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by watsonc73
3360 days ago
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I'm a fan of Stripe generally and loved the concept of Atlas when I first heard about it. I'd be slightly concerned about the commitment bias that might creep in though for startups who rely on Atlas for all their incorporation and financial needs. As a future gatekeeper for some pretty crucial operational issues, do you see any risk in Stripe eventually becoming a dependency for startups? I'd compare it slightly to the App Store where Apple made it simpler for developers to submit, launch and market their apps. As the gatekeeper they then kept increasing their portion of in-app charges. Reduced friction at the start for developers resulted in a sort of sunk cost problem at a later stage. As Da Vinci said "it's easier to resist at the beginning then it is at the end". |
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We see ourselves more as a builder of doors than a keeper of gates. There is a formidable wall of operational nonsense which separates entrepreneurs from building things and selling them to people. We want to get them through that as quickly as possible, rather than creating additional hurdles.
For similar reasons, Atlas is more than happy to help folks take payments with Stripe, but that’s not required or exclusive in any way. If your company thinks Paypal or Apple is a better way to get money from your customers, awesome; your company is no less able to transact with them than any other company. (We literally help people on our forums get set up with DUNS numbers to get on the App Store, for example.)