> Account created after prior account( haploid )was inexplicably silent-banned.

A bit more civility might help you avoid a repeat of that.

That's more of a guideline aimed at people who aren't assholes in person.

I'm just taking what you said at face value. If you come on HN, act like an asshole, and go on to say you'd behave the same in person, then the inference is pretty obvious, isn't it?

Because people disagree with whether your approach is acceptable in any case. It's not that hard to understand.

Spot on. It's different this time.

Sure, it surprised us all when revenues and earnings turned out to actually matter in 2000, but it's 2011 now, man, and the future's so bright I've got to wear shades! The fact that I can download 14,511 apps that allow you to share photos of your cats is the only indication you need that we're living in the post-earnings era.

Making money is for squares. As long as you can line up that Series P round, the party's still on, man. Rock it, don't block it.

"Making money is for squares. As long as you can line up that Series P round, the party's still on, man."

What's sad is I think many entrepreneurs are taking this seriously. They think "starting a company" means raising a ton of money, working on cool projects, and never once thinking about making real money.

It's getting harder and harder to call these projects companies or businesses.

What's also sad is that those very entrepreneurs are sometimes right (youtube, skype). It makes it harder to be critical of that strategy.

What exactly do you mean by "large customers"? We run several million dollars worth of credit card transactions per year( through cybersource and authorize.net right now ), and we pay at or near the wholesale interchange rate.

Even so, our accounting department still can't fully untangle the mess of foreign transfer and conversion fees, float-related costs, gateway fees, amex vs visa discount rate differentials, pci compliance service fees, and all the other horrible shit that Stripe eats for you, in order to give me a straight answer as to whether or not we currently pay more or less than 0.30 + 2.9%.

This is not a hit on our accountants, cybersource, stripe, or our merchant bank - just making the point that it's not so easy to state categorically that Stripe's fees will turn off somewhat larger volume customers.

Generally you end up paying 3.5-4% assuming you accept foreign credit card transactions, Amex, corporate cards, rewards cards, etc. There's a misconception that it's around 2%, but if you do these types of transactions and look closely at your statements, 3.5-4% is the normal range, including a few chargebacks.

Very good point. I can't untangle mine and I am way, way smaller than your company.

If you are indeed close to interchange, you shouldn't have an issue with many of those things (aside from Amex). Cybersource and Authorize.net are a source of your problems - they do their best to lock you in to terrible pricing and tack on hefty fees all over the place.

Foreign fees really should be quite close to your other fees. You take a hit on the fact that they are "foreign" but they actually fall under a lower interchange category, so it comes out a wash for the most part. There should be no float-related costs, gateway fees are standard for auth.net, most reasonable places won't charge you PCI fees if you fill out the simple questionnaire, etc. With a decently-priced interchange plus merchant account and gateway, you should come out much cheaper.

Disclosure: I'm with FeeFighters (http://feefighters.com). We have a bundled merchant account/gateway (http://samurai.feefighters.com) that is a bit different from Stripe, priced at 2.3% + $0.30, but has a monthly fee of $25 and AmEx is separate (2.9%+$0.15).

No, you're probably not incorrect, factually, but if you're expecting a bunch of upvotes for a rehash of the kind of mumbled apologetics we've been subjected to since at least the 80's (eg. the world is better now that it ever has been) when we're staring down the barrel of a massive deficit that wasn't here 10 years ago and you've got home foreclosures and unemployment rates sitting at or near historic highs, well...

I must be living in a different version of the United States than the author is. I don't think I've ever experienced the kind of false optimistic outlook referred to here. Is this a Silicon Valley thing?

Most people I talk to about our business are fairly realistic about the challenges we face, or progress thus far, etc.

1000 years? That is a timeframe long enough to virtually guarantee the occurrence of the Singularity, so I would have to say Vinge/Kurzweil/Eliezer/Goertzel/De Garis, or whomever switches on the first self-modifying artificial general intelligence.

Ok, I will make a long story short, here.

My current business began as a side project many years ago. At first, I was building/managing the technical aspect of the business( website, integration, inventory systems, fulfillment systems, etc )remotely on an average basis of 20 hours per week. I say average because some weeks I did nothing, and other weeks I worked more than my "day job".

Growth was so strong that I ultimately made the decision to jump ship from my prior company and make my current company a fulltime endeavor. It was one of the most difficult decisions I've made in my life, as the cofounder of my prior company was very close.

During this time, we've grown from < $100k/y revenues to > $5mm ( making an effort to be vague here ), and still enjoying good growth. We are profitable and never took a dime of VC.

Hopefully this anecdote answers your question sufficiently.

Would you be willing to talk to me a bit privately? I checked your profile and it looks like your biz is in the clothing space. That is something I have considered doing something with. If you are willing to chat a bit, my email is in my profile.

Thanks.

Inspirational anecdote ya got there. Thanks for sharing.

If you don't mind me asking. How long did it take to get to 5mm in revenues? Also, do you / did you ever have partners on this biz?

It's been many years; We've been building this company fulltime since 2005, and on a part time basis since 2002. Bootstrapping is a slog, since you make expansionary investments from cash flow only.

Yes, I have a co-founder. In fact, he's the majority owner.

I've been noticing this for about half a year now, particularly when googling for technical documentation.

Google is falling down on its core product, because they can..

kloncks is probably utilizing hyperbole in making comparisons with the great thinkers of western civilization.

That said, we do still talk about Edison, Carnegie, and Rockefeller, over a century later. A millennium? Probably not, but the point is valid, even if off by roughly half an order of magnitude.

Sure, no one's saying Jobs will be forgotten to the sands of time any time soon. Yet 1000 years is a little bit of a stretch, especially when you try to size him up next to the ancient greats.

Lots of differences: for a start, much more will be remembered of our times than is remembered from 1000 years ago. Historians in the future will be trying to determine what is important from too much data.

So you'd expect that someone who rises in the general consciousness now to actually be far more impactful than the 'ancient greats'.

A better analog to Jobs than the ancient Greeks might Michelangelo, and we still talk about him, because what he did for that time was incredible. In fact it's still incredible. Jobs didn't just build amazing products for our time, but amazing products for the future as well. We didn't just fall in love with his products, we fell in love with him and Apple as well. [And FYI, I'm not a fanboy!]

This must be the first entrepreneur/capitalist/CEO that has been mourned on such a global scale, and that in itself is remarkable; there's no one who comes close. Maybe Warren Buffett, but outside of the US he's not that well-known. The only person I can think of from modern times might be Walt Disney, someone who was similarly creative, demanding, and left a cultural and commercial legacy behind.

The problem with that analogy is Michelangelo's work actually survived all that time, the iPhone etc's will be replaced by something from Apple or another company, and the devices will get tossed and forgotten just like all the other generations of technical devices that preceded it.

While true, that doesn't really say much.