My colleague @hazelcough was in charge of some pretty major changes to the Stripe Payments API. I really, really love the writeup; it touches on how we matured in our understanding of this problem domain over 10 years.
People have a very positive impression of our level of discernment, but we certainly don't have all the answers and didn't when we started.
There is no single resource explaining the complexity of moving money around; we uncovered it through work over years.
And while Stripe is a company with very global ambitions, our internal understanding of the payments space was very, very influenced by being built primarily in the U.S., where cards are ubiquitous and the primary payments rail startups care about.
It turns out cards are weird!
(It is a fun historical accident that e-commerce hit U.S. first and that credit cards, due to historical accident, have payment capture and settlement semantics which happily align with what a web developer could actually reasonably implement in 1996! Almost nothing else does!)
So as we've expanded from cards to other payment methods, and as cards have gotten more complicated in some parts of the globe (e.g. 3-D Secure & other semi-synchronous bank authentication schemes which can't happen in a single HTTP request/response cycle), our API had to change.
This additional complexity accreted like a barnacle on the API for several years, and we needed substantial redesigns (and then a massive migration effort which required customer work) to get closer to the original ergonomics of the developer experience.
I'd feel remiss if I didn't make one point explicit: while every project at Stripe is the work of many people, this particular one would not have been possible without Michelle's work. She breathed this problem, for years, and is a model for extremely effective senior engineers.
Speaking of things that you might not have expected would take us 10 years:
This blog post is the first one which was not handwritten in ERB. We now have a CMS.
"What you can't really expect me to believe that."
Oh no, trust me, I am being extremely literal.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
This takes advantage of some quirks of electricity generation and usage, which is that baseload power is consistently available but very expensive to store relative to provide, but actual usage is not consistent throughout day/week.
So Ohm's business model is "I am going to contract with you, the power company, to buy X,000 homes worth of electricity, which I intend to resell near retail. I will also use *much less than that* when the grid is stressed. So, quote me aggressively on the rate please."
Obligatory disclaimer: this is in my capacity as industry pundit and not in my capacity as an equity holder.
It will also be interesting how rank-and-file employees will have more options to express a preference on liquidity versus ownership, over the course of their careers.
Me: “Hmm I have to send a package to Ruriko’s mother. I’m sure the delivery firm can do that, but I don’t want to lug it to a convenience store to fill out the form. Do they have a website?”
Kuroneko: “We do! How about you type in the address/etc and we will send someone.”
Me: “So they’ll arrive tomorrow maybe?”
Kuroneko: “Or in two hours, you know, a more reasonable speed.”
Me: “And how much will this cost?”
Kuroneko: “Oh the driver will quote you on the spot, because weight/parcel dependent, but think like $5.”
Me: “And when does it arrive?”
Kuroneko: “Tokyo to anywhere in the country? Tomorrow. What 2 hour window is most convenient to you.”
Me: “Even after living here 15 years this amazes me.”
Kuroneko: “This is literally the only thing we do.”
The best explanation I've heard from folks in the know in cryptoland which is favorable to Tether: massive, massive abuse of OTC desks / other-than-formal currency brokers in China, with a huge amount of yuan being accumulated domestically in return for Tethers.
SaaS asymptotes are brutal, brutal things, and they sneak up on first-time SaaS owners all the time. You feel like you're doing everything right, the product is getting better, you haven't stopped working... but growth hits a wall.
This happens with mathematical regularity.
"That's a metaphor, right?"
No, I mean there is literally a formula. Tell me your acquisition numbers last month and your churn rate; I'll tell you your revenue when you hit the wall.
This is a great business waiting to be built. The state of the art for it, at places which charge $$$$ for tax preparation, is "Get out your calendar, tell us what days you were in X (perhaps by filling in Excel), and a ludicrously underutilized person will total by hand."