<story><title>Building a Developer Cult</title><url>https://subvert.substack.com/p/stripe-building-a-developer-cult</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gregdoesit</author><text>If we are taking about Stripe, we should mention the silent competitor barely anyone talks or knows about outside the payments industry: Adyen.&lt;p&gt;Stripe’s current, (private) valuation is $36B. Developers love them. Adyen’s current, public valuation is $43B (they IPO’d amongst little press coverage). Most developers don’t know about them.&lt;p&gt;So what is the difference? Market strategy. Adyen only goes after large businesses and has something many others, including Stripe cannot compete with efficiently: (far) lower pricing, higher market coverage.&lt;p&gt;The developer experience for Adyen is decent - no complaints, perhaps a bit less “magical”. They will definitely have a fraction of the customers, but those customers are huge. They get and seek little to no publicity compared to Stripe, yet have built a similarly sized business from the Amsterdam, the Netherlands, which is remarkable.&lt;p&gt;It’s a completely different market strategy, and company strategy. Read the Adyen values to see how different the two companies are[1] - Adyen putting “merchants” first, with a mention of support, while Stripe prioritizing developers and small businesses. And company culture could not be more different either - saying this as someone who knows both Adyen and Stripe employees. Both are companies to admire, and show that there is no “one” good way to build immense value.&lt;p&gt;It will be fascinating to see what happens as these two companies expand to compete with each other (meaning Adyen starting to go after small businesses, and Stripe after the largest merchants, with a differentiated pricing model).&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.adyen.com&amp;#x2F;about&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.adyen.com&amp;#x2F;about&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dmitriid</author><text>&amp;gt; Adyen only goes after large businesses and has something many others, including Stripe cannot compete with efficiently: (far) lower pricing, higher market coverage.&lt;p&gt;The reason is: larger businesses will require more payment options than Stripe offers.&lt;p&gt;India? Adyen got you covered: [1] Philippines? Yup, everything [2], including offline payments in stores [3]. Mobile payments in Africa? No worries [4] And so on and so forth. On their payment site they don&amp;#x27;t even list all payment methods, there are so many. You search for a country or a payment method, and they show what&amp;#x27;s available.&lt;p&gt;Stripe has a very long way to go to realistically compete with Adyen.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.adyen.com&amp;#x2F;payment-methods#pmx=india&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.adyen.com&amp;#x2F;payment-methods#pmx=india&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.adyen.com&amp;#x2F;payment-methods#pmx=the-philippines&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.adyen.com&amp;#x2F;payment-methods#pmx=the-philippines&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.adyen.com&amp;#x2F;payment-methods#pmx=convenience-stores-Philippines&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.adyen.com&amp;#x2F;payment-methods#pmx=convenience-stores...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[4] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.adyen.com&amp;#x2F;payment-methods#pmx=mobile-network-operator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.adyen.com&amp;#x2F;payment-methods#pmx=mobile-network-ope...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Building a Developer Cult</title><url>https://subvert.substack.com/p/stripe-building-a-developer-cult</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gregdoesit</author><text>If we are taking about Stripe, we should mention the silent competitor barely anyone talks or knows about outside the payments industry: Adyen.&lt;p&gt;Stripe’s current, (private) valuation is $36B. Developers love them. Adyen’s current, public valuation is $43B (they IPO’d amongst little press coverage). Most developers don’t know about them.&lt;p&gt;So what is the difference? Market strategy. Adyen only goes after large businesses and has something many others, including Stripe cannot compete with efficiently: (far) lower pricing, higher market coverage.&lt;p&gt;The developer experience for Adyen is decent - no complaints, perhaps a bit less “magical”. They will definitely have a fraction of the customers, but those customers are huge. They get and seek little to no publicity compared to Stripe, yet have built a similarly sized business from the Amsterdam, the Netherlands, which is remarkable.&lt;p&gt;It’s a completely different market strategy, and company strategy. Read the Adyen values to see how different the two companies are[1] - Adyen putting “merchants” first, with a mention of support, while Stripe prioritizing developers and small businesses. And company culture could not be more different either - saying this as someone who knows both Adyen and Stripe employees. Both are companies to admire, and show that there is no “one” good way to build immense value.&lt;p&gt;It will be fascinating to see what happens as these two companies expand to compete with each other (meaning Adyen starting to go after small businesses, and Stripe after the largest merchants, with a differentiated pricing model).&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.adyen.com&amp;#x2F;about&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.adyen.com&amp;#x2F;about&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>netcan</author><text>Some realities manifest at different scales. Once you&amp;#x27;re in the largest tier, the &amp;quot;where is the money&amp;quot; reality affects things.&lt;p&gt;Large corporations are the larger, wealthier segment.&lt;p&gt;A big chunk of &amp;quot;startup business strategies&amp;quot; ignore this market. This makes a lot of sense for a startup. You don&amp;#x27;t really care what the bigger market is as a startup, you care what market is easier to access. Assuming the market is big (eg online payments), the size of the market isn&amp;#x27;t a limiting factor.&lt;p&gt;That works in-context.  I&amp;#x27;f you&amp;#x27;re trying to build a startup, landing a multi-year contract with a big company is a bad angle for multiple reasons. Not always, but mostly in the generic case. Long sales cycles. Checklist feature demands. Custom features. Besides being hard for most founders, it pushes in the wrong directions. Meanwhile, who cares if you&amp;#x27;re addressing a $3bn market or a $800bn market. Both of those are big enough for a startup aiming for $8m in revenue. Your problem is sucking and failure, not pyrrhic victories.&lt;p&gt;Also, if you are successful enough, small markets become big markets. When Google IPO-ed, they competed with yellow pages for mom-n-pop business &amp;amp; such.&lt;p&gt;OTOH, most of the market &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; large companies, governments, etc. That&amp;#x27;s reality, and it means something. Now that VCs fund startups so generously, a common pattern is bootstrapping in a shallow pond... then jumping into the main pond once you have momentum.&lt;p&gt;EG, Having a &amp;quot;developer cult&amp;quot; mentality, like stripe, at your base &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; serve you in the long term. Enterprise developers do have influence. It&amp;#x27;s never what makes a decision, but it &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt; be a favourable wind.</text></comment>