hootener

Probably has a thing or two to do with today's date...

I've used both stripe and braintree to build payment processing services that do hundreds of thousands of dollars in transactions per month.

I can't really tell you which is better because it really does depend on a lot of variables that may be unique to your business (e.g., where you intend to operate, the payment methods your target customer base is comfortable using -- hint: it's not always credit cards and paypal, how you intend to bill).

Since I've got more experience with braintree, though, I can comment on some aspects of its use specifically -- primarily their drop-in UI, which has frustrated me at every turn. Their drop-in is probably one of the most frustrating pieces of technology I've ever integrated into a website. Not because it's poor, necessarily, but because it only feels about 80% complete. The user experience is really frustrating at times. Some examples:

* Last I checked, payment method removal wasn't possible in the drop in - you have to integrate their API specifically for that.

* Choosing what payment method you want can be really confusing due to the card number / email address obfuscation they use in the drop in. For example, if you have two paypal accounts, selecting between one of the other is difficult when they're listed as [email protected] and [email protected]. The same thing happens if you use multiple credit cards of the same issuer (two Visas for example). Simply allowing the user to set a card name in the ui (e.g. "Personal Visa" vs "Work Visa") would mitigate this problem.

* It currently isn't possible to set a Coinbase account as the default payment method in the Drop-in. Despite the Drop-in supporting Coinbase fully in every other way. So there's another reason to incorporate the API.

* Lack of other major payment methods. With BrainTree you get Venmo, Coinbase, CC, Apple/Android pay, and Paypal. Depending on your customer base, you could be woefully under-serving them. As my current business grows, we're now looking into incorporating other processors to use alongside braintree to support things like gift cards, ACH transfers, Amazon Payments, etc. This may just be unique to my industry, but I can't stress enough to do your homework ahead of time and understand how your customers expect to pay you.

* I get numerous reports from users of being unable to pay using paypal through the drop-in if they don't have a credit card attached to the paypal account. I've contacted BrainTree numerous times about this and have yet to get a definitive answer as to why this is the case. Additionally, if a credit card is connected to the paypal account, the withdrawal comes from that and not the paypal balance. If you want to frustrate your user base, let them use their paypal account but not their paypal balance...

As I've typed this, I realized it's a pretty ranty indictment of BrainTree. On the whole it isn't a terrible service. Uptime is good, money goes in, comes out, and my business keeps on running. It's not a bad service, I just have a lot of drop-in frustration. I kind of hope I get a reply that says, "The BrainTree drop-in does all this, you're just using it incorrectly."

>'Good ole boy' healthcare companies abound

Ugh. Tell me about it. The old guard in tech around here has led to some real hair pulling moments for me.

I think we're headed for a schism, though. Can't wait.

- maintain consistent dev/test/prod environments

We're pretty heavily invested in Docker. To this point, it's really nice knowing that all the developers are operating in consistent environments.

An additional bonus is that using Docker makes it really easy to propagate infrastructure changes to the rest of your team for use in development. And, more importantly, know those infrastructure changes are consistent across local dev setups.

As an example, I recently incorporated Sphinx search into a project we were working on. I didn't want to require devs to install Sphinx on their own machines and get it up and running for search to function properly. I also didn't want devs to have the overhead of running Sphinx for search on their local boxes unless they were actively working on something related to search. Basically, I wanted search to be optionally configured to run on startup.

I used a DockerFile to setup Sphinx in its own container, pushed the DockerFile to a Tools source repository we use, and then incorporated the build and running of that container into our startup scripts (just some simple orchestration stuff for the local machine written in bash). Now, if a dev wants a containerized search mechanism they run a simple bash script to build that container, then run another command to spin up our dockerized web app with a connection to a running sphinx search container. We do this for all of our services: mysql, redis, sphinx, the web app itself, and anything else we might need.

As an added bonus, all the Docker CLI work and orchestration of our application is easily hidden behind a shell script. If a dev wants to run the webapp, they simply run: app server dev. If they want the app with search they run: app server dev search from the command line. Developers never need to know what's going on under the hood to get their job done. From their perspective, it just works.

I think you've hit the nail on the head, here. WebRTC is really great for a handful of people. Implementation using some third party was never the difficult part, but scale was and is still a total nightmare.

I'd love to see WebRTC done by a service provider in a highly scalable way, so I can stop relying on RTMP (and typically embedding a flash player to support it) to deliver live streaming audio/video on a large scale.

As someone who has only leveraged WebRTC through third party providers (e.g., OpenTOK, etc.), I have no idea the complexity of what I'm asking for. Perhaps it's boil the ocean difficult, but it sure would be nice to have!

This is what caused me to abandon HHVM for plain ol' PHP around a year ago. I was running it in Docker containers and the memory leaks would regularly crash my containers if left unattended for more than a couple of days.

It was quite frustrating because I noticed some definite performance gains (e.g., ~2x faster page loads, etc.), but ultimately opted for PHP's stability.

The benefit to running all this in Docker is that I can swap HHVM back in relatively easily (unless it's changed really dramatically over the past 10 months or so). Your comment has me tempted to give it another shot!

We do this, but use a sliding scale. The middle of the scale is what's locally considered to be a fair salary and fair equity compensation for whatever role we're hiring for. The equity / salary offered at each end of the scale tends to fluctuate depending on the impact of the role.

So far it's worked out well. I think potential hires like the flexibility because it lets them optimize for larger short term gain (a higher salary) or a potentially larger long term gain (more equity if the company sells, IPOs, etc.)

Anecdotally it tends to make negotiations easier for us. We basically end up presenting the entire solution space we're willing to offer for the ''what's my salary and equity'' problem. With the extents known, negotiations tend to settle around some point within that solution space. Your mileage, of course, may vary, though.

> It's a marketing play.

I hope there's no one in this thread naive enough to think otherwise. Of course it's a marketing play. That doesn't mean it can't benefit you.

Your initial point concerned vendor lock in and how this was a cheap way for companies to impose it. My response to that was "lock in to whom?" due to the diverse hosting providers on offer. Granted no mom and pop VPS provider is amongst the perk list (to my knowledge), but you have a several serious options to choose from.

In terms of my company the perks provided did anything but impose vendor lock in. I put parts of my infrastructure where it made the most sense for our business. This actually ended up being multiple providers amongst the list of those offering perks. If anything the benefits on offer from TechStars (and YES other accelerators that join these incentive programs) led to a more diverse and robust infrastructure setup which I hope will benefit us more in the long run.

But yes, fine, I acknowledged in another response lower down on this page that I should have qualified my original statement. The perks on offer were a game changer for my business because it gave us the freedom to choose providers and technologies that made the most sense for the product. For us this was crucial at an early stage and benefitted us immensely. I would assume our company was not necessarily unique in this regard, but perhaps I'm wrong.

In either case, who cares? You either were or weren't going to join TechStars or some other accelerator because the accelerator's terms made sense for your business when weighed against the benefits. Perks are just that...perks. Not fundamental lynchpins upon which you hope to run your business. My only initial argument was these perks are substantive and helpful, and shouldn't be dismissed outright. Apologies if that initial argument was not well-formed enough to get that point across to you effectively.

> Some of those perks (maybe even all of them) are not things TechStars paid for.. they're things that other companies chose to give away to startups in an accelerator (of which TechStars is one).

Of course they aren't. Many are conditional against being enrolled in an accelerator. However, like I said in a previous post, the linked article relates to turning down TechStars. Full stop. Not turning down TechStars for some other accelerator that offers many of the same perks.

> This is a serious question: if Amazon (and Microsoft, SoftLayer, Paypal, and others) setup a program for startups, give the services to startups, and pay for those services from their own pockets... What did TechStars do to earn a share of the credit for those programs?

They were a participating accelerator in that program, that's all (to my limited knowledge).

In relation to these perks being "game changers" it isn't about TechStars having better perks than Accelerator X, it's about TechStars allowing me access to benefits I didn't have before joining an accelerator that ended up being enormously helpful to my startup.

The "game changer" in my company's case was the peace of mind that comes from knowing that for a full year we can shave at least $5k/mo (once again quoting the BizSpark credit here for convenience) off of our operating expenses. That's a technology hire for us in the city where we are based. So, for us, it means a lot.

I apologize because I obviously colored my original statement through the lens of my company's own experience.

This statement:

> but some of the things offered by TechStars are game changers

should have been qualified by stating that it was coming from personal perspective. So, in the short term, these perks meant a lot to the technological freedom of my company based on our technology needs and the other places we could put those savings to work based on our business needs at the time. For my business, the perks made a difference and were a big help early on, they may not do anything for your business or others.

> List them.

They're linked in the parent to my original reply.

> Let's just call this what it is.. cheap way to lock start-ups in your infrastructure

Whose infrastructure? Perks come from Amazon, Microsoft, Softlayer, Rackspace, Digital Ocean, and others. That's a pretty wide swath of hosting providers, but I guess if you want to run your business from a couple of boxes under your desk, you're on your own.

> For most early stage startups, hosting costs represent extremely low % of expenses.

Cost is relative. $5k/mo for a year (citing the BizSpark Plus credit directly here) can make a big difference early on when you're pre-revenue. In the case of TechStars, this is particularly true if you decide not to take the convertible note.