One could argue that a company like Stripe's target demographic is _precisely_ the enterprise markets; yet, their product pages are slick af! Smooth scrolling, animations and all that jazz. Because they're made up of folks who love JavaScript (and animations, of course)

Apple's marketing team is similar. They're probably a bunch of people who _love_ making videos; probably studied film or art or spent a ton of time on Final Cut Pro etc etc.

Stripe has some serious frontend considerations too. I think their original value point was lowering friction in payment systems and reasonable rates. Stripe still does those things really really well, but so did Braintree (now part of PayPal).

Where Stripe absolutely nailed it is the infrastructure around it. Their SDK documentation and continous improvements still outpace Braintree.

For instance, Stripe has custom elements that you can use to interact seamlessly with their SDK, with little setup needed[0]

I could not find a similiar integration from Braintree.

Compartively, I find their informational SDK page a bit more polished than Braintree, respectively, though I realize some of this is personal style and taste, Stripe has clear pathways for me to find the information I want right on the side bar and referenced throughout the landing page for the client SDK[1] where as Braintree[2] is more narrowly focused, which with payments, may mean I miss a better set of features I should be aware of.

Reducing frictions and painpoints is what they won with, in the end. It was easy to setup and maintain. How many 3rd party services have both of those things that handle something as complex as payments? I can't even get AWS integrations with their own SDKs working together without some effort

[0] https://stripe.com/payments/elements

[1] https://stripe.com/docs/stripe-js

[2] https://developers.braintreepayments.com/start/hello-client/...

Could this be because Stripe has to sell, essentially, to developers, not executives, unlike most B2B products? Developers love slick product pages as much as the next guy, but none of that matters if sales are made over golf sessions with executives.

Hmm, yep, could be.

Although I personally feel it may just be innate appreciation or love of the craft. It's interesting to compare Stripe with other providers such as PayPal, AWS/Amazon, Square. AWS is (and has been) focussed on selling to developers, startups to massive companies. Yet, their product pages aren't as slick as Stripe's. They built out their product with the ethos from the Retail side -- frugality, ship fast & often etc. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Agreed that love of the craft seems like the general tone of their corporate culture as a whole, so that makes perfect sense too.

Data point of one:

Stripe got my business years ago because of the API (compared to the CyberSource merchant API at the time) and the competitive rates.

The pretty UI on their site had precisely zero bearing on the decision.

Fair enough. I agree: Pretty UI doesn't _necessarily_ win all the $$$s

But I feel there's something to be said or appreciated about building or striving to build something beautiful despite that.

That's a tired and specious argument that might have held water if Apple were only successful for a year or two. There are a myriad of devices from competitors who also had large marketing budgets but eventually disappeared into the night.

But it's essentially been 13 years (if you only start counting from the introduction of the iPhone). Great engineering/product deserves a big marketing budget. They go hand in hand.