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

Stripe's 22-Year-Old Irish-Born Founder Is Just Getting Started

inc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 91 posts

Re: Stripe's 22-Year-Old Irish-Born Founder Is Just Getting Started

#31

Post by clicks »

pc wrote: post #28
thewarrior wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was born the same year as this guy . How do I reconcile myself to the fact that I may never achieve so much even in my entire life ? Is it a matter of lowering ones expectations ? If this is the kind of brilliance it takes to succeed in the start up world I'm quite discouraged.

Don't stress out over it. I'm Patrick, John's brother. I too constantly feel that I should be more successful, and I'm pretty sure the feeling doesn't go away -- no matter what's achieved. I think looking at others can be a useful gut check: am I working as hard as I could? Am I as focused as I'd like to be? But given that there's so much randomness and circumstance there too, it's a bad benchmark for anything. (For…

So, if you don't mind me asking, do speak about your (and your brother's) upbringing.

What was your childhood like? Did you parents teach you programming? Did you play with legos a lot?

Write as if you were giving advice to future-fathers.

Re: Stripe's 22-Year-Old Irish-Born Founder Is Just Getting Started

#32

Post by nmridul »

pc wrote: post #28
thewarrior wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was born the same year as this guy . How do I reconcile myself to the fact that I may never achieve so much even in my entire life ? Is it a matter of lowering ones expectations ? If this is the kind of brilliance it takes to succeed in the start up world I'm quite discouraged.

Don't stress out over it. I'm Patrick, John's brother. I too constantly feel that I should be more successful, and I'm pretty sure the feeling doesn't go away -- no matter what's achieved. I think looking at others can be a useful gut check: am I working as hard as I could? Am I as focused as I'd like to be? But given that there's so much randomness and circumstance there too, it's a bad benchmark for anything. (For…

>> (For what it's worth, the check I use personally is: "is there a difference between how those who know me best would describe me, and how I'd like to be?" Most of the time, I just try to fix those gaps.)

^^^ If only I could up vote this many more times..

Re: Stripe's 22-Year-Old Irish-Born Founder Is Just Getting Started

#33

Post by raverbashing »

subsystem wrote: post #17
DigitalSea wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's also a pilot and pianist and he's only 22. I'm now asking myself where did my life going wrong?

Not to take anything away from him, but I think his other achievements are far more impressive. Learning to fly or play the piano generally "just" takes time and money. The really hard things are those where you can apply yourself fully and still fail.

Yes

His father may be a businessman (yes, I read the part where he says he's an electrical engineer), I'm not sure.

Based on what things cost in Ireland today and the salary one can make, it does not look good. And any salary considered 'high' pays 41% in taxes (where high is > $41k per year)

Re: Stripe's 22-Year-Old Irish-Born Founder Is Just Getting Started

#34

Post by biot »

MojoJolo wrote: post #20

This guy inspired me. I'm just reading about Stripe a while ago and I don't know the founder is just 22! I'm 20, and I think I need to rush some things. I don't want to be late.

It sure would be a shame if you end up being a sluggard like Jeff Bezos who started Amazon at the ripe old age of 30. :)

Re: Stripe's 22-Year-Old Irish-Born Founder Is Just Getting Started

#35

Post by mibbitier »

thewarrior wrote: post #18
ronnier wrote: post #2

Wow, this guy is amazing. Read his wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Collison

I was born the same year as this guy . How do I reconcile myself to the fact that I may never achieve so much even in my entire life ? Is it a matter of lowering ones expectations ? If this is the kind of brilliance it takes to succeed in the start up world I'm quite discouraged.

IMHO you might want to reassess your idea of success. Having a great family life, bringing up children, enjoying each day. Those are good measures of success.

Re: Stripe's 22-Year-Old Irish-Born Founder Is Just Getting Started

#36

Post by mahyarm »

clicks wrote: post #9
DigitalSea wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's also a pilot and pianist and he's only 22. I'm now asking myself where did my life going wrong?

He also got his company sold to eBay at the age of 17 for $5 million. Our Dani Fong here has a similar story -- dropped out of Princeton at the age of 17... where she was doing her doctorate . I think the parents of these two need to come out and explain to us what exactly their parenting methods are.

Dani Fong was allowed to stop going to normal school at around age 12, because she hated it to the bone and her parents listened. After that she went on to an alternative track that involved programming, horse back riding and community college and shortly after, a physics undergrad that took 5 years.

That's what I gathered from her history. I know of a bunch of people that could of been like that, but stuck to normal school and the pace that it sets with it's busy work and so on limited their potential. I think there is a lot of kids where you could just 'skip the bullshit' and put them in some sort of college degree but instead they flounder in a school system where they don't fit in and is not suited for them.

She started her own company because similarly, she really doesn't like being an employee.

http://daniellefong.com/about-the-author/

Re: Stripe's 22-Year-Old Irish-Born Founder Is Just Getting Started

#38

Post by Jach »

clicks wrote: post #9
DigitalSea wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's also a pilot and pianist and he's only 22. I'm now asking myself where did my life going wrong?

He also got his company sold to eBay at the age of 17 for $5 million. Our Dani Fong here has a similar story -- dropped out of Princeton at the age of 17... where she was doing her doctorate . I think the parents of these two need to come out and explain to us what exactly their parenting methods are.

Be careful of generalizing parenting methods, also don't put too much weight on parenting when there's at least as much (though probably more) due to genetics. (There's also a nice low-hanging fruit plucked by making sure the child has enough iodine in the womb/early infancy[1].) With parenting tricks, what seems to "work" remarkably well for one child might not work at all for another child, even in the same family! I'm not a parent so I observe this lack of generalized techniques from multi-sibling families with very different sibling life outcomes and also from Feynman's anecdote on his son and his daughter. Here's him telling it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzg1CU8t9nw (at the 49 minute mark).

[1] http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics#iodine

Re: Stripe's 22-Year-Old Irish-Born Founder Is Just Getting Started

#39

Post by DaniFong »

mahyarm wrote: post #36
clicks wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He also got his company sold to eBay at the age of 17 for $5 million. Our Dani Fong here has a similar story -- dropped out of Princeton at the age of 17... where she was doing her doctorate . I think the parents of these two need to come out and explain to us what exactly their parenting methods are.

Dani Fong was allowed to stop going to normal school at around age 12, because she hated it to the bone and her parents listened. After that she went on to an alternative track that involved programming, horse back riding and community college and shortly after, a physics undergrad that took 5 years. That's what I gathered from her history. I know of a bunch of people that could of been like that, but stuck to normal…

'Skipping the bullshit' is in fact the lesson I'd like people to draw on. And it doesn't end with school. Too many people are stuck in jobs and relationships and situations they don't enjoy. Get unstuck.

Although, I will annotate to your analysis -- the reason I started this particular company was that I wanted to make a difference. The reason I had to start some company was because I am rather insubordinate, and lack consistency of attendance and effort on things that I am less than passionately attached to.

Re: Stripe's 22-Year-Old Irish-Born Founder Is Just Getting Started

#40

Post by sudhirj »

What's also impressive is the choice of project: pg has written about this (think he calls it the schelp filter or something). Payments is one of the most difficult, red-tape entangled, regulation-choked domains to start a company in. Not to mention the extreme security requirements and general unsexiness of it all.

Think they've managed to do an awesome through all the hurdles - if I ever decide to follow their example and start a payments company in India it will simply be "Stripe-API compliant". That's pretty much all the marketing / features it will need.

Post reply on HN