Fast - the 1-click checkout
Bringing absolute convenience to eCommerce
Welcome back! After taking a break to get settled in for my last semester at UNC, I’m kicking off Next to Disrupt in 2020 with a really good company - Fast. They are earlier stage than I typically target with these posts, but I think what they are up to is worth being on your radar already, and I’m looking forward to doing an update post as they grow in the future. If you like it, give it a share :) Let’s do this!
Fast was founded less than a year ago and is already making waves in the startup community. They started with a simple idea: 1-click login. After very positive initial feedback (and being #1 on ProductHunt), they raised a $2.5M seed round and expanded their vision to include 1-click checkout.
Fast was founded by Domm Holland (CEO) back in March of 2019. He previously founded and grew Tow, an on-demand towing platform that did over $50M in transactions over 4 years before shutting down in 2018. Since founding, Fast has also brought on Allison Barr Allen as the COO. Recently, Domm has been focusing on hiring a lot of both engineers and non-product roles, and (at least in my opinion) has been using Twitter for recruiting far more effectively than I’ve ever seen before.
It all started with Fast Login. In a way, they looked at password managers as a solution to the symptom, not the problem itself. To setup Fast Login, you enter your email on Fast’s website, then click the link they send to your email to verify. After that, you can login to any supported site with 1-click. Since they’ve already authenticated you, you don’t need passwords!
It’s important to note that I had to say “on any supported site” in the previous paragraph. Fast is building a tool, but they only succeed if they get the tool on sites for you to use. Fast has a huge focus on supporting developers, and makes it super easy to support Fast products - all it takes is two lines of code!
That brings us to Fast Checkout, which applies the same 1-click principle to checkout. No more entering your card number on individual sites and managing multiple payment methods on each site - all it takes is 1-click. Fast Checkout is still being developed, and have recently completed tests of 1M transactions per minute. They’re also working on a few big distribution deals that could exponentially increase the speed of distribution once they launch.
So how do they make money?
Good question! And one with a great answer. Fast Login is free for both users and websites. With Fast Checkout, they’ll charge merchants a transaction fee, and Fast’s gross margin will be the difference between that fee and the interchange and network fees incurred by Fast to process the transaction. It’s simple and aligns incentives - because they charge this fee, they aren’t tempted to go the other route and sell data to monetize a free service. Plus, even if the fee is small, eCommerce is a $3T+ market, so there is more than enough volume to move the needle.
Backed by top tier VCs
Fast is backed by Index Ventures (who led the $2.5M seed round in Nov 2019), Kleiner Perkins, Susa Ventures, and Global Founders Capital. If they stay on the path they’ve started, capital will be abundant and cheap going forward - which is great to hear for a product that could improve the lives of so many people.
The bigger picture
At its core, Fast is building consumer and business facing software based on the idea of email-as-an-identity. In other words, having your entire online presence - accounts, passwords, addresses, credit cards, etc - all connected and accessible based on your email. Security is of the upmost important here, making sure that only you can use your account and that your data is shared only if and when you want. Fast has been aware of this since day one, which is good to hear for any service that is so closely tied to our most personal data.
It’s hard to imagine a world without passwords, credit card forms, address updates, and so on. It seems so core to online existence right now, but I for one am excited for a future without it. I’ll leave you with this food for thought - imagine how many times you alone have entered the same credit card or the same address information into different eCommerce sites. Now, imagine how many times everybody has entered the same data. Sounds like a waste of time, right? Imagine if it was… faster.
I hope you enjoyed! If you did, feel free to share this post or the Next to Disrupt page on your socials. Writing these is as much for my own entertainment as it is for yours, so I won’t be too hurt if you don’t share. Or maybe I will. You should probably share.