Stripe Is Now a $20B Company • Hacker News Board

Re: Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

#31

Post by rz2k » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 8:01 PM UTC

superasn wrote: post #5

The thing I love most about Stripe is that they have invested quite a lot of resources in their Atlas program to help people from around the world get a level playing field. Before Stripe Atlas there was not a single resource that would allow a non American to setup a bank account for their company totally virtually without ever visiting US (i know because I spoke to at least a dozen of different people and everyone…

"Do things that don't scale"[1] references Stripe specifically for actively recruiting users, but your description of the Atlas program makes it sound like an extension of that strategy. Whereas launching in a single tiny overseas market probably didn't look like it had favorable numbers in absolute terms, they probably got better at opening new markets after each success, and an ever-increasing portfolio would made it increasingly difficult for competitors to imagine ever catching up.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

Re: Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

#32

Post by jonny_eh » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 8:02 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #29

tlb wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the fraudsters found the online payments business fairly early on, before there were a lot of real customers. In the late 90s, many merchants had as many fraud attempts as actual transactions, and a few fraudsters working through a box of stolen credit cards could take a small merchant to the cleaners. Now that online payments are so large, and there is a finite number of sophisticated fraudsters, fraud as a pe…

It makes me wonder if the same dynamic is at work with cryptocurrencies now. Fraudsters found and adopted them early, because if your goal is to commit fraud, having a currency not under the control of the banking system is a pretty critical attribute. But now that the mainstream world is aware of them and people are actively researching what they might be good for, that may not hold true forever.

The difference is that crypto is only good for fraud. So it'll never move past this early stage.

Re: Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

#33

Post by jaggederest » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 8:03 PM UTC

SeanAppleby wrote: post #8

superasn wrote: post #5

The thing I love most about Stripe is that they have invested quite a lot of resources in their Atlas program to help people from around the world get a level playing field. Before Stripe Atlas there was not a single resource that would allow a non American to setup a bank account for their company totally virtually without ever visiting US (i know because I spoke to at least a dozen of different people and everyone…

My startup went through Atlas a couple years ago when it was in beta, and it was amazing. It let us focus on actually building the business rather than screwing around with generic corporate structure and banking, and the team seemed to be fully invested in removing as much legal noise from starting companies as they possibly could. Any problems we had they were there with us to make them disappear. John Collison app…

It's the classic "grow the pie" strategy - if you create more customers that feed into using your service, it's worth it even if you're running a modest loss.

Think of it as a marketing or business development strategy, rather than a service of its own.

Re: Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

#34

Post by haaen » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 8:04 PM UTC

toptal wrote: post #26

haaen wrote: post #22

Some valuation context, although I'm fully aware that Stripe is a private company and that many of its investors could have investing or striking privileges. Stripe: 20 billion. Adyen (stock symbol: ADYEN) 19 billion. Shopify (stock symbol: SHOP) 17 billion. Square (stock symbol: SQ) 39 billion. Paypal (stock symbol: PYPL) 107 billion. Paypal cofounders Elon Musk and Thiel are early Stripe investors. Former Paypal EV…

Adyen is actually 23b as the 19b you mentioned is in Euros. It’s also noteworthy that Stripe has about 1/2 the revenue and the same growth as Adyen, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out in the public markets given that they have nearly identical business models.

You are right.

Right now, 1 euro is worth about 1.17 dollars.

Re: Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

#35

Post by jczhang » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 8:08 PM UTC

superasn wrote: post #5

The thing I love most about Stripe is that they have invested quite a lot of resources in their Atlas program to help people from around the world get a level playing field. Before Stripe Atlas there was not a single resource that would allow a non American to setup a bank account for their company totally virtually without ever visiting US (i know because I spoke to at least a dozen of different people and everyone…

How did Stripe bypass the law here?

Re: Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

#36

Post by brunoTbear » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 8:10 PM UTC

dawhizkid wrote: post #11

I have heard for years people criticizing the payments industry as a low margin commodity biz. What has changed? Or they just got it wrong?

One important piece of Stripe's margin story that differentiates it from commodity processing is their marketplace and platform product, Connect. Without saying too much (I am a former Stripe), this product enables both processing of cardholder charges as well as payouts to 1099 workers and other businesses that the platform is processing on behalf of. When people talk about Stripe serving Uber, this is the kind of unique value that Stripe is bringing to the table.

Re: Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

#37

Post by collision » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 8:14 PM UTC

neximo64 wrote: post #30

Now only if it didn’t take 7 days to get your payment processed

Which country are you in? We're working on speeding up payout times around the world -- it's something people are (rightly) very sensitive to. If you email me at john@stripe.com I can look into it for you.

Re: Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

#38

Post by ttul » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 8:14 PM UTC

pythonaut_16 wrote: post #24

40acres wrote: post #20

In 2017 e-commerce accounted for 9% of all retail sales. If I recall correctly, Amazon is the biggest e-commerce vendor and they are using Stripe. There are no sure bets in business, but If I had to bet on a private software company's survival 20-25 years down the road I'd be hard pressed to bet against Stripe. I also think their leadership is very impressive w/ the Collision bros at the helm.

I hadn't heard about Amazon using Stripe before. Here's an article from 2017 talking about it: https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-quietly-starts-using-st...

Amazing. I wonder why? Amazon must have insane deals with the credit cards. This must be to access some tech that amazon doesn’t want to replicate for some small slice of its business - maybe on the fraud side.

Re: Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

#39

Post by aidos » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 8:17 PM UTC

superasn wrote: post #5

The thing I love most about Stripe is that they have invested quite a lot of resources in their Atlas program to help people from around the world get a level playing field. Before Stripe Atlas there was not a single resource that would allow a non American to setup a bank account for their company totally virtually without ever visiting US (i know because I spoke to at least a dozen of different people and everyone…

Stripe are just awesome. Thing I love most about them were the capture the flag comps they did. Seriously. So much love for those games.

Re: Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

#40

Post by ransom1538 » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 8:22 PM UTC

haaen wrote: post #17

Stripe is the second most valuable YC company. Total valuation of all companies that YC funded (more than 1,900) now exceeds 100 billon dollars. Airbnb has a private valuation of 31 billion. Stripe has a private valuation of 20 billion. Dropbox has a public valuation (DBX) of 11 billion. So the two most valuable companies account for about half the total value of all the YC companies. This is what a power law looks l…

"This is what a power law looks like!"

Exactly. That is why, now, if a VC looks at your company they think: "Will this company be worth more than all the companies we have ever funded combined". So if the idea isn't something close to that power law, they are out. My 'buy Japanese bubble gum' idea might not hit that.