by midzer on 2/7/25, 12:38 AM with 25 comments
by toast0 on 2/7/25, 1:24 AM
Traditional banks used to give out toasters. My credit union gave my kid a piggy bank and regularly offers referral bonuses.
Paying people to sign up is an advertising expense. Having a useful product is what keeps people around. Spending the advertising budget to get users before the product is ready to keep users and provide a return is a pretty easy mistake for lots of products.
If this was the biggest dirt they decided to write about, I don't think they dug very far. I think PayPal avoided getting banking or money transmitting license for quite some time, which would be more in line with the title of the article. There's lots of reports of at least untransparent, if not unfair account closures and it's credibly claimed that PayPal does not return account balances in a timely fashion in these cases either.
Similar with the amazon complaint. There's got to be something better to complain about that they invested investor money in building a business that needed continual invesment until they found their niche.
by wavemode on 2/7/25, 1:26 AM
A more accurate (albeit less enticing) title would've been "Some companies in tech win by cheating. Some do not. Which will you choose?"
by nickv on 2/7/25, 1:13 AM
by 827a on 2/7/25, 1:20 AM
The CIA literally overthrew the democratically elected leader of Guatemala to protect the interests of an American banana company. But, Paypal paying their users $10 to sign up is spooky, yeah.
by natdempk on 2/7/25, 1:29 AM
- PayPal won by creating technology that makes it easier / possible than any alternative to send and receive money via the internet.
- Uber won through creating an app that lets you hail a ride and creating a marketplace for that.
- Airbnb won through innovating on the social idea of paying someone and creating a marketplace for that.
- Facebook won through creating an innovative social networking technology and creating an ad marketplace on top of that.
- Amazon won through creating an innovative website and marketplace for goods that offered innovations to the consumer like quick shipping times and risk-free purchases via easy returns.
- Tesla won through literally creating a product (EV) and charging network for EVs that people are willing to pay for.
This article is arguing in bad faith. All of these services won because they created something that solved a problem and created value for millions or billions of people, either making plenty of money along the way, or with high potential to make money at any given point in time. If this is cheating, then all of capitalism and the innovations that scale and improve life for the world via capitalism are all "cheating". Build something people want and whatnot.
by throwawaysleep on 2/7/25, 1:23 AM
I mean, have any of these truly won yet? It seems to early to tell.