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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

#41

Post by gibolt »

fredsted wrote: post #19
samwillis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that two some extent these sort of regulations are lobbied for in the background by large corporations in order to make it harder for small business to enter the market. If they are going to get regulated anyway best make it to their own advantage!

EU generally can’t make good (tech) legislation. Cookie law is the goto example. It’s too complicated. Too many cooks.

They tend to take a defensive approach to restrict outsiders, since most tech innovation isn't happening locally

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

#42

Post by tomatowurst »

laluser wrote: post #38
m00dy wrote: post #20

Let's see what will happen for them in this bear market.

This is exactly why they prefer to stay private. Stock volatility would be wild. They will have access to liquidity and funding for a while as long as they are growing a good rate, which they seem to be.

Doubtful as those sources of funding are also beholden to investors who most likely have positions in the market. There can be no isolation in modern finance, everything is interconnected.

If the rates continue to rise and market gets bearish on paying multiples on revenues, its going to run into serious liquidity crunch.

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

#43

Post by etaioinshrdlu »

lambda_lord wrote: post #37

Is it unusual for a successful company like Stripe to take so long to go public? It seems like their house is in order, and they are profitable, but employees aren't liquid.

Is there any reason they can't do a direct listing without selling any new shares?

The only downside for the company seems to be that employees would be able to sell, and that seems rather greedy for the company to not work in its employee's best interest.

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

#44

Post by tomatowurst »

rvz wrote: post #30
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 hypin…

So basically every YC backed company that has IPO'd

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

#45

Post by ElFitz »

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

I have no idea on how to figure out a startup’s valuation.

But I wouldn’t compare an infrastructure / platform like Stripe to B2C nice-to-haves for rich-ish people like Uber or Lyft or cute expensive jokes like Peloton.

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

#47

Post by lowkey_ »

itsoktocry wrote: post #23
goodoldneon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, he's saying literally they did reach X market cap in a public market. He was correcting facts of the previous poster.

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

#48

Post by kpennell »

FWIW - Accepted and ghosted: interviewing for a leadership position at Stripe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29387264

I know Stripe is a darling YC company but if you look for it, you can find some usually anonymous detractors.

"+1. Also a founder of an $XB fintech. Exact same story. Patrick + John dangled an acquisition to get a look inside, and ended up re-trading on the terms. Then proceeded to target 2 of our team members to recruit. Fast forward a few years, and now they have deployed a team to directly copy one of our products. Amongst their L2 team, Patrick and Will are described as the "killers". I guess maybe a bit of duplicity is required to build a company of that size..."

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

#50

Post by taw89345 »

lambda_lord wrote: post #37

Is it unusual for a successful company like Stripe to take so long to go public? It seems like their house is in order, and they are profitable, but employees aren't liquid.

There have been liquidity events before, which allowed old enough employees to sell shares. You will find that many a former employee has managed to leave while being able to exercise their options and have a partial cash out with a lot of money to spare. So it’s not been an exercise of keeping employees tied down. A visibility one is Will Larson: You bet that he didn’t leave without being able to sell shares to cover AMT, and getting some immediate payout.

As for why stay private, what John C has said publicly is that they still see a lot of growth to go, and that not having to provide detailed financian statements to the general public, which would include competitors, is a competitive advantage. It seems believable to me.

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