For all new companies, firsts are monumental. The first customer, first office, first investor. All of those firsts are achieved by overcoming a challenges, and some of them are harder won than others. Payments processing firm Braintree seeks to ease that pain somewhat, by offering $50,000 in free processing to the first 1,000 American startups that sign up on their site.
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CEO Bill Ready announced the move in a blog post entitled “The Next 1,000 Start-Ups” yesterday, with a nod to the $35 million his company raised just two weeks ago.
“We wanted to do something to help startups get off the ground and generating revenue,” he told me. “ Many of our largest clients, including LivingSocial and Fab.com, started with Braintree from their first dollar of revenue, and are now generating hundreds of millions in revenue. We wanted to do something to pay it forward to the next generation of startups.”
Ready contends that the first $50,000 of revenue is the hardest to get, and by offering payment processing free of charge and credit card interchange costs worth that much, benefiting startups will get a leg up.
“The idea behind this offer is to help launch more startups,” Ready says.
A recent Forbes article said, “entrepreneurship has been the primary engine of job growth over the past 30+ years.” This rings true here in Chicago, where a new digital startup launches, on average, every 48 hours. So what happens when an established company pushes to enable more companies to launch? More jobs could be one possible outcome.
Ready says his goal is “to help launch the next generation of startups to follow in the footsteps of the numerous successful companies that have gotten their start on Braintree.” That’s a good goal, indeed. But imagine if this offering inspired other companies to take similar steps, to provide free services to fledgling teams not for marketing or business purposes, but simply to pay it forward.
Helping fellow entrepreneurs and facilitating job growth in our pained economy are honorable motivating factors. And, like Ready said in his blog post, companies may benefit from acquiring loyal customers through an initial free offering. Either way, this is a good move, both for Chicago’s and America’s entrepreneurs.
Visit Braintree’s website, check out their BIC profile and follow them on Twitter at @braintree.
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