He would definitely have replied :) . Patrick replied (very accurately, as it turned out) back in 2011 to my attempt to do a micropayments startup: "I would s

He would definitely have replied :) . Patrick replied (very accurately, as it turned out) back in 2011 to my attempt to do a micropayments startup: "I would strongly advise rethinking starting a payment processor as a student. It is relationship-, credibility-, and capital-intensive. It also requires truly massive scale before being worth any money. (Incredibly massive scale in micropayments. If you make $0.01 off each transaction you have to facilitate hundreds of thousands a month just to pay for the founding team's ramen. If you somehow possess the magic that you need to find 100,000 paying customers you shouldn't end up eating ramen!)" As someone who started down the payments path and desisted pretty quickly ("fail fast", they call it :) ) I'm extremely impressed by Stripe, and they've definitely gotten a great talent and great guy in Patrick.