After a decade of building Paddle, two weeks ago I was officially terminated.
Was there a coup?
Do I have some illness?
Not exactly.
Here’s why rumors of my death are (mostly) greatly exaggerated 👇
Delighted to finally announce that Paddle has raised $200m at a $1.4bn valuation! ✨
We’re building the operational infrastructure that powers SaaS companies across payments, recurring billing, taxes (and all the other stuff that gets in the way of growth).
I started Paddle when I was 18, because the world made it difficult to sell software online.
Churn.
Metrics.
Invoicing.
Payments.
Currencies.
Chargebacks.
Taxes in 100+ countries.
You can’t build something beautiful or innovative if you have to spend all your time becoming an
One of the first things we did after raising the seed round for Paddle was buy the .com for $120,000.
(It ended up weeks later actually costing us $275,000 in a crazy twist of events…)
The way we build startups is changing.
With that change comes the rise of a new breed of company: bootstrapped, cash generative, and growing like crazy.
Here comes the rise of the one-person unicorn. 🦄
In May we announced our acquisition of
@ProfitWell
for $200 million.
It was a pretty intense ride for me and
@Patticus
trying to get the deal done.
We filmed the process, and our documentary “We Sign Tomorrow” is out now! Let me know what you think!
Today we released the all new Paddle Billing.
Hundreds of new features, improvements and updates wrapped up in a completely new set of APIs for developers.
Today, after almost 11 years, I’m stepping into the role of Executive Chairman at Paddle. Delighted to be handing the reins to
@Fitzgerald_JM
as our new CEO.
Excited to spend my time focused more deeply on strategy, product, and with our customers. 💪
One of the first things we did after raising the seed round for Paddle was buy the .com for $120,000.
(It ended up weeks later actually costing us $275,000 in a crazy twist of events…)
Houston, we’ve taken a payment. 🚀💸
Late last year, in a marketing meeting, someone had the "genius" idea that we should try and take the first SaaS payment in space...
So... we did.
Watch the film 👉
I look forward to when
@elonmusk
realizes Apple's egregious 30% App Store tax is going to try and take $2.40 of every $8 Twitter Blue subscription and joins in the fight to open the App Stores.
[insert thing] is changing the world.
but [arbitrary percentage] of people don’t know how to leverage it to the max.
here are my [number between 3 and 12] tips of how to use [thing] correctly.
🧵👇
🚨 Self-promotional announcement alert!
Soon I'll be launching Nothing Ventured, a newsletter, blog and occasional podcast covering startups, software, business, work & commerce.
If you're interested please signup! First issue in the next couple of days:
Today I’m incredibly excited to announce the launch of Paddle Studios — the home of original content that helps you build better SaaS companies.
✨ 10 original shows (including 3 new ones announced today) and many more to come.
Check it out:
Paddle's DX team are working on a new Sandbox/Test Mode, and it's truly going to be a game-changing experience.
I've never seen such a thoughtful developer experience + workflow for managing test vs live configurations.
Can't wait for you all to try it in the next few months.
@imgyf
Paddle uses Stripe for a small % of volume. We built a payment routing product called Pilot which decides per-transaction where to process a charge (based on our data). We have local processing relationships on most continents and use a dozen or so different gateways/PSPs.
@jhooks
@PaddleHQ
Hey - Thanks for highlighting this.
I wasn’t aware this was a campaign we were running, but we got this wrong and that’s entirely on me.
I agree 100% with the sentiment of everyone’s replies. We’ll do better.
Laravel Spark is live! ✨
Stripe + Paddle support, monthly and yearly plans, per-seat pricing, location based pricing, VAT support, isolated billing panel. 💅
🎁 Get it now:
📚 Docs:
Thank you so much for your support!
Interesting COVID-19 consumer purchasing behaviour:
We've seen daily average transaction volume on software/digital product sales in Italy up approx 38% since the start of the lockdown. China daily average volume up 32% vs daily average pre-lockdown.
#coronavirus
#COVID19
This is one of those Paddle features that we essentially never mention/talk about but is the work of dozens of people in the background trying to help make it easier to run a SaaS company.
A while ago, a very rude customer decided to do a chargeback instead of asking for a refund.
I just received an email from
@PaddleHQ
saying they fought and won the dispute for me :)
I’d love to figure out a way to support the growing list of people building for the Paddle ecosystem.
Like
@dr
with and
@slashequip
with .
Ideas welcome on how we can support + get more people building for Paddle customers!
NEW: April Koh built a $2 billion mental-health startup by age 29. Current and former employees tell me she led a fast-paced culture that created panic and fear.
@tdinh_me
This is something we're actively working on (as well as a few other massive subscription things) and will hopefully be coming out in the future!
@ImSh4yy
Hey - this is almost certainly a move from the team to stop bad actors. I’m checking that we can whitelist use of localhost for Electron apps.
I’m not going to recommend anyone spends most of their money on a domain when starting a business, we young, lucky and a little stupid – but it worked!
European accelerator 1st event: invite a burned out founder to talk about mental health.
@ycombinator
1st event: invite Airbnb’s co-founder to talk about how to create a $100bn company.
I made my choice.
Many messages from founders and teams helping each other through the SVB mess.
In fact, the only genuine negativity I’ve seen is from tech “journalists”.
Yet another reminder of the low regard — contempt — the tech/business media has for the very industry they cover.
Gross.
Psst.
Something’s coming.
👀
It’s probably (not) the *biggest* news you’ll hear from us, but we’ve been working on it for a while, and we can’t wait to share it with you!
I can almost hear the gongs in everyone else's offices ringing out as I sign renewal contracts for products we use at Paddle on the last day of the quarter...
@AKASpencerScott
@matinglis_
@median
I don’t try to diminish either. It’s false equivalence and lazy thinking. I can code and I’ve sold a hell of a lot of software in the last decade. They aren’t comparable skillsets, nor is either more or less important than the other.
🚨NEWS🚨 Today, 20
#tech
industry CEOs wrote a letter to Senate Judiciary Chair
@SenatorDurbin
and Ranking Member Sen.
@ChuckGrassley
urging them to support passing the bipartisan
#OpenAppMarketsAct
ahead of next week's committee mark-up. Read here:
We're re-launching the Price Intelligently website today – awesome job by the whole team.
Companies like
@NotionHQ
,
@newrelic
,
@autodesk
and
@Square
work with us to nail their pricing strategy.
Check it out 👇
We operated on the remaining $45,000 for a while. It was the biggest motivator to launch quickly, and get revenue coming in the door.
So that’s exactly what we did.
@vovahimself
@jhooks
@PaddleHQ
It’s on me - this is a learning. Indicates we need to focus on principles of how we think about marketing (eg. how do we want it to make people feel).
No one should be/will be fired or sanctioned because it’s clear there isn’t any bad intent here (just bad judgement).
We're mostly used to seeing the bright side of startups🙌
Here's something which happened yesterday which made me feel low for a day
The worst part was that it was outside my control & I couldn't do much about it🥲
I wanted to share this in public so that others are cautious
Paddle's working to build the next era of software.
It's not the "cloud" era.
It's not the "WYSIWYG", or the "workflow" era.
Welcome to the "do it for you" era.
Blown away by the response to this
@Patticus
-inspired email we sent out to a few newsletter operators yesterday 👇
Turns out people really *do* want their SaaS providers to just "do it for them"!
@levelsio
@saastrash
The companies that they’re licensing this from are just Ethoca and Verifi (which are owned by Visa and Mastercard). Not sure about the specific service you’re looking at but Ethoca/Verifi are legit.
You do have to use an interface from the mid-90s tho…
@awilkinson
@NathanLatka
It’s true
@NathanLatka
has a very particular public style - but would encourage you to spend some time with him. He’s actually very knowledgable and thoughtful about SaaS + financing dynamics.
I also think anyone who goes on the podcast knows what they’re in for.
We’re hiring exceptional product managers to work on the future of commerce and SaaS at Paddle.
London preferred but open to alternatives.
DM me if interested or you know someone.
@fdestin
@mpawlo
These people exist everywhere - Clubhouse, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook Groups. Twitter is essentially the only place that they get suppressed (as people just call their bullshit immediately, and publicly).
🚨 Announcement Alert 🚨
Beyond thrilled to share that I'm joining
@PaddleHQ
in an exciting new role leading Founder Relations
Pinch me because this is a dream job ❤️
It blends cohort programs, community leadership, building in public & more
Here's how it came to be ⤵️