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How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe

bloomberg.com

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Re: How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe

#11

Post by Kluny »

eggbrain wrote: post #2

If you are wondering how Stripe could even start with just 7 lines of code, it's a bit misleading: With Stripe, all a startup had to do was add seven lines of code to its site to handle payments: What once took weeks was now a cut-and-paste job. I.E. the simplicity of the Stripe platform (taking only 7 lines of code for developers) was how they succeeded, not that they built a startup at first with just 7 lines of co…

To expand, it's these 7 lines. (Actually 12)
- more or less. Maybe not precisely that, but it's the bit where you add a payment form to your website.

It's a nice headline, but it really leaves out the tremendous amount of back-end work that went into making that front end easy to use.

Re: How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe

#12

Post by crazypyro »

cperciva wrote: post #7
Kiro wrote: post #5

The biggest thing for me with Stripe was that I no longer needed a card redemption agreement. Before that I had to deal with both my bank and the provider and it was a bureaucratic mess. I still wonder how Stripe managed to get around that.

There is an analogous agreement, but it's hidden behind 'terms and conditions' which you click through without reading.

Isn't part of the innovation the fact that almost all users can click through that part of the process instead of spending lots of time in bureaucracy?

Is there justification for everyone who wants to process payments needing to understand that type of legal document? Is there some major liability that people are agreeing to when they accept the T&Cs?

I honestly just don't know anything about card redemption agreements and google wasn't very helpful.

Re: How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe

#13

Post by dschiffner »

eggbrain wrote: post #2

If you are wondering how Stripe could even start with just 7 lines of code, it's a bit misleading: With Stripe, all a startup had to do was add seven lines of code to its site to handle payments: What once took weeks was now a cut-and-paste job. I.E. the simplicity of the Stripe platform (taking only 7 lines of code for developers) was how they succeeded, not that they built a startup at first with just 7 lines of co…

I hate click-bait headlines as much as anyone else... but nowhere in this headline does it say that they started with 7 lines of code.

Re: How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe

#15

Post by [deleted] »

forkLding wrote: post #8
eggbrain wrote: post #2

If you are wondering how Stripe could even start with just 7 lines of code, it's a bit misleading: With Stripe, all a startup had to do was add seven lines of code to its site to handle payments: What once took weeks was now a cut-and-paste job. I.E. the simplicity of the Stripe platform (taking only 7 lines of code for developers) was how they succeeded, not that they built a startup at first with just 7 lines of co…

I'm thinking for the layman who doesnt code which Bloomberg also targets, this distinction is pretty negligible so in a way its not totally clickbait because its still seven lines of code, for developers it seems to be the code you write whereas the title could go anyway Also really appreciate Stripe, registered for Delaware with them

[deleted]

Re: How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe

#16

Post by saurik »

forkLding wrote: post #8
eggbrain wrote: post #2

If you are wondering how Stripe could even start with just 7 lines of code, it's a bit misleading: With Stripe, all a startup had to do was add seven lines of code to its site to handle payments: What once took weeks was now a cut-and-paste job. I.E. the simplicity of the Stripe platform (taking only 7 lines of code for developers) was how they succeeded, not that they built a startup at first with just 7 lines of co…

I'm thinking for the layman who doesnt code which Bloomberg also targets, this distinction is pretty negligible so in a way its not totally clickbait because its still seven lines of code, for developers it seems to be the code you write whereas the title could go anyway Also really appreciate Stripe, registered for Delaware with them

To the layman, I imagine this reads as either "they spent a few minutes writing one paragraph and made $9B" or "they agonized for years over something as small as a single paragraph that was worth $9B"; neither of these are reasonable interpretations. It is only to the advanced technical reader that I think there is any hope of them interpreting it in the correct manner.

Re: How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe

#17

Post by pkilgore »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #10
mschaef wrote: post #4

~12 years ago, it was Patrick Collison that was named young scientist of the year for developing a dialect of Lisp called Croma: http://lemonodor.com/archives/001038.html I'm glad to see he has continued to do well.

That's really interesting. How did you know that?

The article: "Surely the smartest redhead in Ireland,” read one headline about 16-year-old Patrick being named Young Scientist of the Year for developing a programming language and artificial intelligence system."

Re: How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe

#18

Post by [deleted] »

forkLding wrote: post #8
eggbrain wrote: post #2

If you are wondering how Stripe could even start with just 7 lines of code, it's a bit misleading: With Stripe, all a startup had to do was add seven lines of code to its site to handle payments: What once took weeks was now a cut-and-paste job. I.E. the simplicity of the Stripe platform (taking only 7 lines of code for developers) was how they succeeded, not that they built a startup at first with just 7 lines of co…

I'm thinking for the layman who doesnt code which Bloomberg also targets, this distinction is pretty negligible so in a way its not totally clickbait because its still seven lines of code, for developers it seems to be the code you write whereas the title could go anyway Also really appreciate Stripe, registered for Delaware with them

[deleted]

Re: How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe

#19

Post by tedunangst »

dschiffner wrote: post #13
eggbrain wrote: post #2

If you are wondering how Stripe could even start with just 7 lines of code, it's a bit misleading: With Stripe, all a startup had to do was add seven lines of code to its site to handle payments: What once took weeks was now a cut-and-paste job. I.E. the simplicity of the Stripe platform (taking only 7 lines of code for developers) was how they succeeded, not that they built a startup at first with just 7 lines of co…

I hate click-bait headlines as much as anyone else... but nowhere in this headline does it say that they started with 7 lines of code.

The typical interpretation of "turned 7 X into Y" isn't "7 X plus another million X turned into Y". Last night I turned a pat of butter into a steak dinner. Never mind I also started with a steak, thats an irrelevant detail.

Re: How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe

#20

Post by mmahemoff »

eggbrain wrote: post #2

If you are wondering how Stripe could even start with just 7 lines of code, it's a bit misleading: With Stripe, all a startup had to do was add seven lines of code to its site to handle payments: What once took weeks was now a cut-and-paste job. I.E. the simplicity of the Stripe platform (taking only 7 lines of code for developers) was how they succeeded, not that they built a startup at first with just 7 lines of co…

So it's the equivalent of saying "How this inventor made $X billion with the flick of a switch" after they spent decades inventing the light bulb.
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