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Stripe raises $70M at $3.5B valuation, double that of January

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Re: Stripe raises $70M at $3.5B valuation, double that of January

#31

Post by zrail »

kawsper wrote: post #29
pc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very sorry about that! The support team has expanded a lot this year; we're working on it. Feel free to email me directly if I can ever help -- patrick@stripe.com.

Please be more active on IRC. Right now it is a guy called 'markin' that is doing all the support, and he isn't even hired by you. He says he is happy with the t-shirts and stuff that he have received, but it would be nice with a more direct route to actual employees.

markin and wsmoak have both done exceptional work over the past six months or so. It would be awesome to have both of them on Stripe's payroll if that's a thing they want.

Re: Stripe raises $70M at $3.5B valuation, double that of January

#32

Post by zrail »

canvia wrote: post #28
pc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, we're working on a number of other payment methods. (We have ACH charges in beta -- let me know if you'd like access. patrick@stripe.com.)

Bitcoin?

Bitcoin has been in beta for awhile https://stripe.com/bitcoin

Re: Stripe raises $70M at $3.5B valuation, double that of January

#33

Post by onedev »

mahyarm wrote: post #12
[deleted] wrote: post #8

[deleted]

After the company I worked for raised something like $280mm with a $+1b valuation, I don't think it's that impossible.

I believe mahyarm is talking about Tango.me

http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/tango-2

Re: Stripe raises $70M at $3.5B valuation, double that of January

#34

Post by borat4prez »

pc wrote: post #20
borat4prez wrote: post #17

In my experience Stripe has very poor customer service. Hopefully they spend some of this money in that department. Trying to talk back and forth through e-mail because they won't give me a number to call about sales trying to get a lower rate because my volume of sales is greater than $80k+ monthly, waiting 24+ hours on average for a reply and even 72+ hours on one occasion, finally gave up on them and went with ano…

I'm very sorry about that! The support team has expanded a lot this year; we're working on it. Feel free to email me directly if I can ever help -- patrick@stripe.com.

Thanks for reaching out. Unfortunately, it's a seasonal business so the bulk of our sales comes in November and December and needed to get something besides PayPal checkout implemented before the Thanksgiving rush. It was just dumbfounding how long it took sales@stripe.com to reply to my e-mails.

The last e-mail we sent was November 25th at 5:50pm and didn't get a reply until November 30th at 5:03pm with "Thanks for clarifying, and I apologize for a delayed response on my end." ..by that time we already found an alternative, got it set up and installed in less than an hour.

Re: Stripe raises $70M at $3.5B valuation, double that of January

#35

Post by zmitri »

borat4prez wrote: post #17

In my experience Stripe has very poor customer service. Hopefully they spend some of this money in that department. Trying to talk back and forth through e-mail because they won't give me a number to call about sales trying to get a lower rate because my volume of sales is greater than $80k+ monthly, waiting 24+ hours on average for a reply and even 72+ hours on one occasion, finally gave up on them and went with ano…

FWIW I generally have had excellent customer service experiences with Stripe. Often receiving responses within an hour after sending them at 2 am.

In fact, once an employee out of the blue sent me a mockup showing me how I might use a whole new feature, completely integrated into my sites js and html structure.

Re: Stripe raises $70M at $3.5B valuation, double that of January

#36

Post by vikramhaer »

keithwinstein wrote: post #13

It seems churlish to keep pointing this out, but (assuming the investment is consistent with the typical Silicon Valley practice), it is just not true that this investment, or any participant, has now valued the company at $3.5 billion. Stripe has sold the investors a new round of senior preferred shares (again, making assumptions). These shares carry various bells and whistles whose terms we don't know -- but probab…

After reading through the quora article, I agree that different tranches may have different terms. However, if investors are buying 70M shares at $1 each, it implies that they believe a share of the company is worth that much. If the company has 3.5B shares, that's an implied valuation of $3.5B. In that sense, the investment does value the company at $3.5B. Whether that valuation (or a higher or lower one) is realized through a liquidity event is a different matter, and if/ when that happens, the valuation would be specific to that point in time.

Re: Stripe raises $70M at $3.5B valuation, double that of January

#37

Post by downandout »

Good for Stripe. Many companies are receiving frothy valuations in this environment. IMO a small fraction of them have even a remote possibility of growing into those valuations. Stripe is one of those few.

Disrupting the payments industry, with its labyrinth of regulatory issues, entrenched gatekeepers and competitors, and massive risk management issues, is a Herculian task. Pc and the rest of his team at Stripe have successfully confronted all of these challenges, and I can't wait to see where things go from here.

Re: Stripe raises $70M at $3.5B valuation, double that of January

#38

Post by jusben1369 »

borat4prez wrote: post #34
pc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very sorry about that! The support team has expanded a lot this year; we're working on it. Feel free to email me directly if I can ever help -- patrick@stripe.com.

Thanks for reaching out. Unfortunately, it's a seasonal business so the bulk of our sales comes in November and December and needed to get something besides PayPal checkout implemented before the Thanksgiving rush. It was just dumbfounding how long it took sales@stripe.com to reply to my e-mails. The last e-mail we sent was November 25th at 5:50pm and didn't get a reply until November 30th at 5:03pm with "Thanks for…

What did you go with and how is it working out for you?

Re: Stripe raises $70M at $3.5B valuation, double that of January

#39

Post by keithwinstein »

pc wrote: post #25
keithwinstein wrote: post #13

It seems churlish to keep pointing this out, but (assuming the investment is consistent with the typical Silicon Valley practice), it is just not true that this investment, or any participant, has now valued the company at $3.5 billion. Stripe has sold the investors a new round of senior preferred shares (again, making assumptions). These shares carry various bells and whistles whose terms we don't know -- but probab…

Some of your assumptions are off (e.g. our liquidation preferences are 1x non-participating pari passu; there are no seniority games), but I really enjoyed your Bayesian vs frequentist statistics lecture at 6.945 back in the day!

Thanks, Patrick! (And thanks for posting Mosh on here and giving us a kick in the butt to really release it...) If Stripe just has one class of preferred stock, you're right that my assumptions are off, and I guess then it would be reasonable to impute the value of the newly-issued preferred shares to all the preferred shares. I would still disagree with imputing it to the common, especially since you presumably have your own appraisal of the common at a different price for tax purposes.

Do you think there's a practical path to getting some more realistic numbers in these announcements? Does it matter? It seems like the people possibly being misled by these "TechCrunch valuations" are the press (which is enthusiastic anyway and loves to report the biggest number that can be attributed to somebody) and prospective/current employees (which could be a lot more serious, since people use these valuations to evaluate their own equity packages).

Re: Stripe raises $70M at $3.5B valuation, double that of January

#40

Post by borat4prez »

zmitri wrote: post #35
borat4prez wrote: post #17

In my experience Stripe has very poor customer service. Hopefully they spend some of this money in that department. Trying to talk back and forth through e-mail because they won't give me a number to call about sales trying to get a lower rate because my volume of sales is greater than $80k+ monthly, waiting 24+ hours on average for a reply and even 72+ hours on one occasion, finally gave up on them and went with ano…

FWIW I generally have had excellent customer service experiences with Stripe. Often receiving responses within an hour after sending them at 2 am. In fact, once an employee out of the blue sent me a mockup showing me how I might use a whole new feature, completely integrated into my sites js and html structure.

I was e-mailing sales@stripe so maybe that is a different department than their regular customer service. Sorry I did not clarify. I'm sure they're doing a lot of things right, I just had a bad personal experience.
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