WePay is to paypal what... Myspace is to Facebook? I have no idea what to compare them to, but WePay offer 1/3rd the functionality of what Paypal offer and are building their business on everyone "hating" Paypal except they don't face the same challenges Paypal do.
Even this comment is ridiculous, everyone is praising them for their "honesty" when this is exactly what companies like Mastercard did, so because they're big businesses they're not allowed to make sensible decisions, but because they're a startup they are? http://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/f5vh1/i_founded_the_an...
It's stupid. They mentioned Paypal 17 times in their post, more than they mentioned their own business.
The Myspace to Facebook example is funny, because Facebook was the anti Myspace. Not only that, they were the anti Myspace specifically because they stripped out features.
Many successful companies were the anti-something or another when they were small:
* Google was the anti-Yahoo
* 37 Signals was the anti-enterprise (and lately, the anti-funded startup)
* Southwest Airlines is the anti-American Airlines, don't you love their free baggage commercials?
* Reddit is the anti-digg
I mention PayPal 17 times to explain why the comparison doesn't make sense, and to explain where the comparison came from.
> WePay offer 1/3rd the functionality of what Paypal offer
This is factually untrue. We offer different functionality, like multiple accounts under a single login, the features that make it easy to accept donations and sell tickets, the ability to share accounts, etc.
> Even this comment is ridiculous
What about that comment is ridiculous. The fact that mastercard got bashed for also being honest? Not sure why that would reflect on the quality of the comment itself. Is it ridiculous that I tried to be honest?
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/03/whos-your-arch-enem...
Sometimes having an arch-enemy is enough for users to understand your value add.
I mean okay if WePay were an equivalent to Paypal then what they're doing is justifiable, but they're riding off the hate for Paypal to launch their own business and then everyone thinks oh hey they're the good they're a startup, woo startups! They're getting free passes too, Paypal avoided the Wikileaks things because they don't want to deal with an angry US government and suddenly they're the devil for not standing up tro the government, but when WePay do it they're heros?
I can't replace my usage of Paypal (which is just sending money to people and buying things on Etsy etc.) with WePay, for me (a simple user at best) being unable to do that with a supposed "competitor" surely proves it's a worthless comparison.
“Quick question, though: did you or Bill have any programming or web development experience before founding Wepay? A buddy of mine (an investment banker) and I (ex-Army officer, MBA) throw around business ideas all the time while drinking at the pub, but we always are forced to bring ourselves back to earth when we realize we both have no programming experience whatsoever. Is it even worth it to start something tech-related when both founders aren't your typical tech guys? How did you do it?
> I love this question. Bill had a CS degree from BC, but he wasn't a talented web developer or anything like that. His background was helpful, though, since it was good to have least some technical knowledge before starting the company; we weren't operating completely in the dark. I had zero technical background. You could probably get to Bill's pre-WePay level with a bunch of books, long conversations with your programmer friends (you can make some of these friends online - try hacker news), and persistence.
>
> If you are "relentlessly resourceful" you can find a way to build what you need to build (usually by finding the right person and convincing them that you and your idea are worth their time). It's definitely harder to start a tech/internet company without being technical, but it's not impossible. You just need to be a lot scrappier in the beginning. I have a ton of non-technical friends starting technical companies. Some of them will succeed and some will fail. The smarter, more resourceful, harder working ones will have the best chance of succeeding.”
http://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/f5vh1/i_founded_the_an...
1. Allowing people to make payments from outside the US. 2. Allowing for people from outside the US to accept payments.
Until that happens, PayPal will continue to reign supreme.
Awesome feature though. Just disheartened that I cannot use it. =(
I suspect that we tend to read/hear the noisy disgruntled Paypal users. My suspicion is that this portion is probably a small % of their user base.
