Udit

building as a weekend project

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

@GergelyOrosz I am reasonably sure I know whom you are referring to, they are almost infamous at this point for this.

The dreadful reality is that AI slop is *very* distinguishable to people who see it all the time, but that is still a *very* tiny minority of everyone online.

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

@aidancramer @vince_jos @eugZolotarenko @tibo_maker @outrank_so i have no stake in this fight, but out of curiosity: what's wrong with this tactic? it sounds like it would be quite effective?

(tangential: pretty sure most won't survive long-term given how good ai detectors are getting...)

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

@wickedguro @stripe I literally started building this and ran into so many privacy/data protection law violations that i gave up before it even went live :(

https://t.co/Z2W2VgKgg2

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

@stripe @stripesupport say I start an indie project which allows merchants who use Stripe, to share dispute data with me. I will aggregate & share with merchants (for a fee), enabling them to block users who have a history of friendly fraud. Wld this be compliant w/ Stripe T&C?

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

I got 4 of these emails a few weeks back, all bookings from 1 user.

I emailed the cardholder making it quite clear that we will invoice them for the full cost of the booked transaction, chargeback + counter costs, plus an extra $100 processing fee per chargeback that would go to collections if it wasn't paid.

All of the chargebacks were withdrawn. Apparently it was a "sorry, I used my wife's card and she didn't recognize the transaction" issue.

Having said that, I put in the effort because each transaction was >$200 and there were 4 of them. If the amount is <$100, I just refund to avoid the risk and accept the online theft as the cost of making payments available online. Sad reality.

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

@Austen Respect, sir. Not many who would accept a loss with such grace.

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

@hridoyreh I think the hard part is in (5) build a better version and most importantly (6) do *better* seo and marketing than whatever has taken them to 1M+

Ideas are (and almost always have been), the easy part :)

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

@ElitzaVasileva @owndotpage I basically learnt the same thing last week when I forcefully disappeared thanks to getting dengue. Important lesson indeed.

Focus for the next few weeks is to be able to lower bandwidth required to "keep things running" to &lt;1h per day so I can focus on the actual growth stuff.

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

@natnaelgirma27 @marclou That's a really good multiple.

Boils down to
- do you think the potential is 2-3x by the end of the year
- do you have the bandwidth to get there

If yes to both, don't sell. if no to either, sell.

Congrats either way. What a wonderful piece of validation. :)

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

@zenorocha @resend What a wonderful tradition. Adding it to my list immediately (albeit a smaller scale version proportionate to *our* revenue milestones, hahah)

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

Why is customer-reported attribution bad?

I rely on that almost as the source of truth for prepfully

(randomize the order of options presented to customers btw: that way you eliminate the noise/bias created by people picking the 1st option)

Agree on over-reporting though. Meta Ads are by far the most egregious on this front. I did 3 blockout tests and realized the incrementality was 3%.

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

@jeff_weinstein @stripe oh yay nice, we're live! loved the attention to detail. all the key information was auto filled.

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

@airindia I already DM'ed this! 21A or 24A both work. They're both available. 21A is already mapped to my ticket, and I'm being denied check-in until I make an extra payment (that I am not interested in doing because I *already* paid for a seat!)

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

@airindia i already paid for a seat when booking flight. i am trying to change to a different seat during check-in, in the same category. why are you charging me again? and now you aren't letting me check-in your app says "sorry, please pay for the new seat to check in", and refuses to let me go back to my original seat. quite ridiculous.

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

@airindia Thank you for confirming over DM that you are unable or unwilling to help. You might as well have just written this publicly, but that would have made for bad PR, I guess.

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

@airindia sorry, but you should not ask me to DM you if you have no intent to respond to DMs.

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

[quoting coz can't reply]

@levelsio the delays are almost always for regulatory reasons, not as an interest grab.

Wise & co were able to do things quicker for ages when they were smaller. Not as easy once regulators come hammering down. All new players are initially super fast, then slow down once the inquiries and audits start.

So this is enshittification is regulator imposed, at least in this case.

Source: used to work at deutsche bank in their payments team at one point.

[@levelsio @levelsio]

I'm pretty excited to move off of Wise Business permanently after realizing I can't just transfer my money out when I need to

They keep my money hostage for 10-14 days at least for a big transfer, like they literally won't transfer my money

I remember when dinosaur banks did this? Like they'd purposely delay transfers or not transfer at all in the weekend to then make money on the interest of it

But now fintechs like Wise have started doing it too?

Obviously you don't want to use fintechs to store lots of money, but sometimes you receive money and you wanna transfer it elsewhere (like your broker) but Wise just delays that entire process by 2 weeks, which is quite mad!

Excited to move to @Stripe Business banking ASAP!

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

I bought some ads to try it out. Super cool experiment

Potentially rate limit by device id / ip. Or add frequency capping as a feature. X views per device id or IP per day. Can later make this a premium/subscription version for advertisers. Or enable when on minimum spend limits reached.

(used to work in an adtech startup before hah)

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

@vascoabm regretfully not much you can do. banks almost always side with the cardholder anyway. but still worth fighting since the numbers are non-trivial.

if you're registered in the US, debt collection could be an option, but probably overkill and low roi for effort.

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

You were very generous in the lengths you went to before you initiated a chargeback.

I know that I was once the "bad guy" in a situation that happened almost 3y back. Your example reminded me of it. There was a customer who sent 4 emails requesting a refund before initiating a dispute.

I had set up a google filter which was busily archiving all their emails. Only realized it when I got the dispute notification from Stripe.

I've never made that mistake again.

PS - it was the only dispute I've ever "accepted" :)

[Udit @uditbatra1990]

@NithurM @moaijobs i got the same thing on prepfully