Archive for April, 2011

Breaking down the PayPal API

Saturday, April 23rd, 2011

PayPal is the most popular platform for receiving online payments. The relative ease of opening a PayPal account and receiving payments compared to opening a merchant account for a traditional payment gateway is the number one reason, and another is the comprehensive API they provide for their payment services.

Foreclosure: The PayPal API is amongst the worst I've ever had to deal with - inconsistencies, sometimes poor and conflicting documentation, unpredictable failures and account changes and major differences between the live and sandbox versions all conspire to make working with the PayPal API quite a pain in the ass.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any better alternatives currently, so hopefully this guide will help ease the pain for some of you out there taking your lumps working the API into your applications.
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Posted in Binpress, PHP, Web development | View Comments

Finding co-founders – Technical founder POV

Saturday, April 16th, 2011

First, a prelude - though I've mostly written technical articles on this blog, it's called techfounder for a reason - it was my original intention to also talk about startups from the view-point of the technical founder. I have been involved in several ventures so far in this role (currently at Binpress), each giving me more perspective on the overall picture.

I've just stumbled upon a nice article titled "Why you can('t) recruit a technical co-founder". The author makes some solid points about why it's hard to recruit / find a technical co-founder for a startup, but it seemed more common sense than deep introspection.

Idea is nothing, execution is everything

If you've started up your own venture, you know this saying is not just a cliche. Ideas, however great, will get nowhere without execution. On the other hand, solid and above execution can get very far with even below mediocre ideas.
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Posted in Business Development, techfounder | View Comments