Should I stop working on my Startup

Wow, so many quitters in here. I'm actually kind of disappointed with the community's response to this.

@voidmonk is correct: this is huge validation. This is Startups 101. Stripe built the same thing you did? That means it's a need that people have. Maybe you're not going to win 100% of the market, but there are a ton of ways to be competitive and get your piece of the pie.

1. Offer a better or cheaper product. Give more options, customizable UI/themes, a different workflow. Stripe's offering is not going to be one-size-fits-all: you can still fit the other sizes.
2. Integrate with different payment providers. Stripe doesn't own the entire market and there are plenty of people who don't/won't work with Stripe.
3. Be even more "developer friendly" than Stripe: make your product the most simple to integrate.

The list goes on, but you will never win if you quit when the first bit of competition comes along.

Things like this are always unnerving. Some factors to consider:

• Have you tried Stripe's offering? Is your UX better? Easier to setup?
• Can you integrate with another service or several other services?
• Could you make a page to let users manage their subscription for all their Stripe subscriptions? Can you let them manage subscriptions for all sites, not just those that use Stripe?

I think there are ways you can still find a way to make this work. It won't be easy, but then again most startup ideas aren't easy. What matters is how much you want to work on this idea.

Personally I think your UI looks better than the stripe portal for subscriptions. That is one thing that differentiates you. After 4 months I doubt you want to abandon your start up. I would consider what else can differentiate you from their offer and allow you to stand out to potential customers. Stripe is just one payment system. Consider integrating other payment options as well or features that further differentiate you from them.

I've been looking for a portal like this for a while. I'm not sure your solution is a great fit for our company, but I'll give it a shot.

I haven't really found anything I'm super happy with. We built our own user portal for payments, it's incredibly buggy, and there are a million other "things on top of Stripe" problems to be solved. Don't give up yet.

There will likely be some inflexibility in Stripe's payment portal that makes it a dealbreaker for many companies. Maybe all companies. For example, I don't think their screenshots make it clear that they give users the ability to adjust the quantity of a recurring subscription. They've also got to be able to switch between annual and monthly subscriptions for this to work, which I don't think Stripe is accounting for.

I think they're just going to ship a bare essentials package with Invoice History by Customer, update card, and the ability to cancel a subscription.

There's a whole world of payments problems for even the smallest global SaaS company on top of that (message me if you like).

Them launching a similar product is just a validation that there's a big enough need for it, and every market has more than one maker or supplier, so this is a positive factor.

Try to spend more time on talking to potential users/customers, and doing sales and marketing.

Focus on less but essential features. We use Stripe too, but they've become too big and complex with multiple products and APIs. There's a clear need for simple products, that do just one thing, and do it better than the rest.

I'd say stick to your offering for a while, unless you have financial troubles.

Salut Philippe,

Je ne suis pas developpeur, mais j'ai essayé le truc de Stripe.

Une fois que la subcription est fait, impossible d'effectuer des modifications.

Je serait partant d'essayer ta plateforme et voir si on peu intégré avec des outils que j'utilise dans mon domaine.

Are you talking to any prospective customers? Are their problems completely solved by Stripe's offering? A portal can become much more fully featured than what Stripe is offering and it's likely you'll iterate much faster than Stripe can on that.

It looks like you've built this to only work for Stripe. If that's the case, my two sense would be yea, to stop. But obviously, this isn't the only option for subscription management. A quick google search revealed several options. I feel like you should be able to pivot to something that isn't specific to one service.

As a side note, making an add-on to any successful service seems dangerous to me. Especially one that operates like a startup as I'm sure Stripe still does. You've created a feature that Stripe could very easily do themselves. And they have. Don't create features. Create solutions. And if you do create a feature, at least make it scalable.

Hi Philippe,

I am one of the Co-founders of the startup Abowire, an all-in-one Subscription Management software. I really like your product approach. Currently, we are re-builidng our Customer Portal.

In Abowire we want to unify online with the offline subscriptions globally and reduce the complexity of running a scalable subscription business, by integrating all the tools you need in one solution at a fair price.

Let me know if you are interested and we could join forces. Just drop me an email to andres@abowire.com. We are based in Berlin.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Best,
Andres

I signed up for their private beta, but didn't get an email back. So as far as I am concerned, their service doesn't exist and yours does. Something to keep in mind. Have you tried out their private beta yet?

I had the same feeling about six months ago. i started Rejuvia (www.rejuviamedical.com) and we werent dont any significant sales six months ago, but i put on my hard hat, and realized i was just going through a tough time. a lull. but i did see the light at the the end of the tunnel, and that's why i continued.

I would say keep chugging along if you can see how and why you will succeed. if you think you are just going down path that leads to a cliff, then stop. there needs to be light at the end of the tunnel

As most have pointed out, if your service is tightly coupled to Stripe, then not much point continuing with it.

I'd only like to add that you've built a great product and I'm sure you can use your time to build something else very quickly that has a higher likely-hood of making it big without such a big competitor jumping into the game.

Read The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen or Google it and brush up on the basics. Is your innovation a sustaining innovation (marginal improvement, easy to duplicate, targets same customers as entrenched competitors) or a disruptive innovation (low quality but good enough, targets non consumption)? If it's sustaining you don't stand a chance. If it's disruptive you keep going. It sounds like it's sustaining, but that doesn't mean you can't pivot to disruptive.

Your product looks amazing, I'm building a saas and could certainly use it. What about integrating Paypal and others to create an alternative?

sometimes the experience of building something is more important than having a big company and lots of money.

i count so many of my smaller projects as "wins" despite the fact that they got destroyed by better products that entered into the market.

i learned the process of shipping.

Your thing looks pretty slick, I'd be totally heartbroken to just stop...
Do you have any paying customers already?
Did you ever reach out directly to Stripe at some point?

It sucks, but I'd cut my loses and stop. Or do the same thing for other services (Adyen, paypal, mollie, insert payment provider)