Disqus - Latest Comments for eolson

Re: TransFS, Comparison Shopping Engine - A Sign of Relief

Eric Olson — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:50:15 -0000

I am really glad you enjoyed our product. We're working hard every day to make it better and to help build a better financial services shopping experience for small businesses. If you, or any of your readers, have any feedback on our approach I would love to hear it (eric [at] transfs [dot] com).

Re: Credit card processing services – Marketing for Digital Money

Eric Olson — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:04:26 -0000

Great post. It is true that credit card processing is sold under many brands and it is very hard for merchants to compare credit card processors. We actually created TransFS.com to alleviate these issues because we were small business owners who were frustrated from our own shopping experience.

TransFS.com is a comparison shopping engine that shows merchants a number of credit card processing rates in "apples to apples" format that are are available to them. It is free for the small business owner to use and it is quick and easy.

Another benefit to what we do is that we screen all of the processors that "bid" on our site and we also have the processors agree to provide transparent billing statements to customers and not to change their markup.

We exist to serve small businesses as far as their financial services shopping goes and to send business to the great processors out there who are transparent and customer focused.

Re: Thread

Eric Olson — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:12:00 -0000

Great article, Alexandra. It is good to see more coverage of companies that are working to add some transparency to the credit card processing world.

CreditCards.com`s MerchantAccountGuides.com is a fantastic resource for businesses looking to get clear information on credit card processing. Many small business owners don`t know they are getting a raw deal on their credit card processing fees since bills can be hard to read and there are generally too many important items buried in the fine print.

I recently co-founded a company called TransFS.com that aims to put the power back into the hands of the small business owner in terms of credit card processing. We developed TransFS.com as a reverse auction for credit card processing services. A small business owner simply enters some pertinent information into our site and then we solicit bids for their credit card processing business from select reputable processors that we vet. We also don`t reveal the small business` contact information to the processors so the small business won`t get barraged with emails and phone calls.

After the bids come back, we provide the bids to the small business owner in an apples-to-apples manner so they know which rate is best for them and can choose a new processor with confidence.

The three of us all built small businesses before starting TransFS.com so we were acutely aware of the pain and thought that this was a great way to alleviate it. We simply hope our humble solution makes things easier for the backbone of our economy, the small business.

Re: The Venture Capital Math Problem

Eric Olson — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:51:10 -0000

> I don't have a conclusion, I'm just saying it is interesting to think about and ponder the root causes of limited VC industry scalability..

Absolutely agree. It is certainly a topic that deserves a lot more attention and a lot more discussion. Looking forward to keeping the discussion going!

Re: The Venture Capital Math Problem

Eric Olson — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:30:52 -0000

@Proales: Interesting thought. However, one thing to remember is that Fred is referring to VC backable companies, which are a subset of all entrepreneurial activity. The answer to your question, in my mind anyway, is "it depends." If all of the cities, towns, D-1 universities, etc. are telling people to start VC backable companies (as opposed to nice small businesses or businesses that don't need capital) then perhaps we do need to rethink the long-term sustainability of that message. If these places are suggesting that more companies should be started (including companies that don't need VC funding) that may not be a bad thing. A lot of great companies both big and small have been built without VC money and, therefore, don't figure in to VC asset class problem Fred is discussing. (These "non-VC" companies have created a sizable amount of jobs in the aggregate as well so they do provide some solid economic benefits.)