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"Paypal for Groups" Startup WePay (YC S09) Raises $7.5M Series B (mashable.com)
74 points by jazzychad on Aug 13, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 11 comments



Back of the napkin speculation:

1) facebook - 500 million users 2) Use facebook groups for random money collection 3) WePay => fb ~= PayPal => eBay 4) YC gets nice payout and WePay mafia fund a hot YC startup that solves micro-finance problem


LOL - obviously the timing (and title) are a little awkward given the whole "WePay saves Burning Man from the cold, heartless claws of PayPal" press a few hours ago :(


"The PayPal of X" is not going to be a good sell, no, but it's probably more of an explanation than a sales pitch.

PayPal by itself is a good metaphor for explaining concepts that would otherwise be difficult to grasp; WePay isn't doing that good a job of explaining exactly what it is about. I find that their cornucopia of usage examples do more harm than good - especially with "13 more examples" JS drop-downs in some categories.


"WePay isn't doing that good a job of explaining exactly what it is about."

I agree. We have struggled with this since the beginning.

Thanks for the feedback; we will definitely keep working on our messaging.


I'm just happy I stuck with you after the massive amount of mentions of the site. I don't know what your bounce rate is, but I think you are making a very compelling product a very complex sell. :)

I'm by no means a UX expert, but I think I would prefer that you just break down the options into ones that work differently from each other; for instance, I just figured out that group collections display how the transactions are spent, whereas charitable donations don't. I didn't even get that from watching the usage list.

Your home page generally does a great job of addressing most of my thoughts, but the collect-manage-spend doesn't really translate into anything by itself. The "I want to" doesn't either - especially since I usually choose an "Other" option.

Keep it up, I love to ditch PayPal and Google Checkout whenever I can.

PS: The "More" link for the customer testimonies doesn't work in the most recent version on Opera. Maybe it's on my end, maybe it's not. :)


Is WePay suitable for web services as a replacement for something like PayPal Website Payments Pro?


Congrats guys, win that market!


Whoa, congrats guys!


You shouldn't ask for a SSN for group accounts? Maybe an EIN?


Informal groups don't have EINs.


Awesome news! Way to go for a great team and a great product!




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