PoundPay
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
PoundPay was the original name of what became the payments company Balanced (Y Combinator Winter 2011). The name came from its first product: a mobile app for sending money to friends, free and instantly - similar to Venmo. By January 2011 the team concluded a free P2P app could not be a profitable business, so it pivoted to a payments API for P2P marketplaces, letting buyers pay on a marketplace's site while sellers held PoundPay accounts.
02 / FAILURE REASONS
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03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- PoundPay launched
PoundPay launched in October 2010 as a mobile app for free, instant P2P money transfers, built by CEO Matin and the founding team.
- Pivot to payments API
By January 2011, the team decided the P2P app would not be profitable and pivoted to a payments API for P2P marketplaces.
- Rebranded to Balanced
PoundPay rebranded to Balanced, keeping the marketplace-payments focus.
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
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