It's crazy that there was so much investment for such a simple idea. I mean the entire product is just a thin wrapper around Stripe. He must have some really serious plans to move in a new direction in order to attract that much interest and funding... I wonder what the plans are?

Based on the description "social payments" I think it's targeting a wider base than the original "paid link shortener"

For sure - are you thinking tighter integration with social networks like fb and twitter? This definitely has a lot of potential, but I bet they would need to work out some agreements with the social networks themselves to be able to do it really right, and without running into trouble...

Probably that is where the VC investment and connections come into play, to get those partnerships in place. These are certain advantages of having VC as a stakeholder in business than just being a profitable completely bootstrapped startup.

Just love the way he said how he got early access to Stripe: "I'm friends with one of the founders + I asked repeatedly." :)

Most importantly he has used access to a key service early and executed it all very well. Congratulations & all the very best Sahil!

Thanks for the link. I was looking for it as I remember this post from what I thought was last year (apparently longer - boy does time fly). Glad to see them doing well.

What's the record for the ratio of VC funding to days since the original weekend project appeared on HN?