The Collison Brothers Built Stripe into a $95B Unicorn • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by concordDance » Fri, May 27, 2022, 8:08 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #82

kareemsabri wrote: post #60

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 uni…

I think that this is not just a story-telling problem. It is a wealth-sharing problem as well. I don't know much about stripe, but think of Bezos as a pretty good example - to a O(n) rounding he has 100 billion dollars and 1 million employees. Why is he getting 100,000 from each employee ? Not because those employees send him a cheque. But because of particular outcomes of share capital, and corporate law. Decisions…

> Oh and lest we forget, it is in the main scientific advances that have bought us the last 200 years, not founders or entrepreneurs, and those advances were funded almost fully by government out of ... tax revenue.

This doesn't ring true to me... the industrial revolution came from the steam engine. And so many later advancements like the light bulb, generators, cars, planes, mass manufacture of fertilizer didn't have much governmemt involvement.

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

#232

Post by izgzhen » Fri, May 27, 2022, 8:12 AM UTC

jollofricepeas wrote: post #194

notfromhere wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By its nature, you get more value out of an employee than you pay in wages. Otherwise, there would be no point to hiring anyone.

Exactly. Fundamentally, tech workers don’t seem to understand this point mainly because they are making more money than “everyone else.” The other reason is that we as humans don’t understand big numbers. Big ape brains can’t understand the gap between $1 million and $1 billion let alone 100 billion. If software engineers would have banded together a long time ago to get a larger piece of the pie like professional at…

While senior engineers don’t make NFL wages, the executives do (including some former senior engineers). Would it be fair to compare execs to NFL player instead? (While engineers are those work behind the scene to support the game)

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

#233

Post by chii » Fri, May 27, 2022, 8:27 AM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #227

chii wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is one factor in why companies are not democracies societal democracy works because everybody is born into a society equally. A company democracy doesn't work because not everyone is "born" into the company - the founders are more born, since they put up initial capital. If the employees also put up capital, they will get an apportioned vote. So a company _is_ a democracy, but the votes aren't tied to lives like…

This values capital over labor to a far too large extent. The value of a (successful) company is overwhelmingly dominated by labor - including the labor of the founders and CEOs, to be clear - not by original capital investments. But, ownership is only afforded to those who contribute capital, and ~0% to those contributing labor (this does vary between companies, as some do offer equity as part of the labor contract,…

> The value of a (successful) company is overwhelmingly dominated by labor

but those labour only decided to contribute their labour because they are guaranteed a wage - which is capital being spent.

If you put up a job offer, where your wage is tied to the profitability of the business (aka, if you worked but the business didn't make any revenue or profit, you don't get paid), then you'd find that there aren't many who would take this offer. It is this property of equity which makes capital more powerful.

you could artificially raise the power of labour by fiat law. But this law would distort the capital being spent - you might even find capital flight, if the law is very skewed towards labour.

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

#234

Post by qeternity » Fri, May 27, 2022, 8:43 AM UTC

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #191

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.

Is that amazing? It might actually be the standard way. Google - better search. Search was "solved", just not well. Zoom - better video chat. It was "solved", not well. Amazon - they've never done anything original, always just better. Online books was done, colo servers were a thing. Apple - same. Telsa - better electric cars. Airbnb - better short term rental market. Salesforce - better CRM. Snowflake - better data…

I think you’re selectively choosing what constitutes “new” vs. “better”.

As Henry Ford said, if you ask people what they want they’ll tell you a faster horse. It’s not as if the automobile wasn’t new and revolutionary, but nobody cares about cars. They care about getting around. And a way to get around that was faster, more powerful and more reliable…that was new. It’s the details that matter.

If you take your view, the moon landing was hardly anything noteworthy because animals have been migrating to new lands for millions of year.

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

#235

Post by rob74 » Fri, May 27, 2022, 9:12 AM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #215

notfromhere wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By its nature, you get more value out of an employee than you pay in wages. Otherwise, there would be no point to hiring anyone.

On average, yes, but any given employee may be a net negative and not really earn their keep.

Well, from what I hear, Amazon has several methods in place to quickly "weed out" these employees (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon#Treatment_...). Gotta make sure that wealth keeps flowing smoothly from the bottom to the top...

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

#236

Post by kareemsabri » Fri, May 27, 2022, 9:23 AM UTC

notfromhere wrote: post #183

philwelch wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is a wealth-sharing problem as well. I don't know much about stripe, but think of Bezos as a pretty good example - to a O(n) rounding he has 100 billion dollars and 1 million employees. Why is he getting 100,000 from each employee? I used to work for Amazon. I did not give Jeff Bezos $100,000. In fact, I actually made money out of the deal.

By its nature, you get more value out of an employee than you pay in wages. Otherwise, there would be no point to hiring anyone.

No, on AVERAGE you get more value out of each employee than you pay in wages, if you turn a profit (let's put aside investing in growth / VC funding for simplicity). That's how you stay in business. That does not mean for each employee you are efficiently paying them based on the value created for the business, some may be underpaid and some grossly overpaid.

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

#237

Post by sumedh » Fri, May 27, 2022, 9:25 AM UTC

edanm wrote: post #199

jollofricepeas wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Fundamentally, tech workers don’t seem to understand this point mainly because they are making more money than “everyone else.” The other reason is that we as humans don’t understand big numbers. Big ape brains can’t understand the gap between $1 million and $1 billion let alone 100 billion. If software engineers would have banded together a long time ago to get a larger piece of the pie like professional at…

> - Senior engineers would make NFL wages That is an absurd exaggeration, unless by "senior engineers" you are including people who do a lot more than "just" engineering, e.g. build companies, build products, etc. The reason NFL wages are so high is not just that they bring in a lot of money, it's that the players are to a large extent irreplaceable. If you take the, say, 500 most talented players in the US at a give…

> And at the top end, the best players are a massive draw that makes teams tons of money.

What is so special about them?

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

#238

Post by CPLX » Fri, May 27, 2022, 9:48 AM UTC

daenz wrote: post #131

CPLX wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

>Or you can grab some torches and sharp objects and hold them to his throat and change the terms of the negotiation. Do all of your employees at From Day One own a portion of the company? Why shouldn't they "hold sharp objects to your throat", as the founder, to get a better deal than what they agreed to? If not, why not?

If they believe they’ve exhausted all other avenues for positive change, and if I personally have subverted and taken over roles best left to a democratic government, then of course they should.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it.

If they grow weary of the existing power structure and have not been given the ability to meaningfully participate in the institutions that govern the lives of themselves and their communities, then they most certainly should exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow those institutions.

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/abraham_lincoln_101160

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

#239

Post by CPLX » Fri, May 27, 2022, 9:50 AM UTC

beambot wrote: post #134

CPLX wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

To be fair: all laws are legal fictions enforced by the pointy end of a stick. Could just as easily end up with totalitarianism.

Now you’re getting it.

So when a small group of people has seized control of the laws it’s time to resort to the pointy end of the stick.

The laws are there to protect the people from those who seek to enslave them not the other way around.

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

#240

Post by benoketamad » Fri, May 27, 2022, 9:52 AM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #83

wewxjfq wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If your idea of "good legislation" is "bureaucratic hellpit that promises the solution to all problems to the electorate, but in reality just makes things slightly more expensive to big companies and destroys any chance of smaller players to disrupt the market", then yes, EU legislation is great. Cookie law is "simple", but what does it achieve? How are our lives better after knowing that every website uses cookies ?…

GDPR: At least you have the means to hold a company accountable in the EU, without spending a shitton of money on lawyers. In the US it's like the wild west. Steal as much data as possible, without any repercussions whatsoever. Neutered congress and other amusing institutions add to the mix.