Important lesson about going up against large companies

I saw on TC today that Clinkle finally launched.  For those who are unaware, Clinkle is a mobile wallet with gamification features.  They raised a huge amount of cash on just an idea and the fact that the founder is a Stanford rich kid, and have been struggling to get their product complete.  Lots of people quit the company, including high level executives.

Their launch following just a few days after the launch of Apple Pay demonstrates why it’s never a good idea to go after a market that big companies are likely to target or are targeting.  Not only did Apple get great deals with banks and credit card companies to insure that the fees they are charged are the lowest, but the amount of publicity they got, and are still getting, makes it difficult for any other brand with the exception of maybe Google Wallet to get noticed.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/23/clinkle/


    • No, actually they weren’t. Yes, they are a big company and quickly growing, but that’s only because they were purchased by Braintree five months after launching for $26.2 million. Braintree is owned by PayPal, which is owned by Ebay; both huge companies.

      I doubt Venmo could have grown as big as it has without being acquired by a large company early on, which was probably part talent acquisition and part technology acquisition.

      Don’t get me wrong, $26.2 million is a great payday for only having launched for 5 months, but that early acquisition does not prove that Venmo can compete with large companies like Paypal.

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