A startup that raised $40m finally caught up to my solo-built side project!
So about 2 days ago, I shipped charging for chats on my side project Coffee Chats, which helps people easily schedule virtual chats and meetings without the back and forth of email. In the release, I also shipped the ability to make coupons so guests of your choice can skip over paying.
Today, one of my power users let me know that X.ai -- a scheduling startup that has raised $40m finally released the exact same feature I made in roughly 2 days and they're still missing coupons.
Just thought this was funny and also validating because, if a $40m VC-backed startup is doing this too, Coffee Chats is probably headed in the right direction.
Also, this is a reminder that if you are building something as solo-founder like me or have a small team, keep building and build fast. The other guys might have more money but you have speed. Use it to your advantage!
[EDIT]
For context:
- My tweet: https://twitter.com/trycoffeechats/status/1295876566388367365
- X.ai's blog post today: https://x.ai/accept-payments-when-scheduling-meetings/
So true. In my day job have witnessed company growth from 200 to 2000 people over the past 2.5 years and the pace of development is markedly slower.
A source of hope for the IHers
Yes! IHers may not have a ton of money or headcount but we do have drive and speed!
There's also Lunchclub and Superpeer
But I like kind of like yours too @chptung - I write and cover stories about virtual event and meeting tools on Virtual Mojito.
Would love to start a conversation and see if you're of the game. You can find me on Twitter here.
Yes let’s definitely chat about Coffee Chats x Virtual Mojito. I’ll follow you and reach out!
Super funny and appreciate the quote about building fast. Do you have any resources to help someone who is looking to do something similar with Stripe?
Yes! It's a little old, but this repo has everything you need to build a marketplace with Stripe Connect in Rails. I used some of this code as a guidepost while building charging for chats on Coffee Chats: https://github.com/adam-stripe/stripe-connect-managed-rails