It's insane that they aren't public yet. Their investors must be pressuring them like crazy to IPO.
How do you ruin a good company? Simple. Go public
Stripe valued at $159B, 2025 annual letter
101–110 of 253 posts
Re: Stripe valued at $159B, 2025 annual letter
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't meet the financial requirement ($200K annual income or $1M net worth), you can also qualify as an accredited investor by passing the Series 65 exam and filing a form with the SEC. So you have to prove that either you can afford to lose some money or you have enough investing knowledge to know what you're getting into. Seems fair.
So someone who inherits $100 million (11 year old or not) doesn't have take the exam, but someone who knows about the industry inside out has take an exam to participate? Seems "fair" to be honest. I have a few friends that that have told me about certain companies they would like to invest in and they are knowledgeable about but they cannot access them but I can and not give them any shares.
We don't care if people with $100MM make a bad bet on a tech company.
Re: Stripe valued at $159B, 2025 annual letter
#1031.6 percent of global GDP blows my mind.
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Re: Stripe valued at $159B, 2025 annual letter
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reporting isn’t the drawbacks of being public, it’s the investors. They get to _choose_ who they let in if they are private (by definition). They don’t need the public’s money and don’t want the headache of dealing with the public. I’d completely agree if I were them. Disclaimer: ex-stripe who is still an investor.
The vast majority of public shareholders don't vote their shares. A VC is much more likely to apply unwanted pressure to the board/management than the general public is. IMO, the best reason to avoid an IPO is to stay out of the media.
Harder for activist investors to get into a private company than a public one imho. Keeps out those who would squeeze the business and bail, and potentially kick out the founders. With sufficient cashflow (which Stripe most certainly has), you can buy out existing investors without going public.
(not ex-Stripe, but own startup equity and have no problem with them never going public if that is the choice; optimize for the enterprise and existing stakeholders, not the public market mechanics broadly speaking)
Re: Stripe valued at $159B, 2025 annual letter
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
IPOs also kill a lot of companies. Now you have a new list of investors you are obligated to attend to, and what those investors what is not always to make your company more successful, if it can make more money now.
The reverse is much more true. When private equity takes a public company private, there's a 50% chance they'll kill the company. Also, private companies fail at a much higher rate than public ones do.
I don't think PE buyouts are the right comparison here; we're talking about companies that never go public versus the ones that do.
And, of course private companies fail at a much higher rate. The set of private companies includes every company that doesn't succeed to the point where it has the realistic choice to go public. Again: wrong comparison.
Re: Stripe valued at $159B, 2025 annual letter
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Private markets is where the wealth is (if you invested at the bottom)" Stripe might not need your money now, but they certainly needed it at the pre-seed, seed stage where if you were an angel/seed investor you would have been able to participate.
No they didn't. They were picky at the seed stage. They were picky in their first priced round. They were picky in every subsequent round. There was never a point where they wanted your money. The most promising companies fight off investors when word gets around they're raising. There is never a point in the lifecycle of any of these companies where they wanted random retail investors with no network on their cap ta…
Even worse. This means that no wealth will be created for people who actually want to invest.
With Stripe's non IPO example, many will follow and will stay private.
So more gatekeeping.
Re: Stripe valued at $159B, 2025 annual letter
#107Braintree had $1.53 trillion TPV in 2023[0], and it's just a subsidiary of Paypal which has tanked to $40 billion market cap despite revenue and profit that are probably lightyears ahead of Stripe. Honestly, I wouldn't touch Stripe with a ten foot poll at this valuation. Fintech is an industry that just disappoints in the end. [0] https://www.paypal.com/us/braintree
I don't know you have paypal and stripe in the same sentence. Paypal is not a great service at all.
Re: Stripe valued at $159B, 2025 annual letter
#108Braintree had $1.53 trillion TPV in 2023[0], and it's just a subsidiary of Paypal which has tanked to $40 billion market cap despite revenue and profit that are probably lightyears ahead of Stripe. Honestly, I wouldn't touch Stripe with a ten foot poll at this valuation. Fintech is an industry that just disappoints in the end. [0] https://www.paypal.com/us/braintree
Paypal TPV YoY growth for 2025 was 7%[1].
Stripe cites 34% growth for the same period and metric.
[1]: https://s205.q4cdn.com/875401827/files/doc_financials/2025/q...
Re: Stripe valued at $159B, 2025 annual letter
#109I remember when Stripe started and it was super fun to set it up as a developer and build stuff. Today I find it does way too much for small projects and the fees are too high. Does anyone knows of good alternatives for that? (Someone recently shared https://astrafi.com/ with me and it seemed promising, with much better fees, but I haven't tested or used anything other than Stripe)
You can't really do better than stripe. The onboarding overhead is because of fraud and the costs are basically barely above interchange.
Re: Stripe valued at $159B, 2025 annual letter
#110It's insane that they aren't public yet. Their investors must be pressuring them like crazy to IPO.
The cynic in me thinks they don't want to crash their valuation.