The Next 1,000 Start-Ups
A cute marketing trick. No you're not doing this just because you want to "help new startups". That's a nice way of rationalizing it, but really1) Braintree is suffering from the competition, especially on HN, Stripe is loved like no other2) They're not giving away 2 million dollars. With so many startups failing to ever generate significant revenue, I wouldn't be suprised if less than 10% of companies that are the first 1000 to register actually wind up generating $50k in revenue through their service. I'm sure Braintree have their own internal calculations about how much this will cost them and that number is certainly no where near 2 million dollars.3) The primary purpose of this is to bind new businesses to Braintree. The scenario of "getting their free processing here and then going somewhere else before they pay us a nickel." is cute, but misleading. At that point in the company's development switching the entire payments system is much more expensive and would not make any economic sense.Props to Braintree for coming up with this, I think in the end it's beneficial to the startup community, though I dislike the "second coming of jesus christ"-vibe of the announcement. They're doing this for business reasons, not because they woke up yesterday and felt a little charitable.