markets to raise money. And investors are likely OK holding off on liquidity if the valuation continues to rise.

Going public typically requires a significant amount of effort across the company, which can reduce focus on other initiatives key to growing the business.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure what Stripe's policy is on selling shares on secondary markets, but another reason is that at some point employees need liquidity too.

<comment><USER54> Look at the valuation increases: Almost 2x year to year for quite a while. I don't expect most people seeing that kind of valuation increases looking to liquidate any part of their position unless they really can't help it.

If their fundamentals growth slowed to rates resembling the regular market, then sure, but as is, all a company with that growth rate might need is let tenured employees add, say 5% of their equity to the round so they can get a bit of liquidity to keep them quiet.

<comment><AUTHOR> No one can predict what the price will be in a year. Diversifying before a possible recession would be prudent, especially since payment processing volume is presumably highly correlated with consumer spending.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'm curious as to why they chose to raise $250M via VC instead of raising in the public markets? Of course there are trade offs and advantages to each, I'm just curious as to their calculus.

<comment><USER56> Can get a higher multiple from VCs probably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Congratulations to the Stripe team. Truly great product and company. The fact that WeWork truly thought that they were $12B more valuable than Stripe is insane to me.

</comment><comment><USER58> [Random techie]

This makes total sense. Stripe is driving the example for OSS for all countries to follow.

Thank you Stripe Co-founders. I appreciate your work and effort to bring GH where it is today.

</comment><comment><USER59> also their support for startups via their communities, atlas, and weekly free feeback is what truly makes them shine. keep up the great work!

</comment><comment><USER60> I've always wondered: What was Stripe's actual MVP when they started? How did they MVP in a few weeks, and start charging cards?

</comment><comment><USER61> I still wish I could accept multiple currencies with strip without conversion and spend them via a CC. Only reason I am still with PayPal

</comment><comment><USER62> Amazing and congrats! I'm curious if anyone knows how much revenue/profit Stripe is making? Or is it all still under wraps?

</comment><comment><USER63> > Still, a raft of younger startups, such as Checkout.com, are raising > hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital to challenge Stripe.

There is a paywall link for more details. I'm curious to know what they are looking to challenge (especially given the rave reviews that Stripe gets here at HN)

</comment><comment><USER64> This is a very reasonable value.

</comment><comment><USER65> So their business is still not sustainable without outside funding? Why do they need training wheels?

</comment><comment><USER66> I'm calling it now. New bubble.

</comment><comment><USER67> No way that's worth as much as Airbnb

<comment><USER68> What do you mean? They look like they're on a fast path to disrupt like all of banking! The banking industry has to be bigger than the bed and breakfast advertising industry.

<comment><USER69> Not to mention they are more regulatory compliant, and so likely deal with fewer lawsuits and have to spend less on lobbying.

<comment><USER70> > Not to mention they are more regulatory compliant

Source?

<comment><USER69> Here's a few:

[https://www.jotform.com/blog/is-stripe- psd2-compliant/](https://www.jotform.com/blog/is-stripe-psd2-compliant/)

Linda Scott of Silicon Dales in the U.K. uses Stripe and isn't surprised that the payment processor is in compliance. "We have found Stripe to be proactive and open around legislative changes."

[https://www.paymentssource.com/news/stripes-next-step-is- bui...](https://www.paymentssource.com/news/stripes-next-step-is-built-on- strong-authentication-compliance)

Stripe hasn't exactly been in the news for lawsuits or controversy, unlike AirBnB.

<comment><USER70> Not being in the news has nothing to do with being regulatory complaint.

You've provided articles that Stripe is compliant, which is fine, but nothing there indicates that Airbnb isn't compliant.

What regulations specifically is Airbnb breaking that Stripe isn't?

<comment><USER69> [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-19/airbnb- ip...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-19/airbnb-ipo-why-new- york-city-is-making-investors-nervous)

[https://www.wired.com/story/inside-airbnbs-guerrilla-war- aga...](https://www.wired.com/story/inside-airbnbs-guerrilla-war-against- local-governments/)

[https://www.epi.org/publication/the-economic-costs-and- benef...](https://www.epi.org/publication/the-economic-costs-and-benefits-of- airbnb-no-reason-for-local-policymakers-to-let-airbnb-bypass-tax-or- regulatory-obligations/)

<comment><USER70> First link: That's hosts not complying with the law, not Airbnb. There is a big difference between the two.

Second link: Still not in non-compliance with regulation, this is a story about lobbying.

Third link: Still not breaking any current regulations, it's about lawmakers considering regulating the business in the future.

Still looks like Airbnb is compliant with current regulations. Same as Stripe.

<comment><USER69> I will concede that perhaps I am wrong about AirBnB being less compliant than Stripe. Bravo to them for doing so in an environment that rapidly changes, sometimes designed to hem them in.

However, I will move the goalposts to rephrase my original point- AirBnB appears to operate in an environment that has more regulatory challenges, especially new ones, than Stripe, which operates in banking, which while regulations-heavy, which doesn't seem to be moving at nearly the same clip. And so my original point about AirBnB's problems still holds- the consequences of dealing with more lawsuits and having to spend more on lobbying.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Unshaky: Software attempt to fix "double key press" issue on Butterfly keyboards - <AUTHOR> https://unshaky.nestederror.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> What is it?

Apple made it difficult to replace only the keyboard and it costs hundreds of dollars. Unshaky might save your keyboard by dismissing such "second key hits" (any key presses that occur no later than x milliseconds after the previous effective one).

Github: [https://github.com/aahung/Unshaky](https://github.com/aahung/Unshaky)

Video walkthrough: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppaeCBLCfu0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppaeCBLCfu0)</comment>


Authorize.net down - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/AuthorizeNet/status/501771788020228096 <comment><USER2> Looks like their back up but don't see any communication from them on Twitter. Anyone heard anything?</comment>


Email records show e-scooters city discussion - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/2018/08/14/sf-escooter-permit-process-email-records.amp/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is so exciting. Cars are over. There is finally change.</comment>


Perchlorate, used in rocket fuels, may be more hazardous than previously thought - <AUTHOR> https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/research-story-tip-something-in-the-water-environmental-pollutant-may-be-more-hazardous-than-previously-thought <comment><USER2> I covered a Texas Tech study that showed how perchlorate can be passed to babies via breast milk. That was in... 2005. The EPA's recent decision is extremely disappointing. [https://www.wired.com/2005/02/rocket-fuel-fed-to- newborns/](https://www.wired.com/2005/02/rocket-fuel-fed-to-newborns/)

(An aside: Reporters don't usually choose their own headlines. I fought and lost a battle with my editor on that one.)

<comment><USER3> Riverside California also performed tests showing high levels of perchlorate in the drinking water at about the same time. The test results have not slowed residential growth in Riverside.

I'd love to see test results from Lompoc. Actually, anyone living within 10 miles of a military base needs to pay attention to their water quality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's also a big component of fireworks – and every July 4th levels in lakes and rivers spike.

That being said, this paper only presents in vitro data. Perchlorate may be more toxic than assumed, but the evidence isn't strong.

[https://sci-hub.tw/10.1038/s41594-020-0417-5](https://sci- hub.tw/10.1038/s41594-020-0417-5)

<comment><USER5> >> but the evidence isn't strong.

I always feel compelled to point out that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Or chemicals should be presumed unsafe until proven safe, rather than the other way around.

<comment><USER6> The problem with precautionary principle arguments (like your latter point) is that the precautionary principle is not self-consistent. You'd need to know the effect of implementing the precautionary principle before using it, which is probably impossible to calculate.

<comment><USER7> The precautionary principle is the initial condition though! (Ideally speaking, of course.)

The idea is to assume new chemicals may be dangerous. Then undertake careful testing programs to determine if they really are dangerous. I think that this is what the grandparent comment was suggesting.

There is good precedent for the use of this principle, take for instance drug trials. Furthermore, I think it would be beneficial to assume all new technologies may have detrimental effects, and weigh those effects carefully.

<comment><USER6> The precautionary principle could only be the initial condition if it had been followed since the beginning of time; you want it to be _our initial presumption_ , a presumption whose sole virtue is its convenience for PP advocates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is an area outside of Gilroy where a safety flare manufacturer had been dumping perchlorate in a pond for years. It was showing up in local wells years later and bottled water was provided for years until the levels went down enough. Now maybe it wasn't enough? Ouch.

</comment><comment><USER9> > In May 2020, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruled not to > place regulations on the amount of perchlorate that can be allowed in > drinking water.

Predictable. Just 150 days left to vote.

<comment><USER10> I don't get it. Do these people not live in the same country as everyone else? Breathe the same air and drink water? It's madness.

<comment><USER11> The EPA declined to regulate perchlorate because, among other things, it's not found in very many water systems and is naturally occurring in the southwest. (When the EPA tested thousands of systems in 2011, under the Obama administration, just 0.62% had perchlorate levels about the EPA recommended limit: [https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2011/02/11/2011-26...](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2011/02/11/2011-2603/drinking- water-regulatory-determination-on-perchlorate.))

Instead, EPA has been pursing less formal measures to reduce perchlorate in the specific drinking water systems where it has been found: [https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-notes-successes- reducin...](https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-notes-successes-reducing- perchlorate-drinking-water)

As one of "those people" who thinks it's harmful to have a national regulation where a more local one will do, I don't see the problem with this. There are many kinds of pollution that are national in nature, but drinking water is actually fairly localized. There is no evidence perchlorate pollution migrates great distances, so why do we need an nationwide regulation?

It should be noted that drinking water systems are almost entirely run by public entities, and already face massive funding challenges. When the EPA sets maximum allowable levels of a pollutant, it triggers a huge bureaucratic framework that everyone must follow. Is it unreasonable to decide that we don't need to force everyone to go that far for a chemical that appears in possibly concerning levels in less than 1% of systems?

This is an excellent example of how even the slightest push back on the notion that the federal government should regulate anything and everything is treated by the media as a crisis of epic proportions. You didn't know what perchlorate was before this article, and it doesn't affect 99% of water systems out there, but the EPA declining to create nationwide monitoring and enforcement framework for the chemical is somehow "madness."

<comment><USER12> I can only assume you live near an estuary.

Do you really believe that water pollution is only a problem to be handled by people who are downstream and not a shared responsibility?

<comment><USER11> I live on the Chesapeake Bay, the country's largest estuary. (I'm staring out my window at the water right now.) Of course I believe that water pollution is a shared responsibility—much of the silt in the Bay comes from agricultural operations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. But the EPA continues to push along NY/NJ/PA into meeting their 2025 TMDL targets for run-off into the Bay. Phosphorus and nitrogen from agricultural activities is the archetypal example of something that must be regulated at the federal level, and Wheeler doesn't deny it. (There is an ongoing spat about whether the TMDLs are directly enforceable against the states, but the EPA's current position was formulated during the Obama administration.)

But what doesn't come floating down the river is perchlorate. Accepting that the EPA must regulate certain types of water pollution doesn't mean that all water pollution must be regulated at the federal level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Aw man... perchlorates are also pretty abundant in Martian soil... another hurdle for future terraforming I guess :/

(Last I checked, [some] plants weren't bothered too much by these, but the question then is whether they accumulate in fruit...)

<comment><USER14> This may be a stupid question, but can anything be planted in Martian soil, even if the atmosphere was corrected? I always assumed not.

<comment><USER15> On the atmosphere point that's one thing that isn't as much of a problem. Plants can breath in Mars atmosphere and pressure.

Sure the pressure is 0.6% comparing Mars/Earth but the CO2% is 0.04% when comparing Earth/Mars.

In other words the partial pressure of CO2 on Mars is actually higher than on Earth. Which is great for CO2 breathing plants. If the temperature was raised a plant would have more CO2 available even with the much lower pressure than on Earth.

Indeed experiments with 95% CO2 (matching Mars) and 6millibars pressure (matching Mars) and with martian soil showed that Potato's grow fine. [https://cipotato.org/blog/indicators-show-potatoes-can- grow-...](https://cipotato.org/blog/indicators-show-potatoes-can-grow-mars/)

The only adjustment was temperature!

<comment><USER16> But how is this possible? Water has a vapor pressure of 23 millibars at 20 C, meaning water would boil from the leaves.

<comment><USER15> It boils but it takes many hours to boil off completely. Here's a study of the time taken to evaporate water in a near vacuum at 20C: [https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2014/pdf/2060.pdf](https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2014/pdf/2060.pdf)

25ml of liquid water takes 3 hours to completely boil off under vacuum. Less if the water is mixed in with other substances (eg. soil). The inner structure of the plant itself is capable of trapping water to an even greater extent. To the point where water directly boiling off the plant directly isn't significant.

Note that this was simulating asteroid conditions. Mars is slightly better at retaining water since it has slightly more pressure. This is why it's pretty likely that we're seeing flowing water on Mars each summer: [https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence- th...](https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-that-liquid- water-flows-on-today-s-mars)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Until 10 years ago, Dry Cleaners used this for all our clothes.

<comment><USER18> You're thinking of Tetrachloroethylene (perchloroethylene)

<comment><USER17> Am I? Is that different?

<comment><USER19> Both contain Cl but perchlorate is a highly oxidizing anion (ClO4-), while perchloroethylene is relatively unreactive (though carcinogenic) organic compound (Cl2C=CCl2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Perchorate is one of those chemicals that I first heard of on account of their use as rocket fuels. It seems that you won't go far wrong by regarding anything in that class as hazardous.

</comment><comment><USER21> Space rockets should all switch to hydrolox, at least that burns clean. Like Delta IV.

(yeah, yeah, terrible impulse density..)

<comment><USER22> What's wrong with methane/oxygen?

<comment><USER21> \- methane is a very potent greenhouse gas. What's the effect of methane in the stratosphere?

\- there are some results suggesting soot emissions in the stratosphere could be a problem if space launches increase a lot. Methane burns a lot cleaner than kerosene, but afaiu some soot is still formed.

Now all things considered, given nobody seems interested in a pure hydrolox lower stage due to the poor impulse density, methalox certainly looks better than alternatives.

<comment><USER23> GHG emissions from rocketry are so trivially small that it's really not worth optimizing at this point. Maybe if SpaceX flew 500 rockets per day.

(disclaimer: I work in a climate research group)

<comment><USER21> Total volume is trivial compared to all other human activity, but like I mentioned there is some concern about the effect of rocket emissions in the middle and upper atmosphere given that we're likely to see a substantial increase in launch rate. See [https://eos.org/features/the-coming-surge-of- rocket-emission...](https://eos.org/features/the-coming-surge-of-rocket- emissions) for a recent overview.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why Don't YC Alumni Pay It Forward? (My Personal Plea) - <AUTHOR>

There's well over 200 Y Combinator companies these days.  All of these companies receive investment to run their own business.  All of these founders subscribe to the belief that "You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss" ( http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html ).
Yet to the best of my personal knowledge, none of these companies pay it forward ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_it_forward ).  Many of these companies have platforms for developers to build on.  Yet I can tell you having personally asked a few YC founders about investing in other companies that no YC company pays it foward.   The response I've gotten from these founders is "I have no idea how that would work."  I call B.S.
These same founders, however, seem to want people working for them.  Yes, more people need jobs than need to start companies.  But I don't understand how founders can subscribe to the belief of being one's own boss and then turn around and ask everyone else to work for them.  It's as if to say "What's good enough for me is to be my own boss. What's good enough for you is to kiss my ass and beg for a job."
So why don't YC alumni pay it forward? Why don't those of you that are founders with funding make a conscious effort to invest in other companies yourselves? At the very least, for those of you that have platforms and API's, why don't you invest in companies to build on your platforms and API's?
BE THE CHANGE. <comment><USER2> 1\. You cant make assumptions about someones beliefs because they are a YC company

2\. The number of YC companies that have a significant enough exit long enough ago for the founders to turn into angels is very small

3.YC companies in general are very supportive of the ecosystem, using and promoting similiarly new companies, helping interview yc candidates, giving advice and providing services.

4\. Companies are funded to make money doing what they are good at, they need to hire employees to do that, they werent given the investment to become investors themselves, that happens after their own companies have an exit

</comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps they are reminded of the saying "a fool and his money are soon venture capital"

I think only a very few numbers of YC companies have reached the stage where they coud responsibly choose to risk some cash on an investment. Most liley the ones that _have_ done it have not made a big deal about it, and the others are still trying to figure it out.

In the end though, I would suggest you do not adopt the idea that these other companies have any requirement or responsibility to pay it forward.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's easily a much greater risk to spend money on recruiting, hiring, training, and paying taxes and benefits for full-time employees than it is to make a comparatively small investment to build new products built around your company.

<comment><USER3> _citation needed_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think a lot of them simply aren't at the level where they can do that, or they're reinvest their money in their next project so they can afford to do the next project without external investment.

I don't think there's some secret evil "we take take take but don't give any back" mindset.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not a YC alum and I don't intend to be and what I'm about to say is personal opinion so take it as is.

As an entrepreneur, and someone who've successfully sold his own startup, I would gladly help out other entrepreneurs but I wouldn't invest in any. Others have ask if I'd be interested in investing and simply put, I don't enjoy investing nor is it something in my nature. What I love to do and what I'm passionate about is building a company.

I'm not the type that can invest in others and casually give advice on the side lines. I am the type that is very hands on and you can't be an investor and do that unless you plan on doing very limited investing and that's it. My opinion of course. That said, that doesn't mean I'm not interested in helping people, make introductions, and give valid advice freely.

Paying it forward doesn't necessarily mean having to put in money. Everyone is different. Just because they don't want to invest doesn't mean they aren't trying to help. You need to clearly distinguish the two. As a matter of fact, I wish most people who look for investors to invest make better choices on the investors they would accept rather than focus on just the money they would get. Mark suster says it best that taking on an investment is worse than marriage as its a heavy commitment. Get to know the people who are investing in you behind preliminary meetings and understand the value in which they can provide beyond the money. Even YC are selective of who they accept.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't know much about YC, but my take is that there haven't been that many around with big enough exits to become angels. Here is some counterproof:

<http://daskapitalcapital.com/> (Alexis Ohanian of Reddit's investments)</comment>


The PC was supposed to die a decade ago. Instead, this happened - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-pc-was-supposed-to-die-a-decade-ago-instead-this-happened/ <comment><USER2> The worst type of click-bait, don't journalists get any training that discourages writing articles and headlines like this.

<comment><USER3> Journalists don't typically write headlines.</comment></comment>


The Multiple Inert Gas Elimination Technique 50 Years Later: Lessons Learned - <AUTHOR> https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Multiple-Inert-Gas-Elimination-Technique-50-Wagner/ef2df8b500a3e2871ecc9edf100721e78dc944be <comment><USER2> Can OP give us a summary? It looks interesting but I dont understand.

<comment><AUTHOR> A recent MedCram video on COVID-19 and lung function[0] mentioned the technique, and how he hopes it is used to figure out the lung failure modes for this disease. The lungs are very complex systems and the video goes through three possible ways for lungs to fail. COVID-19 is so new, doctors don't have a good understanding of which failure (bottleneck) is killing people. The technique was invented in the 70s to be able to disentangle all the flow factors and pinpoint where the rate limited step is in real diseased lungs.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO4xgcIaPeA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO4xgcIaPeA)</comment></comment>