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Wow - I wonder if this is how Bezos felt when he said (paraphrasing) he feared the internet was taking off without him? Stripe Capital is their iPhone moment -

Wow - I wonder if this is how Bezos felt when he said (paraphrasing) he feared the internet was taking off without him? Stripe Capital is their iPhone moment -- they've learned much from the software payments market, setting up an 'import Financial Foundation,' and now can use their novel data stream to effectively transform business cash flow financing. Capital will be a a beautiful take on an old way of financing (factoring accounts receivable), at the scale of big tech, and in immediate payback terms -- since CC's settle comparatively (to 1-3 day ach) 'instantly' in the US. This combined with the data on sales will allow them to pick better winners and allocate capital -- the impacts of this will be mind boggling. I wish I could buy stock.

Terrario 6y ago
Unfortunately, Stripe is private
napoleond 6y ago
(Disclaimer: I work at Stripe, but commenting purely in my personal capacity.) > I wish I could buy stock. Something I wish I'd internalized much earlier in my life: if you're a programmer or otherwise have skills relevant to a startup (many HN participants fit this bill!) then you do have access to stock in companies like Stripe. In exchange for your time and expertise, they will pay you in both stock and cash. My contact information is in my profile and I would love to help anyone I can in this endeavor.
- nrmitchi 6y ago
  > you do have access to stock in companies like Stripe. In exchange for your time and expertise, they will pay you in both stock and cash. That's not really a fair comparison. There are two huge differences between that and "buying stock". 1. You don't have to jump through arbitrary interview hoops in order to buy stock. I personally had a horrible initial interview experience with Stripe (I 100% don't believe Stripe's process is bad, but my experience was poor). This shouldn't prevent me from buying stock 2. This method of acquiring stock leaves you putting all of your eggs in one basket. You can only work for and get stock from a single company at a time, and you have to dedicate at least a full year to that one option.
tuna-piano 6y ago
Is it really a novel data stream? I believe you can already purchase billions of anonymized credit card transactions... https://datarade.ai/data-products/us-consumer-card-payments https://datarade.ai/data-products/us-consumer-card-payments
- anonymouse008 6y ago
  Yes, and I know of startups using data like this to find financial influencers that if customer A makes a purchase / visits a store, customer B, C, and D will show up in 3 months. Same goes for Square -- but for some reason, the emphasis on these integrations seems to be lacking... I've interacted with both and Stripe seems to 'get' this integration value. For them, the hardest part was getting the data, then maintaining the relationship to keep access. Stripe has a 0 cost data stream (which is a slightly different definition I guess for novel data stream) - it's novel in that it's kind of like the Rockefeller 'what's this stuff we dump into the river? oh gasoline?' type of novelty. Also, the metadata that sits on top of all of this - which products are selling, what's the product life cycle of company A in similarity to company B, makes this so much more potent than just the CC data itself. Stripe understands your business better than you do.
coachtrotz 6y ago
Second Market tried to make this possible years ago. Now you have options like Forge (formerly Equidate) and Carta recently announced a product called CartaX which will be a market for shares of non-IPO companies.

Terrario 6y ago

Unfortunately, Stripe is private

napoleond 6y ago

(Disclaimer: I work at Stripe, but commenting purely in my personal capacity.) > I wish I could buy stock. Something I wish I'd internalized much earlier in my life: if you're a programmer or otherwise have skills relevant to a startup (many HN participants fit this bill!) then you do have access to stock in companies like Stripe. In exchange for your time and expertise, they will pay you in both stock and cash. My contact information is in my profile and I would love to help anyone I can in this endeavor.

nrmitchi 6y ago
> you do have access to stock in companies like Stripe. In exchange for your time and expertise, they will pay you in both stock and cash. That's not really a fair comparison. There are two huge differences between that and "buying stock". 1. You don't have to jump through arbitrary interview hoops in order to buy stock. I personally had a horrible initial interview experience with Stripe (I 100% don't believe Stripe's process is bad, but my experience was poor). This shouldn't prevent me from buying stock 2. This method of acquiring stock leaves you putting all of your eggs in one basket. You can only work for and get stock from a single company at a time, and you have to dedicate at least a full year to that one option.

tuna-piano 6y ago

Is it really a novel data stream? I believe you can already purchase billions of anonymized credit card transactions... https://datarade.ai/data-products/us-consumer-card-payments https://datarade.ai/data-products/us-consumer-card-payments

anonymouse008 6y ago
Yes, and I know of startups using data like this to find financial influencers that if customer A makes a purchase / visits a store, customer B, C, and D will show up in 3 months. Same goes for Square -- but for some reason, the emphasis on these integrations seems to be lacking... I've interacted with both and Stripe seems to 'get' this integration value. For them, the hardest part was getting the data, then maintaining the relationship to keep access. Stripe has a 0 cost data stream (which is a slightly different definition I guess for novel data stream) - it's novel in that it's kind of like the Rockefeller 'what's this stuff we dump into the river? oh gasoline?' type of novelty. Also, the metadata that sits on top of all of this - which products are selling, what's the product life cycle of company A in similarity to company B, makes this so much more potent than just the CC data itself. Stripe understands your business better than you do.

coachtrotz 6y ago

Second Market tried to make this possible years ago. Now you have options like Forge (formerly Equidate) and Carta recently announced a product called CartaX which will be a market for shares of non-IPO companies.