Some companies will proactively reach out, others need to be reached out to. It's possible this is too small, but then again many pre-revenue startups will get this sort of treatment so it's not just about money.
The thing to remember is that Stripe (or your cloud provider, or your email sending provider, or any other SaaS) get something out of that relationship – they get a sales channel, they can trust you more, they can lock you into their services, they can show you more of their value – these sorts of companies basically want these relationships. The fact you can sign up with a credit card and never talk to anyone is sort of just to appease devs that don't want to talk to anyone, it's not how they make money in the B2B market (it's a bit different for B2C or B2B-ish services like Squarespace).
This project sounds pretty neat, and I could see it appealing to the audiophile market. I know people who would be interested.
But, I'm sorry to say, it sounds like Stripe cancelling your service wasn't the biggest issue, but that the service never found its market. Looking at the site I couldn't tell what it was or who it was for, and it looked a bit dodgy. Copy like "we're not google. we won't kill the site" (said twice) makes it sound like a hobby rather than a company, and even if that's true, it's not going to go over well for marketing. Also, it's sadly somewhat ironic given that the service has indeed gone. I totally see the vibe you were going for, but I think that vibe is one that typically maxes out at a handful of friends using it.
Thanks, I agree... it was never intended to be a "real company", which was ultimately to my detriment. The irony of killing it hurts, so I'll probably just leave it up for the existing users, and (hopefully) find some other payment processor. It only costs me a few dollars per month to host it, so I am not super worried about the money, but it's a huge motivation killer to be ousted from Stripe. I was happy with keeping it "indie and scrappy" and only friends using it, and I went through a lot of pains to make it so the architecture was always break-even, but I never expected my payment processor to bail on me.
Yeah it's tough. I'd love for hobby projects to be able to be sustainable like this, but I understand that taking money comes with so much regulation and auditing throughout the whole stack (KYC, credit card companies, taxes, etc), so I can see why it's not always viable.
The thing to remember is that Stripe (or your cloud provider, or your email sending provider, or any other SaaS) get something out of that relationship – they get a sales channel, they can trust you more, they can lock you into their services, they can show you more of their value – these sorts of companies basically want these relationships. The fact you can sign up with a credit card and never talk to anyone is sort of just to appease devs that don't want to talk to anyone, it's not how they make money in the B2B market (it's a bit different for B2C or B2B-ish services like Squarespace).
This project sounds pretty neat, and I could see it appealing to the audiophile market. I know people who would be interested.
But, I'm sorry to say, it sounds like Stripe cancelling your service wasn't the biggest issue, but that the service never found its market. Looking at the site I couldn't tell what it was or who it was for, and it looked a bit dodgy. Copy like "we're not google. we won't kill the site" (said twice) makes it sound like a hobby rather than a company, and even if that's true, it's not going to go over well for marketing. Also, it's sadly somewhat ironic given that the service has indeed gone. I totally see the vibe you were going for, but I think that vibe is one that typically maxes out at a handful of friends using it.