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The CEO of Stripe reveals what it's really like running a $9.2B startup
- eanzenberg 8y ago"startup"
- Itaxpica 8y agoI came here to say this, once you're calling a 9+ billion dollar company is 'startup' the word has no meaning.
- s_dev 8y agoDepends on the definition of startup and what definition is most meaningful to the user. I find the definition of startup: "A business in the early stages" very limited and not that useful. Lots of old school business folk and baby boomer use startup with this in mind. Paul Graham's definition is one where the number one priority is growth. A business in contrast the number one priority is the bottom line. Priorities are a good way to differentiate between companies because they're trade offs and are specific/measurable. Companies will make decisions that reveal their priorities even if they profess to adhering to other priorities.
- inerte 8y agoI like “an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model” If you’re selling water and expect to grow a lot, unless you’re selling water in a completely new way, are you really a startup?
- jonbarker 8y agoThere are three subcategories of innovation: product, process, and financial innovation. So you could be a water startup if your water is not differentiated but you have either some new way of financing the production of water or some new process for producing said water.
- eanzenberg 8y agoPG definition is a shitty definition. Many public and private businesses you ask will tell you their number one priority is growth. Startup by the literal name being used means a relatively new company. If you want to differentiate among the general public use "tech startup" instead.
- ams6110 8y agoAgreed. If your company is 9 years old and making billions in revenue, it's not a startup. If it's still very growth-oriented, call it a growth-oriented corporation.
- s_dev 8y agoPeople seem quick to provide criticism of definitions without presenting their own definition for reciprocated criticism. So far your definition so far is limited to just precluding anything greater or equal in age to 9 years or anything above 2 Billion in revenue. Typically what happens as companies scale is they switch priorities from being growth oriented to being a profit oriented one -- the reason being is not looking after bottom line is simply not sustainable. Focusing on growth at the expense of profitability is sustainable for early stage companies as a someone will pay to see if the growth can be realized.
- coldtea 8y ago>People seem quick to provide criticism of definitions without presenting their own definition for reciprocated criticism. So far your definition so far is limited to just precluding anything greater or equal in age to 9 years or anything above 2 Billion in revenue. Small, less than 4 years of age, under 100 people, aspiring and trying to find its way. Could be VC backed eyeballs-oriented, or regular slower-growth company. Stripe is nothing like that today.
- gamblor956 8y agoPG's definition is but one bastardization of the word "startup" and it is by far the most useless one. A startup is a company that hasn't identified a profitable business model. Legally, the definition is further restricted to a company which hasn't begun revenue-generating activities. It's okay to be a startup for a few months while you're getting everything together and launching. Once you've launched, if you're still a startup, that's an embarrassment--it means your product (or products) isn't generating sufficient revenue to be a real business.
- jryan49 8y agoThe entire economy's goal is growth, seems pretty catch all.
- earenndil 8y agoIn that case, amazon, which is near the top of the s&p 500, and makes hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue, is a startup.
- jonknee 8y agoWhat is your cutoff? Bird is not yet a year old and is definitely a startup, but has a $2b valuation. It's a wacky world.
- gamblor956 8y agoStartup actually has a legal definition, generally referring to a company that has not yet commenced its revenue-generating activities. Then, the term was extended to mean a company that had not yet identified a profitable business model but was (presumably) working toward it. Now, it's whatever the tech bros want it to be so that they can tell women that they work for a startup.
- jonknee 8y agoWell then by all means please link me to the law that states what a startup is!
- XVincentX 8y agoI agree. It's just to appeal more fascinating.
- paulsutter 8y agoYes it's the right word. Stripe is a startup "A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit." The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth." http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html
- eanzenberg 8y agoIs AMZN a startup? BTW they are not the exception either.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- paulsutter 8y agoYes Amazon is a startup, and startups dominate the list of largest companies today (startups in italics) - Top 10 companies in 2018: Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Tencent, Berkshire Hathaway, Alibaba, Facebook, JP Morgan Chase, Johnson and Johnson - Top 10 companies in 2008: Exxon, PetroChina, GE, Gazprom, China Mobile, ICBC, Microsoft, AT&T, Royal Dutch Shell, Procter and Gamble Maybe Microsoft is no longer a startup. But the others, startups for sure. They are qualitatively different from normal companies. from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by_market_capitalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by...
- dasil003 8y agoThis is ridiculous, Microsoft and Apple who's founders are retired and dead are still startups? Startup is not just a synonym for tech company, it implies a certain lifecycle stage (among other things).
- paulsutter 8y agoCertainly Apple is a wobbler (and Microsoft is questionable). But Amazon is kicking ass as always, undermining industry after industry. They're still managed with the same tenacity. And dont count out Alphabet, Facebook, etc. Whether or not we like these companies, they're a different animal from the norm.
- mxschumacher 8y agoBoth in terms of content and technology of the site, I've been consistently disappointed with Business Insider. Given its large reach, I consider it one of the worst outlets on the internet. Do others share this opinion?
- ezekg 8y agoBe sure to listen to the linked podcast if you haven't: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/national-public-radio/how-i-built-this/e/54372836 https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/national-public-radio/how-i.... It contains a lot of good content.
- mxschumacher 8y agoYeah, I'm subscribed to the podcast (the episode came out in early May). Collison is great on Twitter (https://twitter.com/patrickc https://twitter.com/patrickc ). Deep thinker.
- douglaswlance 8y agoYeah, I mean, most advertising-supported outlets are terrible. The incentives push the organization toward churning out clickbait. We need a new system of incentives for information dissemination.
- mxschumacher 8y agoCan we agree that there are degrees of terribleness? Most of the links that make it to the HN frontpage have honest, valuable content and are not mere clickbait, even if they are published by a company seeking to directly monetize their content.
- anonytrary 8y agoThe linked article uses ~300 cookies and ~30 ads. I'm starting to realize that with news sites, we're not looking at the news -- we are the news!
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- ezekg 8y agoI read this and listened to the NPR podcast episode this morning, and just wanted to say: Patrick and John, you guys have done a great job with Stripe and have made starting an online business simple. I don't think I would have started the businesses I have if it weren't for Stripe making payments so simple. (I saw that you mentioned the negative emails that you get every morning, so if you're reading this, here's a positive message.)
- vntok 8y ago> Patrick Collison, 29, and his brother John, 27, famously turned seven lines of code into a startup called Stripe, which has been valued in fundraising at $9.2 billion. And it's the first sentence no less.
- windows_tips 8y ago> $1 billion per line
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- epberry 8y agoNo discussion at all of the actual content of what he was saying. In my experience he was right on the money. Problems just keep coming at you and you gotta deal. The only way to truly be successful and be able to look back and relax is to leave the business. Seems most founders aren't built that way though.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Silhouette 8y agoI tend to agree, though I doubt there's anything specific to unicorn success levels about that. Even the smallest business I ever started, with positive but very modest results financially, felt like that. I think it's probably the sense of building something completely new and open-ended that attracts a lot of us in the first place, and that drive doesn't disappear just because you finished your MVP or shipped v1 or hit this or that financial milestone.
- ironjunkie 8y agoOne must love the selection bias of all those articles about startups. If you were the head of a 9B$ "startup", would you really say you "made it" ?. No , you would probably do like Patrick and John and say it is "so hard everyday", and we never "made it" to better subscribe to the startup narrative. In summary, there is no content in this article as it is usually the case whenever successful founders are interviewed.
- segmondy 8y agoif you are smart you must talk about how hard it is not how hard you work and how lucky you are. anything else will earn you scorn from the people.
- flashgordon 8y agoI get the difficulty component but surely acknowledging the luck component cannot be the scorn magnet? What is so bad about acknowledging that there was a component in the success (how ever small you want to make it) that wasnt truly you but just kismet?