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Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

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Re: Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

#52
post #10

I love the quote from John Collison: "This is digital migration in a very compressed period of time, for both businesses and customers," Collison adds. "My mom recently asked me if I'd heard of 'this Instacart thing.' Yeah mom, I have."

Sadly, it’s also likely one of the largest and fastest transfers of wealth from small businesses to large corporations. As Amazon hires 100,000+ workers how many small businesses are shuttering for good? Stripe is one of the “good” tech companies in this respect by helping to level the playing field for smaller businesses, but it’s not going to be enough.

The impact of Covid-19 on many businesses around the world is very sad.

That said, it's less clear to me that the medium-term impact will be pro-incumbent or pro-large company. Big incumbents tend to be less adaptable and to benefit from large fixed cost barriers to entry (e.g. real estate). We're seeing a lot of nimble small businesses migrate to online business models far faster than the behemoths they used to struggle to compete against.

Re: Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

#53
post #29
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Stripe still hiring during COVID-19?

Yes!

Although they are particularly picky at the moment, which makes sense given the situation.

Anecdotally, I couldn't get an interview, even though I had an offer from them in the past.

Re: Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

#54
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't know about best buy, they might be able to negotiate something better. but for small fish, it's standard practice to keep not just the fee, but twice the fee: when you charge a card, visa charges you 2.5% on the purchase amount. and then when you refund the card, visa charges you 2.5% on the refund amount. as far as visa is concerned, they're both just transactions, regardless of the direction, and they want…

IMHO it is time to start promulgating the idea that electronic money transfer should be considered a basic human right just like free cash transactions have been since the invention of money. It already is that way in many advanced countries where electronic money transfer is a service provided by the government. It is only in the U.S. where a private monopolistic cartel is allowed to impose a private tax on all reta…

The U.S loves its private monopolistic cartels imposing a private tax on all XXX.

I don't think this is changing any time soon. We don't even have public healthcare.

Re: Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

#55
I'm very happy with Stripe and for their success, but I plan on switching all my payments to go through PayPal again. I did some math and PayPal offers a better deal for Canadian businesses after Stripe bumps me off of their grandfathered conversion fees in a couple months.

I love the slick interface, but it's simply not worth the thousands per year I'll be saving with the switch.

For me the main selling point for any payment processor is the minimization of fees. Sure, the API's are nice, but I already use a payment gateway for that.

I'm a few clicks away from saving thousands. Am I missing anything?

Re: Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

#56
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't know about best buy, they might be able to negotiate something better. but for small fish, it's standard practice to keep not just the fee, but twice the fee: when you charge a card, visa charges you 2.5% on the purchase amount. and then when you refund the card, visa charges you 2.5% on the refund amount. as far as visa is concerned, they're both just transactions, regardless of the direction, and they want…

IMHO it is time to start promulgating the idea that electronic money transfer should be considered a basic human right just like free cash transactions have been since the invention of money. It already is that way in many advanced countries where electronic money transfer is a service provided by the government. It is only in the U.S. where a private monopolistic cartel is allowed to impose a private tax on all reta…

In what countries can you do free electronic transactions?

Re: Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

#57

I want a bot that translates these advertisements to the equivalent phrasing used in public equity markets "Someone bought 1,000,000 shares of a company at a price of $20 in a secondary offering. Company's marketcap is now $36B" Private equity market lingo is dumb. Many companies don't state the valuation after a round and the ones that do deliberately do it for clout. It is confusing and counterintuitive because peo…

Down rounds are also bad news for previous investors (and other shareholders, like employees) due to how liquidation preferences typically work.

A preferred share issue.

Re: Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

#59
I hope they are letting the employees cash out at these rounds. Otherwise they will end up like Uber, Lyft and other unicorn employees that not only got screwed by the IPO, but the subsequent taxes because of that. I know many Uber employees that need to sell at these low prices just to pay taxes and their RSUs leaving them with very little actual gains.

Re: Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

#60

That's much higher than Square (25.2B) but lower than Shopify (60.5B) (Square and Shopify have 4.71B and 1.58B in revenue, respectively)

Shopify is going to pull back payments from stripe. It's the only logical thing for them to do for them to boost revenue. They already ramped up the Shopify Pay branding and removed the "powered by stripe" cobranding on Shopify Payments. Stripe helped it along by not refunding payment fees on returns. Shopify's largest merchants are apparel companies who have high return rates.
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