Fynn GloverCo-Founder & CEO, Schematic · Co-founder & CEO of Schematic | Runtime monetization infrastructure for SaaS & AI companies

Why Zep uses Stripe + Schematic

30 Oct 2024 · 1 min

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1:27

In this brief monologue, the speaker—representing the early‑stage startup Zep—explains the strategic decision to avoid building its own entitlement and pricing infrastructure and instead adopt third‑party tools that integrate with Stripe. The core arguments are: (1) early‑stage startups need simple, flexible infrastructure; (2) building entitlement features is not a core differentiator, so a buy‑versus‑build analysis favors purchasing a solution; (3) the chosen platform must work seamlessly with Stripe, support evolving pricing models, discovery, and grandfathering, and scale as the company grows; and (4) focusing engineering effort on the product’s unique value proposition is paramount. The speaker emphasizes keeping the stack lightweight, prioritizing flexibility, and ensuring that any external tool can grow alongside Zep’s needs.

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I think as an early stage startup, we're really trying to keep things simple with our infrastructure, but flexible. And looking for tools that work with Stripe or complement Stripe. So right out of the bat, there was no way that we were going to build our own entitlement capabilities. So from an entitlement perspective, you know, I went actively went looking in the market. Technologies that would work with Stripe or complement Stripe, that would manage what I envisaged being an evolving pricing structure and approach to plans and entitlement, and really wanted to find a platform that was not overly complex, that would grow with us and support the type of discovery and grandfathering that we would need to put in place. As an early stage startup, I also don't want to be building anything that isn't core. And our core capability is, you know, our core product. We're not differentiated by building plan infrastructure, plan and entitlement infrastructure. Summing it up, keep things simple, buy versus build, and plan for, especially early stage, plan for flexibility, ability to be flexible.