devan

We got in, after first getting the standard rejection email.

Building Commerce.js - https://commercejs.com

espresso

can you link me to the product checkout?

yup they do, thats why sites like spacebox.io & shoplocket are fine, but others are (probably) just illegally aggregating.

Yup. I was the original founder & ceo of Kout inc now ribbon.co http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/print-edition/2011/08/12...

We went through a pretty messy founder split which will probably come to light in full later on.

in short.

Chec's the original - you can probably tell by how consistant our product is compared. The old cofounder ran off with the corporation and didnt follow through on his agreement to transfer the assets over, after i was asked to stand down and incorporate a new entity - so i had to rebuild the company from the old room back in england.

I'd love to speak to you about it and see what you'd like to see implemented.

can you drop me an email at devan [at] madebyswipe.com?

I'd say within 6 weeks? We're a tiny team (2 devs). I'd love to speak to you about it and see what you'd like to see implemented.

drop me an email at devan [at] madebyswipe.com

And the way tailoring works is. We detect were the user clicked the link from (using the headers) then tailor the landing page to leverage that source.

I.e. clicked via FB? Let try and use fb connect to prepopulate the checkout, provide an incentive to share this page if they're influential. etc..

see my answer just above

In terms of features

3.5% fee compared to 5%

PayPal Integration (for your customers who feel safer using them)

Physical Product Handling

Access Windows for digital sales (https://trychec.com/assets/img/anything-digital.png)

Inline Social Payments on Facebook (checkouts in customers newsfeeds)

Social Deals - Based on influence or demographics

And a powerful merchant backend.

as well as a few smaller features around.

Groad is primarily built to deal with digital files, we can handle any type of good.

and that's just in v1. we've got a lot to do, and you'll see us differentiate more in the future.

It might be easier to give the stories behind the idea to help.

So, i created this initially for myself. As a teenager i had resale rights to a DVD info product, and made a couple thousand a month selling it.

I hated the checkout process of 2checkout, 1shoppingcart, ejunkie, and others. So I ended up throwing a paypal checkout in an iframe and creating a post hook script to manage the order.

I wanted a simple, clean, yet powerful app to manage everything, so i made one. The first version of this was built in 2010.

I had one professional/full product to sell and i sold it in fairly high volume, and I didnt need a fully fledged store, i just had a single product to sell. Over time i created more and more minisites to sell different types of info products so i could have some passive income whilst i was at school.

Gumroads story

Sahil created an icon on photoshop that he wasnt going to use, but thought other people would find value in it so he wanted a service that let him sell his "value" to his followers (if that makes sense).

Gumroad allows people to sell their small snippets of value. (primarily digital).

Chec allows smaller merchants to start selling online who have no need for a front end store. Merchants like mmfixed.com etc..

Is that a little clearer? :)

Most of these sites will go down due to one big hurdle. Payments.

Underwriting merchants and get verified by Visa/MasterCard as a payment service provider is a bitch. Aggregating credit cards is a heavily regulated area - but most of these sites are unaware of this issue.

We initially started on Stripe, and got told what we were doing was unregulated/not allowed on stripe, so we then grabbed a coffee with them and learnt about this process.

In fact I was grabbing coffee with Sahil (Gumroad) a few months ago and they've just run into this issue themselves - which they are starting to solve. so you'll probably notice them asking you for more information to underwrite you, unless they find a way around this.

That's also why we ask users to go through an activate process.

Link based selling has been around for years. 2checkout, 1shoppingcart, ejunkie etc...

I started working on Chec in late 2010/early 2011, before groad launched. (https://www.facebook.com/checkoutbyswipe, if you wanna trace down to the day that page was setup) - It's a long story between then and today.

Short Version - University in England -> AngelPad Incubator -> Raised large seed -> Founder Split -> Had to rebuild new company.

We thought we fixed that bug. might just be some left over JS validation. we'll get into it.

We provide region specific shipping options for physical products, and will be doing tight integrations with UPS, Fedex, RoyalMail apis to help you with fulfilling physical items.

We'll take a look !

Yeah just noticed that one, same in IOS. Working on fixing it up.

heuristics & 3 strikes with chargebacks and we lock your account.

But we've got a lot to do here.

thanks!

We're working on that.

You can, I was just trying to get across the usage cases/types of products.

We've had one user crowd fund for a childs trustfund through us. Dudes in europe selling rare coffee beans. Contracts invoicing for their time through the platform. The generic digital sales cds/ebooks/etc

We cover a wide spectrum of products.

We're trying to create a framework/platform for longtail ecommerce. Not just a platform for people who want to sell digital things they create.

There is definitely overlap between us and groad, but its not our primary focus, for certain things you want to sell its just quicker to sell via them, and thats cool.

We looked into posting directly to Craigslist for you, but its against their T&C. :(

yeah, we're working on that! we rushed the marketing site.

Gumroad's a platform for people who want to sell digital things they create and has a 5% fee.

We're a platform for long tail merchants. So for example - you'd sell the psd your not going to use in your app on gumroad, but you'd sell the final app through chec. - if that helps. - we also only charge 3.5% and can do a lot more with downloads + handle physical products.

We position ourselves between Gumroad & Shopify (if they did payments).

on a side note - me and sahil know each other well. Back in april 2011 when Chec was called Kout I actually reached out to him to join Kout after he launch groad on hackernews. He said "you've already built the software why do you need me" but we've kept in touch and occasionally get coffee and discuss the space.

Link based selling has been around for years. 2checkout, 1shoppingcart, paypal, ejunkie, quixly etc have been at it for a while. I came up with the idea for Chec after i ended up throwing a PayPal checkout in an iframe for a info product i was selling.

P.S - if anybody is wondering about the 2 year gap between launching - that story will come to light shortly.

Had a similar idea for this - We'll probably play around with this at Kout as soon as we've sorted out our payments infrastructure - Here's a mockup I made a little while back using Twitter - http://bit.ly/Kd0ugW

= Inital Idea = You're perpetually logged into a social network, why not pair up a payment method and leverage that connection. Always be connected to a payment method/global checkout - authorised by a 4 digit pin.

There's an array of pro's as cons for this.

= Issues for Facebook (and Twitter) =

The hurdles to get setup as a Payment Service Provider, and have the capability to preform cross-border, cross-country transactions, dealing with multiple currencies, as well as boarding merchants outside of the US, is a complete bitch.

It would be completely out of Facebook's internal focus to build and maintain this - outsourcing/partnering is a different story.

= Facebook's Cut =

Facebook takes a 1/3 cut from developers for FB Credits. They can't take a 1/3 cut from credit card processing.

They'll realistically take 2.75 - 3.5% and that would just piss off their developers who are being charged a 1/3, unless FB reduce their 1/3 cut - which I doubt they'd do.

Facebook would (probably) make more cash using FB Credits than processing credit cards - The margins are rediculously low with card processing (varies on card type) - It's game of volume.

Unless you're PayPal who charge you 2/3% for sending money between PayPal accounts. When all they're doing is ACH transfers between "dynamic bank accounts" they've setup, which costs them under 5 cents to preform.

= The trust factor = with Facebook (Guy/Girl's in Social Commerce take notice here).

Consumer's/Users whatever you want to call them simply would not trust Facebook with their super sensitive data (Credit Card & Billing Information). They don't have the best reputation when it comes to users data.

They might experience some success and sign up a few tech savy users - but ultimately - even if they sort out all of the technical & logistical issues they will constantly face this one.

This is why social commerce isn't full circle, or shouldnt be. When was the last time you entered your credit card details into a Facebook app? would you?

Social Commerce is really the discovery of products, but when it comes to facilitating the transaction, consumers need to be out of the ecosystem where "public" data is flowing, their friends are talking to them, or irrelevant social data is distracting them.

Consumers feel incredibily uncomfortable entering sensetive data into a platform which they use with the mindset of "sharing".

Unless of course it could be masked under a "Pay by Facebook" option which doesnt require the user to type in and sesntive information - ha.

Those are just my thoughts, and of course you have risk, disputes, charge backs, being the ultimate target for russian hackers etc.

I could be completly wrong, but I think a third party needs to step in here.

Facebook and a Dwolla/GoCardless partnership - now that would be intresting - you can fake a credit card but you cant fake a bank account.

Thanks! Just really wanted to add a bit context.

about a 100 emails in the last hour or so.

Original founder here, took the prototype of Kout from a dorm room in the UK to SF in about 3 months (Stereotypical dropping out start up story) - so im emotionally inclined to defend product related posts ha.

Anyway.

Just wanted to cover a few points people have mentioned...

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We merge in the ecommerce platform with the payment processor. We really just process payments so we can control the whole experience, but if you have your own gateway you can just plug the api keys in. Most ecommerce platforms require you to go signup with a 3rd party payment gateway, and the quick hack for most people is to go with paypal.

Our focus is really on the ecommerce side. eJunkies lame. 1shoppingcart's lame. Yeah a few others have poped up this year (quixly & gumroad) they just really validate the need. If you don't need a fully fledged frontend store your options are pretty limited.

We're not targeting big head merchants (shopify style merchants). We're targeting micro merchants, the long tail of ecommerce; think the blogger who's still using ejunkie and paypal to sell online, or the kickstarter style sellers who just have one product and need a quick simple way to sell it. www.mmfixed.com - is a prime example for a merchant we are targeting.

That's pretty much the current MVP. We've been live with around 200 merchants for just over a month, and we've processed a few k, again in the first month. We have a couple thousand on a waiting list, but waiting lists never convert at 100% :(.

And yeah. This is just initial build (mvp), our "linked based selling" app wont disrupt the industry, but what we want to build and our vision will... Well, it gets us up in the morning, which is the important thing, so we'll see how everything plays out.

shoot any questions or whatever to devan [at] kout.me

D.

We're not targeting big head merchants (shopify style merchants). We're targeting micro merchants, the long tail of ecommerce; think the blogger who's still using ejunkie and paypal to sell online, or the kickstarter style sellers who just have one product and need a quick simple way to sell it.

It's an underwhelming landing page. I agree.

Our vision and what we want to do over the next few years is what wakes us up in the morning.

Square's going after a trillion dollar industry, ecommerce is a drop in the bucket.