Braintree Founder On Decision To Raise Capital vs. Continuing to Bootstrap

A good reminder to entrepreneurs -- even if you don't need the capital, having outside investment (especially from a top VC firm) essentially provides you with:<p>1. Validation and hopefully constructive criticism of your business model by virtue of their due diligence process.<p>2. Network and contacts.<p>These two alone are often worth more than the cash.

Way to go BrainTree! We use them at <a href="http://cam.ly" rel="nofollow">http://cam.ly</a>, and the straightforwardness of their terms, and customer service has always been in a different league, compared to other merchant account providers.<p>Not to mention, a sane, documented API, and features / terms that actually make sense.

If any of the "Braintreeps" are here, could you comment in more detail on the Blockbuster -&#62; Netflix'esque transformations in the payments industry?<p>Other than Square and possibly a mobile phone wallet I can't think of many major sea changes that are underway right now.

I hope Braintree can now afford an across-the-board price cut. Without that, the market remains wide open for new entrants.

Congrats to BT- though my site doesn't use them, their mentality of trying to cut out fine print for CC processing is a good step in the right direction.