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The Collison Brothers Built Stripe into a $95B Unicorn

forbes.com

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Re: The Collison Brothers Built Stripe into a $95B Unicorn

#21

Post by samwillis »

encoderer wrote: post #2

Paddle buying ProfitWell is big. Paddle would also take over all my billing support. I don’t want to do a billing migration right now but if I did I probably would switch to Paddle. The first real contender to Stripe in a long time.

This so much, Stripes innovation was making it so much easter to integrate a payment api. Paddles innovation is making international tax/vat a complete none issue to new businesses. They are doing everything small business want to make online digital goods sales painless from an admin point of view.

Re: The Collison Brothers Built Stripe into a $95B Unicorn

#22

Post by itsoktocry »

warent wrote: post #9
tootie wrote: post #5

It's a really amazing case of a business going into a crowded space and building a solution to what anyone would have called a thoroughly-solved problem and still managed to disrupt it. They didn't really "invent" anything or make a new market, they just did something better than everyone else. And, I think, got incredibly lucky with entering the market at the exact right time.

It is curious to wonder how they managed to lead the company this successfully. How often do young founders actually hang onto leadership this long without either imploding or being replaced? Why are the Collison brothers different?

>How often do young founders actually hang onto leadership this long without either imploding or being replaced? Why are the Collison brothers different?

Stripe is great, so I assume these guys are good leaders. But Stripe was founded in 2011. Are there not plenty of young founders of that era "hanging on" to their leadership? I don't see anything particularly out of the ordinary here.

Re: The Collison Brothers Built Stripe into a $95B Unicorn

#23

Post by itsoktocry »

goodoldneon wrote: post #17
newaccount2021 wrote: post #8

absolutely ZERO chance they could get a $95B valuation in public markets today HN/VCs also said Uber was a $150B company...Lyft was a $50B company...Peloton was a $40B company... if Stripe went public today, I would say they would be lucky to crest at a $30B valuation, even that may be lofty...PayPal has 3x market share as Stripe and has a $92B valuation

Uber peaked at ~$150 billion market cap. Peloton peaked ~$55 billion market cap. They were absolutely overvalued at those market caps, but it's wrong to say that "HN/VCs said those companies were worth X but they didn't reach X in public markets"

>They were absolutely overvalued at those market caps, but it's wrong to say that "HN/VCs said those companies were worth X but they didn't reach X in public markets"

Why is it wrong? You think private markets are better indicators of value than public?

Re: The Collison Brothers Built Stripe into a $95B Unicorn

#24

Post by samwillis »

warent wrote: post #9
tootie wrote: post #5

It's a really amazing case of a business going into a crowded space and building a solution to what anyone would have called a thoroughly-solved problem and still managed to disrupt it. They didn't really "invent" anything or make a new market, they just did something better than everyone else. And, I think, got incredibly lucky with entering the market at the exact right time.

It is curious to wonder how they managed to lead the company this successfully. How often do young founders actually hang onto leadership this long without either imploding or being replaced? Why are the Collison brothers different?

I think it's to some extent the good old Irish charm, and I say that as someone married to a much better Irish other half.

Re: The Collison Brothers Built Stripe into a $95B Unicorn

#25

Post by clint »

goodoldneon wrote: post #17
newaccount2021 wrote: post #8

absolutely ZERO chance they could get a $95B valuation in public markets today HN/VCs also said Uber was a $150B company...Lyft was a $50B company...Peloton was a $40B company... if Stripe went public today, I would say they would be lucky to crest at a $30B valuation, even that may be lofty...PayPal has 3x market share as Stripe and has a $92B valuation

Uber peaked at ~$150 billion market cap. Peloton peaked ~$55 billion market cap. They were absolutely overvalued at those market caps, but it's wrong to say that "HN/VCs said those companies were worth X but they didn't reach X in public markets"

They reached it, but were quickly proven wrong

Re: The Collison Brothers Built Stripe into a $95B Unicorn

#26

Post by clra »

asd88 wrote: post #16

More like $50B unicorn nowadays?

It's hard to tell given the private stock and all, but the article mentions that there's reason to believe the company hasn't taken quite as much of a haircut as comparable ones that are already on the public markets:

> In March, Fidelity, required to publicly update the value of its holdings, marked down Stripe by 20%. Most unicorns—startups valued at $1 billion or more—are trading on the secondary markets at 20% to 40% discounts to their last official venture capital rounds. But Stripe’s shares remain hard for new investors to obtain and in high demand, with recent transactions implying a valuation of as much as $165 billion, per New York–based EquityZen, a marketplace for pre-IPO shares.

Re: The Collison Brothers Built Stripe into a $95B Unicorn

#27

Post by yunohn »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #13
samwillis wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that Paddle becomes a middle man in the transaction taking on all international tax responsibility. They pay you out after paying all tax/vat local to the customer. This massively simplifies international sales, particularly for EU business. I also believe that an awful lot of small online SASS and digital good sales by companies are committing (unintentional) tax fraud in the countries of their c…

A simple solution is to do a b2b company only and thanks the EU for complicating the situation so much. Another thing I used to do was to just sell to everyone except European customers (explicitly written on the website). The funniest thing is that the EU ostensibly did it to make "Amazon pay their fair share" while most small merchants that used to run e-commerce have moved to sell on Amazon or eBay just not to hav…

> A simple solution is to do a b2b company only

“Simply change your entire business model or build a different product”

> Another thing I used to do was to just sell to everyone except European customers

“Just ignore the entire EU market for whatever you’re selling”

This isn’t a serious post right? Or I guess, it’s actually a classic HN counter-post.

Re: The Collison Brothers Built Stripe into a $95B Unicorn

#28

Post by HatchedLake721 »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #13
samwillis wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that Paddle becomes a middle man in the transaction taking on all international tax responsibility. They pay you out after paying all tax/vat local to the customer. This massively simplifies international sales, particularly for EU business. I also believe that an awful lot of small online SASS and digital good sales by companies are committing (unintentional) tax fraud in the countries of their c…

A simple solution is to do a b2b company only and thanks the EU for complicating the situation so much. Another thing I used to do was to just sell to everyone except European customers (explicitly written on the website). The funniest thing is that the EU ostensibly did it to make "Amazon pay their fair share" while most small merchants that used to run e-commerce have moved to sell on Amazon or eBay just not to hav…

How does you stopping selling in ~30 EU countries, help you with being tax and law compliant in the other 150+ countries?

You still have to know and understand your legal/tax responsibilities when selling to businesses in Singapore, South Korea, Australia etc.

Re: The Collison Brothers Built Stripe into a $95B Unicorn

#29

Post by jonny_eh »

tootie wrote: post #5

It's a really amazing case of a business going into a crowded space and building a solution to what anyone would have called a thoroughly-solved problem and still managed to disrupt it. They didn't really "invent" anything or make a new market, they just did something better than everyone else. And, I think, got incredibly lucky with entering the market at the exact right time.

> they just did something better than everyone else

Wow, HN's ability to dismiss and diminish major accomplishments continues to astound me.

Re: The Collison Brothers Built Stripe into a $95B Unicorn

#30

Post by rvz »

newaccount2021 wrote: post #8

absolutely ZERO chance they could get a $95B valuation in public markets today HN/VCs also said Uber was a $150B company...Lyft was a $50B company...Peloton was a $40B company... if Stripe went public today, I would say they would be lucky to crest at a $30B valuation, even that may be lofty...PayPal has 3x market share as Stripe and has a $92B valuation

> HN/VCs also said Uber was a $150B company...Lyft was a $50B company...Peloton was a $40B company...

Exactly.

The hype squad have been screaming about the valuations of these companies and now look at them as soon as they IPOed. Neither of them are profitable companies.

It just means the VCs, insiders and everyone else who got was in before the IPO made a windfall in their stock and by now cashed out. The news hyping up the IPO to retail investors and left them holding the bags again as the market drops.

I would expect Stripe to delay their (eventual) IPO.

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