Thank you for your tips. Can I retroactively subcontract (the books) canadian --> US? That makes a lot of sense, otherwise I think I'm facing a double taxation problem.
Stripe, Balanced, Braintree, etc all look like much better technical solutions (Apis, ease of integration) than what I use currently, but the pricing is SO prohibitive! Are there any plans for these guys to do Interchange+ pricing, and lower per txn down to a reasonable 10c? At the end of the day, payment processing is a commodity and I'll gladly do the extra work it takes to integrate with a cheaper processor.
My biggest obstacle with Sidekiq is communicating back to the frontend client when jobs are done (i.e. credit card processed, FacebookGraph friends cached, etc). Right now I use Pusher (websockets) with a polling fallback, but it's clunky to develop and who likes polling. Does this solution address that at all? If not, what would you do?
My bank required that I could only use a 6 character alphanumeric password when signing up. Kind of scary, but then again, it made me choose a super random PW like v3Ff78 whereas most all people in that situation would use their same password for everything, such as baseball. Thats my theory anyway
I can't remember what it was, but someone posted here before with a library to help build clean, easy to use API Docs.
The one that looks like a split-pane with examples on one side and details on the other.
I'm a SCUBA instructor (trained and living in Vancouver BC), from Seattle.. and I can definitely attest to the character of pacific northwest divers as being very pro-environment, "protect the wildlife", to the point of craziness. Oh man, I can only imagine the aggressive and passive-aggressive reactions this kid got when he pulled that thing out of the water...
Sure, they're nice creatures. If I had a choice, more often than not I would say let the thing be. But I also own a speargun and hunt on occasion. I like the sport, and it feels good to put your own skills on the table once in a awhile. What irritates me is how irrationally angry people get... it's an act of selfishness, a chance for a relatively passive person to stand up for something. It's not really about the octopus, it's about their beliefs. People have to stand for something... whether that's Obama or an Octopus, it doesn't really matter.
The cool thing about running a company, as I'm sure a lot of people here do, is how quickly you get to see the big picture on the world, and sit in the shoes of everyone else's perspective. Wearing a lot of hats and working on hard things really trains you to only give a shit about things that matter, things you can have an influence on, where the goal is not to change people's opinion subjectively, but to prove, objectively, that you can add value and earn a place on this planet.
Imagine you are one of the engineers behind traffic lights. That's something to be proud of, you've built something that keeps people safer, can allow emergency vehicles to pass through, are centrally controllable, it can do this this and this, EVERYONE knows about them... "Hey I'm the guy that invented the traffic light!"
BUT now look at the "primitive" roundabout. It wins. Something thats simpler, won't fail, and actually keeps people safer.
This is the dilemma I always fight with myself when I build tech solutions to problems: Does this really make it better?
Just because I think its cool, or even that I am proud of it, doesn't mean its good for people to use. For me it always comes down to what is the best. I believe the best in anything is very objective, and that can often lead to very existential questions...
I make software that replaces paper tickets. The battle is always there when someone will say they just want to stick to paper tickets. Sometimes, its hard to disagree with them.
but when a customer pays me money, I start to feel better for awhile. Then the thought is not: 'is this the best solution to this problem'... but rather: 'is this the best thing I am capable of'
Some of the newer gateways (Braintree, Stripe) don't have monthly fees - but there is a tradeoff. Both of those guys have a high per transaction fee (25-30 cents) and also a relatively fixed discount rate (I haven't heard of anyone negotiate it down with volume). They also don't have some of the extra features other gateways offer: ACH/EFT transfers, Interac Online (canada), card-present transactions (lower discount rate), etc.
For example, I use Beanstream (canada), my monthly fee is about $70, but I pay a much lower discount rate (as I can plug in my own merchant account), and my per transaction fee is only 10 cents. When I do 4,500 transactions in one month for a big event, that saves me $900 alone. I can also do automated ACH transfers to my clients (I provide event ticketing software), Interac Online support, and more. My business model is also TPPA (third party payment aggregation) so the risk is much higher. They also have great customer support.
But the $70 does hurt. I think more and more gateways will start to have to offer no monthly fees much like Stripe/Braintree.
Yeah I'm an American who went to school here in Vancouver, started a company, doing well, but probably moving myself and the company back to the States soon as it's very difficult to get a VISA. The new startup VISA only applies to companies that are fundraising.
When I first started goodnights http://www.goodnights.me & http://www.guestmanager.com I had a grand vision to take on a huge goliath, raise money, get employees, yada yada, the whole "start up dream". The product took many turns, adapting to customer demands.
After realizing event ticketing is quite the classic commodity, I asked myself, how can I differentiate my offering? I can't compete on features, service fee kickbacks, venue relationships, etc. So I built a guestlist component and targeted it directly for nightclubs. And so, after a couple failed fundings, working with crap people, I had a great product, a couple loyal customers, poor marketing. I've spent (am spending) tons of time to clean up the company (get it down to just me, no overhead, etc) - I've dropped the whole 'startup thing', now I'm building a SaaS company for myself & my customers, and see where it will take me. I prefer the freedom and debt-free lifestyle of living that it affords me, over being a CEO of some venture funded company.
But to really answer your question, I got my first (SaaS) customer by hanging out every night at nightclubs, getting a couple people to evangelize using my software through the beta's. Once it was good enough, such that I didn't have to do anything for the club to operate itself, I went to another nightclub and just sold them on it. It wasn't that hard because the product is good. The clinching feature in my case is the ability to add a guest to the iPad via SMS - promoters love that. Now I am trying to figure out how to scale up my efforts, see if any partnerships make sense, maybe move geographically (I'm in Vancouver, but American)