PayDragon
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
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Sections to complete：02 · 05
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Paydragon was a Los Angeles mobile commerce startup built by the team behind Y Combinator-backed QR-code company Paperlinks and led by CEO Hamilton Chan. It started as a line-busting app letting users order and pay at food trucks and restaurants before reaching the front of the line, then pivoted in 2012 to 'Checkout' — a one-click app for scanning barcodes on grocery and household items with free two-day shipping, plus gamified rewards and referral credits.
02 / FAILURE REASONS
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03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Company founded
Paydragon is founded in Los Angeles by Hamilton Chan, spun out of QR-code company Paperlinks.
- Launch and seed funding
Paydragon launches its restaurant line-busting app, raises $1.35 million in seed funding (Rustic Canyon Partners, SV Angel, Yuri Milner, Mark Schwartz), and pivots to 'Checkout' one-click barcode shopping with free two-day shipping.
- App redesign
Paydragon redesigns its app around searchable product categories and daily deals; the founder later describes the two-sided merchant-and-consumer funnel as extremely difficult to push through.
- Fades from market
No further public activity is documented after the early-2013 redesign; the company is recorded as ended in 2014.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN / AFTERMATH
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.