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Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

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Re: Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

#131

Post by aacook »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #119
aacook wrote: post #101

Stripe's awesome. I'm in YC's startup school and used Stripe Atlas to incorporate. I got an email from Stripe, sharing an opportunity to post your landing page and get feedback from Stripe's design team. That Friday I got an awesome teardown from Stripe's design team. The page ( https://nanagram.co ) still has quite a ways to go, but I incorporated most of their feedback and I'm super happy with it. Another cool thin…

One minor nitpick - just tried to sign up, and if I was a USA user, then your page would have unhidden the pricing buttons. but as I was UK user, it did not unhide anything (not even a sorry!). As such i was left with the default waitlist boxes, and was confused as to whether I was signing up or not. (it's possible it did unhide the sorry, but it was not clear on the smaller screen... maybe a splash of colour? Perhap…

Thanks so much for your feedback. I just deployed the new US-to-international plans earlier today and haven't had a chance to user test it yet. That experience is totally not the best right now. I'm working on a full-on international release. I'll be reaching out to you to try and convince you to do a user study in exchange for free photos and aim to release mid-late next week.

Re: Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

#132

Post by aacook »

saadsg wrote: post #122
aacook wrote: post #101

Stripe's awesome. I'm in YC's startup school and used Stripe Atlas to incorporate. I got an email from Stripe, sharing an opportunity to post your landing page and get feedback from Stripe's design team. That Friday I got an awesome teardown from Stripe's design team. The page ( https://nanagram.co ) still has quite a ways to go, but I incorporated most of their feedback and I'm super happy with it. Another cool thin…

How long did the Atlas setup took you? Few weeks? Update: Just saw your landing page. Pretty cool concept :)

I used them a few months ago, before startup school. I can't remember the turnaround time as I had a wedding on the horizon and that time is a blur, but I remember it being reasonable and delightful. It's totally worth the price. Doing paperwork is the last thing I want to be doing. On my last startup I must've filed for tax extensions for almost 10 years in a row. I love Stripe for removing all of those headaches.

Re: Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

#133

Post by edanm »

snowmaker wrote: post #123
chadash wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why Y Combinator may not be right for your startup. The 100 billion dollars of valuation listed on YC's website may not be up to date, but it's clear that the top 10% of companies make up the overwhelming majority of their portfolio. So they go for moonshots. And they also invest in multiple competitors in the same space in the hopes that one will pan out. So if you're building the kind of company that mi…

The thing is that it is very hard to tell, early on, if you have a potential $10M or $10B company. You're right: if YC had a crystal ball where we could somehow only invest in the $10B kind of company and never in the $10M kind of company, we'd do that. But I don't think such a crystal ball is possible, because companies morph too much. Famously, Microsoft's first product was an interpreter for Altair Basic, which ha…

> The thing is that it is very hard to tell, early on, if you have a potential $10M or $10B company.

I (kind of) disagree with one part of your comment. YC can't tell whether a startup has the potential to be a $10B kind of company, but a person starting a company can certainly decide whether they want to go for a $10B company.

Many people do - a lot of startup founders are trying to be the next Google. But some of them are not, in which case YC isn't right for them (and they'd probably need to pick the right idea/product/company to work on that can succeed without needing to be a $10B company).

Btw, I think you make a great point about Microsoft/BASIC!

Re: Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

#134

Post by patio11 »

bschwindHN wrote: post #128

A bit off topic but I'll ask it here anyway - I see Stripe Atlas advertised as an easy way to start an "Internet Business". What exactly is the definition of an Internet Business? If I sold a physical product, would I still be able to set up the company through Stripe Atlas?

I work on Stripe Atlas. Your question is answered in a bit more detail here: https://stripe.com/docs/atlas#should (and the answer below that one).

We have a number of product decisions to make about how we do things, so the design center of Stripe Atlas is Internet companies. If one incorporates e.g. a Delaware LLC through Stripe Atlas, that’s an LLC. LLCs can e.g. own apartment buildings. We generally assume you probably won’t use us to form an LLC to own and operate an apartment building. There is, at present, no plan to have an Atlas meetup to swap tips on finding great exterminators. But if e.g. you sell SaaS, we have a lot to say about selling SaaS, and your peers in Atlas will run businesses similar in character to yours.

Many Stripe Atlas companies sell physical products; most of them are technically-enabled or sold over the Internet. If we were hypothetically not able to support a product business, it would not be because it is physical, it would be for one of the reasons on the link above.

Re: Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

#135

Post by kennydude »

Firebrand wrote: post #99

So maybe I don’t understand because I’m a dumb-dumb lay person, but what does Stripe do differently from all the other payment processors that has given its rise and hype. Is Stripe popular because its developer friendly? What makes it better than Apple Pay, PayPal, and Square? Normally, when I shop online, I’m usually given an option to type my credit card info or use my PayPal account. Where does Stripe fit into al…

Stripe is a payment processor for online payments. They are a company which take those credit card details you enter and actually take your money on behalf of the shop.

Apple Pay is supported by Stripe, so it's a non-competitor (Apple Pay is just a way of giving your card details to a processor).

PayPal is the closest competitor, but their APIs are quite old (although improving) and when Stripe launched PayPal's pricing was very cmoplex. Also people just don't like the PayPal model for business.

Square is a payment processor, mostly, for physical payments mostly seemingly for hipster coffee shops. They do online payments, but nowhere near the same level Stripe do them.

Re: Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

#136

Post by kennydude »

byron_fast wrote: post #89
gakos wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that their API is great, but there's so much more to building a business - most of all perseverance. Many people can make a good or great API but very few can execute on the rest.

Well in this case their API is backed by a connection to credit card systems... the hard part. The card companies could have done it, but they needed Stripe to show how obvious it is.

> The card companies could have done it

That's not how card companies work. There's 100s of payment processor out there and the card companies let you shop around and pick one that's right for you. They do however require said processors to have large amounts of money just to access their systems.

Stripe has lots of funding to do that AND get good developers to build a decent payment processor.

Re: Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

#137

Post by jkeat »

puranjay wrote: post #129
AndrewWarner wrote: post #83

As a client, I love working with them. I never thought I'd say that about a payment processor. I get pitched lower rates by their competitors all the time, but their software sucks. Giving a refund on Authorize.net feels like I'm being forced to travel back to the 1990s web. Stripe's site is intuitive, their rates are good, they integrate easily with every software I use and their customer service speaks to me like h…

I'm not even a Stripe customer but I still like to visit their site from time to time for design cues. Of mainstream B2B tech companies, I think Stripe has some of the best front end design I've ever seen. Everything is gorgeous AND useful. And despite so many products and pages, you never feel disoriented on their site

Agreed! The sheer amount of landing pages borrowing from Stripe's wide shadow button style is a testament to this

Re: Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

#138

Post by aacook »

moeamaya wrote: post #113
aacook wrote: post #101

Stripe's awesome. I'm in YC's startup school and used Stripe Atlas to incorporate. I got an email from Stripe, sharing an opportunity to post your landing page and get feedback from Stripe's design team. That Friday I got an awesome teardown from Stripe's design team. The page ( https://nanagram.co ) still has quite a ways to go, but I incorporated most of their feedback and I'm super happy with it. Another cool thin…

That's great on Stripe, but tbh your product is awesome. If I was an angel investor, I'd happily put money into this and recommend you to my family. Keep up the great work!

This is very nice of you. I'm due to visit my 94-year-old grandma tomorrow and will be printing this out and showing it to her. Cheers.

Re: Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

#139

Post by roel_v »

adtac wrote: post #127
sophiebits wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means a VC paid $245 million to purchase 1.225% (which is $245M divided by $20B) of Stripe's stock.

In transactions, is it typical to just create new stock such that the newly created stock is 1.225% of the final total? Would the previous investors agree to diluting their stock like that? Or is it common to sell from a common pool of stock that's owned by the company (who is that? the CEO? what is the company if not for the stock distribution?)?

You should read a book on this, it's not something that someone can/will explain in a one off paragraph comment.

Re: Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

#140

Post by kaivi »

aacook wrote: post #101

Stripe's awesome. I'm in YC's startup school and used Stripe Atlas to incorporate. I got an email from Stripe, sharing an opportunity to post your landing page and get feedback from Stripe's design team. That Friday I got an awesome teardown from Stripe's design team. The page ( https://nanagram.co ) still has quite a ways to go, but I incorporated most of their feedback and I'm super happy with it. Another cool thin…

I love Stripe as well, but one thing keeps me wondering - why do their bank payouts take so long?

My company is based in Norway, and I see funds arriving a week after they are marked "on the way to your bank". Money get sent like that every day, but arrive only after a week from a local bank. I know that local bank transfers are reconciled multiple times a day, and I can't see why there is a delay.

The money sending frequency setting seems just misleading to me.

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