Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Collison Brothers Built Stripe into a $95B Unicorn

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 292 posts

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

#51

Post by wewxjfq »

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.

More like: US companies can't handle good tech legislation, which the EU makes. I enjoy my rights. And "cookie law" is very simple.

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

#52

Post by ttcbj »

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.

While I see your point, I went through several scammy credit card processing solutions (one from an intuit subsidiary, one from a local bank) back around 2013 before I found stripe.

You wouldn’t think that “it’s easy to use and not scammy” Would have been an innovation, but at that stage, I think it was.

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

#53

Post by colinmhayes »

tomatowurst wrote: post #40
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.

IPO right now is very difficult as the door is closing, and investors are wary about paying a premium like they have before. They delayed it too long and have missed the window, it is unlikely from a year from now they will be able to get any bids for the current market valuations.

I mean why didn't they IPO last year with everyone else?

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

#55

Post by vlovich123 »

kpennell wrote: post #48

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…

> but if you look for it, you can find some usually anonymous detractors.

Seems like a vacuous statement. Isn’t that true of anything/anyone in life?

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

#56

Post by [deleted] »

kpennell wrote: post #48

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…

[deleted]

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

#57

Post by nwienert »

lowkey_ wrote: post #47
itsoktocry wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If Shaq lifts me up so I can dunk, you can say that I dunked, but in general it's more accurate to evaluate things under more normal circumstances.

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

#58

Post by Ferrotin »

WXLCKNO wrote: post #54
asd88 wrote: post #16

More like $50B unicorn nowadays?

Can you take stock of a public competitor in the same industry and simply apply its price movements to a private valuation?

Simply, but not precisely. The same macroeconomic factors that affect the public companies’ value apply.

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

#59

Post by thecosas »

taw89345 wrote: post #50
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 cove…

https://stripe.com/files/stripe-2021-update.pdf

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

#60

Post by kareemsabri »

I know the Collisons are brilliant founders and I have long admired Stripe (I've used their Golang API client as inspiration many times in my own code) but it's kind of unfortunate how founder lore really minimizes employees. Stripe has 4,000 people working there, this article mentions only two other employees in passing (the CPO and CFO). Surely many others were brilliant contributors to Stripe's becoming a $95B unicorn, and staying one, beyond just the Collison Brothers. A culture in our industry that made employees feel more ownership would likely help with retention and recruiting.
Post reply on HN