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Stripe founders are the youngest Irish billionaires on paper
- minimaxir 10y agoNot to diminish the accomplishments, but "Youngest Irish Billionaires with Funding" is an overly narrow superlative. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OverlyNarrowSuperlative http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OverlyNarrowSuper...)
- idlewords 10y agoIt sounds like the bad translation of a restaurant special.
- ojbyrne 10y agoI don't think the "with Funding" is really meant to narrow the selection. I think it means something more like "based on the valuation from new Funding, are Youngest Irish Billionaires"
- nostrademons 10y agoI think the intended grouping of that sentence is (((Stripe founders) are (youngest Irish billionaires)) (with funding)), i.e. they're simply the youngest Irish billionaires, not the youngest Irish billionaires with funding. Still a fairly narrow superlative, but less ridiculous than the original interpretation. "Youngest Irish billionaires" is the lede, "with funding" is the actual news story - they're announcing Stripe's funding round.
- minimaxir 10y agoNormally I would agree with this interpretation, except that Bloomberg did a proper story on Stripe's new funding a few days prior: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-25/payments-startup-stripe-valued-at-9-billion-in-new-funding https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-25/payments-...
- aaronbrethorst 10y agoShitty title. Should be: "With [new] funding, Stripe founders are youngest Irish billionaires."
- troels 10y agoSo. If I value a company, of which I own 100%, at 1B, does that make me a billionaire?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- loeg 10y agoIf you can convince a 3rd party to give you $1 mil for 0.1% ownership of said company, yeah, you are.
- troels 10y agoNo. Then I'd be a millionaire.
- nicky0 10y agoIf you define as "millionaire/billionaire" as strictly the amount you hold in cash, yes. However, the commonly accepted definition includes entire net worth which would include the valuation of shares in companies owned.
- troels 10y agoThere are two differences though. One being that the equity is highly illiquid. The other (and more important) being that there is no market validation of the valuation.
- lotsofpulp 10y agoThe most useful purpose of being labeled a billionaire is being identified as one who has the ability to spend a billion dollars. Obtaining $1 mil doesn't qualify, and it's highly unlikely the other 99.9% of the company would be bought for $999M, so from my perspective the only other purpose of being labeled a billionaire would be for clickbait/marketing.
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- nhorob67 10y agoStartup valuations drive me crazy. Preferred stock is not common stock! This article says they sold a 1.6% stake, derived by taking the amount raised divided by the valuation. Once again, preferred stock is not common stock.
- nstj 10y agoAmen. You'd have to be even more concerned when staff etc use this valuation when considering value of equity grants etc.
- goseeastarwar 10y agoYou're technically correct, but there's no distinction between preferred and common at IPO and it's a fairly safe bet they won't go public below this valuation.
- qwrusz 10y agoI agree there are legit problems in the way valuations and fundraising gets reported. But what would you "prefer" they say? I don't see leaking/reporting details of term sheets becoming a trend any time soon. $150mm is ~1.6% of $9B. If they sold the whole company the day after this last round at the same price the last round paid the day before - without us guessing what random clauses might be in the term sheets or how much the bankers and lawyers might siphon off in fees (7% is not unheard of) - then the last round should just get their $150mm back or 1.6% of the total. At least its not fake news. Mainly this is useless and inaccurate news. But it's info of interest to bloomberg audiences, many of whom know what valuation on paper means. I agree it's misleading numbers for many newsreaders. What else could/should they report?
- dang 10y agoSince Patrick and John have as much distaste for bullshit as the rest of us, I don't think they'll mind if we excise the silly euphemism "billionaires with funding" from the title. Also, this is kind of a weak article that doesn't add much if any information. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13037654 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13037654 was a big thread on the actual recent story.
- minimaxir 10y agoAnd thanks for adding "Paper" in its place, too.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- contingencies 10y agoThey still can't process my card.
- jakozaur 10y agoYet another case of European founders that moved to San Francisco and became succesful. They tried to start in Ireland, but without much success (e.g Enterprise Ireland hasn't allocate them funding to previous vencture).
- cylinder 10y agoNot like it was the US government that funded them either.
- s_dev 10y ago>I’m sometimes asked whether Stripe could have been started in Ireland. It’s impossible to really know the counterfactual, but I suspect not. -p. collison (blog) I think he was on a US bound circuit as soon as he was done with Leaving Cert. I don't think they "tried" Ireland despite selling a company siopa when they were 16 or what not. pg was aware of the two lads from an early age and recognized their talent quickly. I have no doubt they would have done well though I doubt very much as well as they have and theres something for ourselves in the Irish scene to reflect on that.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- winter_blue 10y agoHm, I wonder what visa they used to move to SF. Right now, there's no startup visa of any kind. The closest thing is the EB-5 investor visa, but that requires investing $500k-$1mil of your own money (not investor money). And, the H-1B work visa prohibits starting your own company and self-sponsoring. If they figured out a way to move here and start a company under the current U.S. immigration system, it would benefit a lot of people to know how they did it.
- rusk 10y ago> Right now, there's no startup visa of any kind. They've been over there a while I believe. The Collison bros have for a long time been known as valedictorians - could well be they found some other means to get a visa.
- jakozaur 10y agoYet another case of European founders that moved to San Francisco and became succesful. They tried to start in Ireland, but without much success (e.g Enterprise Ireland hasn't allocate them funding to previous vencture).
- GomezSandra 10y agoSilicon Valley entrepreneurs who are immigrants. Another to the list!
- bogomipz 10y agoWhat is the reason for your distinction? The United States is a nation of immigrants. To quote John F. Kennedy: “Every American who ever lived, with the exception of one group, was either an immigrant himself or a descendant of immigrants”
- idlewords 10y agoThere's a big difference between immigrants and descendants of immigrants.
- bogomipz 10y agoI am not sure what you are getting at but it's still very much a nation of immigrants: Here's some data: http://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/Annual-Number-of-US-Legal-Permanent-Residents http://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/Annu...
- flukus 10y agoHe was wrong about the exception though.
- bogomipz 10y agoIndeed, it was most certainly the only group that arrived by foot and a ice bridge :)
- robotresearcher 10y agoTwo groups. First, America the nation did not exist when people came to North America. The second group were brought against their will. Neither are what we usually mean by immigration.
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- dpandey 10y agoRather than fret about the valuation, it's useful to look at the big picture and ask what stripe has created: an incredibly valuable product in a massive market with lots of potential. It's also rapidly capturing the value it has created: its running ahead of projected revenue and has become the preferred provider for giant companies: http://fortune.com/2015/07/28/stripe-visa/ http://fortune.com/2015/07/28/stripe-visa/ You can have a long discussion about the real or implied valuation, but the truth is this company has a great product and terrific momentum. Who's going to stop it from becoming the next paypal?
- tehbeard 10y ago> Who's going to stop it from becoming the next paypal? As in market share, or support/development annoyances?
- dpandey 10y agoFor instance, becoming the market leader worth $30B.
- zuzun 10y agoBut the easy-to-use API is 90% of the great product, isn't it? Because I noticed most other payment processors offer similar APIs now. PAY.ON develops a white-label platform for third-parties, so now my online bank offers me RESTful payment processing for Visa and Mastercard and I think they even support PayPal.
- BillinghamJ 10y agoI haven't seen a single payments API made as clean or simple as Stripe's. The magic is in what you _can't_ do with it imo. The solutions from old style banks adopting nicer looking APIs still force you to mess around with setting up your own acquiring bank account, etc.
- zuzun 10y agoYes, you have to open a free business bank account (but most companies need one anyway) and then you apply for the payment processing. I should have added a link to the platform in my initial post. [1] It might not be as easy to use as the Stripe API, but it offers you many more payment options. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that this will put Stripe out of business, I'm just saying there seems to be a change in the payment processor landscape and in a few years, people might take these simple online payment platforms for granted. [1] https://docs.aciworldwide.com/ https://docs.aciworldwide.com/
- richartruddie 10y agoThat's great. Always proud when entrepreneurs create a great product that has seamless integreation with other platforms and improves efficiencies. Whats not to love about this?