DALL-E/prompt: "A watercolor painting depicting the scene of a startup office during bankruptcy. The image shows a small, disheveled office space with empty desks, chairs overturned, and a few boxes packed with belongings..."

My Company Died—Learn From My Mistakes

A dispatch from the wild, vicious world of consumer payments

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@mike_8038 over 1 year ago

The decision-making through the course of the story is interesting. The events show how much is outside a founder's control. I love the term "fake PMF"!!

Ignacio Fanlo over 1 year ago

Thanks for your vulnerability

@vlad.papko over 1 year ago

Great story, thank you.
I work in fintech startup for the last 7 years, what I learned is that for every critical third-party dependency you need at least two independent vendor integrations that you can substitute in relatively short period of time. This gives you leverage for pricing and safety in a case of one them goes down / changes offering or 10s other reasons that could result in broken relationship. It could apply to payment gateways, communication providers (sms, email, notifications), fraud detection, verification services, etc. It's annoying to build the same thing multiple times, but it's better than being on a verge of shutting parts of the system down and loosing customers.

@kjellpinter over 1 year ago

Really appreciate this

Ghanshyam Acharya over 1 year ago

A quite fascinating journey you had there Amanda. Loved the quotes you slipped in there. All the best for your new venture.

To really know failure, you have to lose your house (all of them) along with every penny you own. Then you'll never fail again.

@zeiber over 1 year ago

Thank you for this transparency.
Having worked in FinTech, I understand and identify with a lot of this. As a 25-year serial startup employee, not a founder, I also hate losing... and I was part of one that fell apart, despite healthy raises and PMF indicators. I always thought there was a way through it—by making one of our partners the hero, not ourselves—but we didn't take that path. Would we have survived if we had?

There's no such thing as a sure thing with consumer fintech innovation.
Best of learning and breakthroughs in your next venture!