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I know the Collisons are brilliant founders and I have long admired Stripe (I've used their Golang API client as inspiration many times in my own code) but it's

I know the Collisons are brilliant founders and I have long admired Stripe (I've used their Golang API client as inspiration many times in my own code) but it's kind of unfortunate how founder lore really minimizes employees. Stripe has 4,000 people working there, this article mentions only two other employees in passing (the CPO and CFO). Surely many others were brilliant contributors to Stripe's becoming a $95B unicorn, and staying one, beyond just the Collison Brothers. A culture in our industry that made employees feel more ownership would likely help with retention and recruiting.

paulpauper 4y ago
I am sure a good chunk of those employees are millionaires will will become millionaires after the IPO.
javajosh 4y ago
>it's kind of unfortunate how founder lore really minimizes employees It's far easier to tell the story of a handful of people than of thousands. The only successful approach to the latter is selecting some at random and telling their stories - but that still leaves most people out. I think it's an interesting and hard problem to tell a comprehensive story about a large group, but I'm not really sure if it can be done. Even Howard Zinn focused on (usually unsuccessful) opposition leaders more than the everyman in his narrative! In any event, I'd love to see someone succeed at making such a narrative, not necessarily about Stripe, but about anything really.
- kareemsabri 4y ago
  For sure. I understand why stories are told the way they are. I stand by my point though. And I do think there's a happy medium between Ayn Rand'ian style hero entrepreneur and telling the story of thousands that can be achieved with modest effort, since I've read a few of them. Admittedly the absurdity of the headline is what triggered the initial thought for me, but the article lived up to the headline in this case.
AlchemistCamp 4y ago
> I've used their Golang API client as inspiration many times in my own code For the last five years, I’ve requested an Elixir client. I wish they would either build one or greatly improve the docs for people who aren’t using one of their first party API client libraries. It’s not like Stripe lacks the resources. In fact an argument could be made that ignoring all but the most popular handful of languages runs counter to their goal of increasing the GDP of the internet. Increased friction for adopting new and productive languages means fewer do and devs remain in a slightly more ossified ecosystem.
- andy_ppp 4y ago
  Completely agree, I also had this problem but I guess that is one downsides of using a language that isn't particularly mainstream. Still with thousands of programmers it would be worth the return on the small investment.
  - reducesuffering 4y ago
    They have libraries for: iOS, Android, React Native, Javascript, Ruby, Python, Go, PHP, Java, .NET. Have you seen how prevalent Elixir is statistically? It's actually pretty niche and downtrending[0]. Where do you draw the line? Where's the Nix, Julia, Nim, Rust, and Crystal libraries? It's good to express the desire for it so that it might be next in line, but these comments make it seem like it's an expectation, even when those libraries are all open source and are able to be whipped up by the community. You're correct that these are the downsides in building on something that isn't very mainstream. [0] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=java%2Cjavascript%2C.net%2Cpython%2Cgo%2Cphp%2Cruby%2Celixir https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=java%2Cjavasc...
    - AlchemistCamp 4y ago
      I don't think it's down trending at all. Just look at the most recent Hiring thread on this forum! Based on what I've been seeing, Elixir has been growing faster the past year or two than it was previously. Elixir Forum's posts and active users are going up and that's where people tend to ask their questions, rather than Stack Overflow. In fact, the lack of support from companies like Stripe is the single top complaint I hear. Most users are very happy with the language, tooling and community. FWIW, I'd like to see a Stripe Rust lib, also. But it's far more important to just be make the guides better for people who aren't using a Stripe API client and maybe even make a guide for making a compliant API client. That way, you can be programming in something truly niche like Janet and still have a great experience with Stripe. The information is all there, but it takes way more digging than it should to get at it.
andy_ppp 4y ago
Being able to hire brilliant people is a difficult skill too. I don't suspect Adyen have the same ability to hire great people that Stripe do and while they have a lot of complex problems a payments API is not the most glamorous of companies to work for.
lifeisstillgood 4y ago
I think that this is not just a story-telling problem. It is a wealth-sharing problem as well. I don't know much about stripe, but think of Bezos as a pretty good example - to a O(n) rounding he has 100 billion dollars and 1 million employees. Why is he getting 100,000 from each employee ? Not because those employees send him a cheque. But because of particular outcomes of share capital, and corporate law. Decisions made in UK / US legal circles since before the USA was a USA. These decisions have been part of 200 years of the most phenomenal growth in global human wealth ever, so there is a lot of baby in the bathwater. But look at say the German mittelstand - a different approach to local business banking. And compare european social-democracy to US welfare states. There is a lot of room and flexibility between "totally dampen growth and human innovation" and "more equal sharing of life's burdens". Oh and lest we forget, it is in the main scientific advances that have bought us the last 200 years, not founders or entrepreneurs, and those advances were funded almost fully by government out of ... tax revenue. So the last 200 years of growth can be seen as a story of government funded and directed scientific achievement, given reign to rollout in a benign business climate, and the workforce provided via mass education and health programs, all of which funded by taxing the successful companies. Is that an over simplification - hell yes. But so is "young founder has great idea and works hard".
- l33t2328 4y ago
  To an O(n) rounding error he also has 0 dollar and 100000000 employees
- jdavis703 4y ago
  If Amazon’s board decided to reallocate the CEO’s compensation package and grant it to employees, it would increase the entry level salaries of warehouse workers from $18/hour to $18.45/hour. Not a bad bump, but also historically low by Amazon pay bumps. But it’s also not going to solve income inequality… And very likely there are few people qualified to be CEO of Amazon who’d do the job for $18.45/hour.
  - daenz 4y ago
    Not to mention the financial fallout of not having an experienced leader at the helm. Sure, it would coast for awhile without a leader, and I'm sure someone will try to explain to me how it could be run completely democratically, but eventually a competitor with a competent leader would eat their lunch.
polote 4y ago
> Surely many others were brilliant contributors to Stripe's becoming a $95B unicorn, and staying one, beyond just the Collison Brothers. From my experience working at several saas unicorns, in each companies there was 2-3 max people who where responsible for the success of the company. It is not that all others were useless but they all could have been replaced easily without having any impact in the success of the company. I know this is difficult to hear as an employee but this is the truth. 99% of us are replaceable. In my opinion and experience, working with skilled and nice people VS working with stupid and coward people for example has only an impact on the happiness of the employees but has no link with company performance. (company culture has no impact on company performance)
- kareemsabri 4y ago
  It's not difficult to hear, it's just not true. I don't know what sort of companies you've worked at where employees are completely fungible, but I've had the opposite experience, working with many talented and hard working people who make major contributions that help deliver hundreds of millions in revenue. Perhaps you joined them when they were already unicorns and the playbook / moat was already developed, but at startups there's nothing BUT the people. You think the Collisons are writing all the code and conceptualizing all the new products and figuring out how to take them to market, or creating and maintaining a high performing engineering culture, or [50,000 other things that need to happen to reach $95B]? If that were true, it would be weird that companies work so hard to acquire, retain, and develop talent.
  - polote 4y ago
    You can be very talented and do a ton of work without having a bigger business impact than another person doing 50% less than you. At the end whether you have a design system, if you have infinite scalability, if you use node or Ruby, having that feature or that other feature it doesn't matter. The only thing that matter is the revenue the company make. If what matters was the people then ngo would be unicorns
    - Cederfjard 4y ago
choppaface 4y ago
“Founder Lore” like this, especially from Forbes, assumes an audience of investors who have money and non-investors who have essentially no power. These articles are purely about marketing and looking for lift among those who have money. The list of names who were involved in creating the article are a lot more important than the content.
Abishek_Muthian 4y ago
>but it's kind of unfortunate how founder lore really minimizes employees Yes it is, And none more pronounced than those involving celebrity founders like Elon Musk; The achievements of SpaceX and Tesla are often showcased like 'his' alone in media like Iron Man waving his hand and Jarvis building the products. One thing these founders are proven to be good at is getting very talented people to work for them and perhaps lately taking credit for all their efforts. P.S. Not implying that Collison Bros are like that, I don't know enough about them and I like Stripe as a product.

paulpauper 4y ago

I am sure a good chunk of those employees are millionaires will will become millionaires after the IPO.

javajosh 4y ago

>it's kind of unfortunate how founder lore really minimizes employees It's far easier to tell the story of a handful of people than of thousands. The only successful approach to the latter is selecting some at random and telling their stories - but that still leaves most people out. I think it's an interesting and hard problem to tell a comprehensive story about a large group, but I'm not really sure if it can be done. Even Howard Zinn focused on (usually unsuccessful) opposition leaders more than the everyman in his narrative! In any event, I'd love to see someone succeed at making such a narrative, not necessarily about Stripe, but about anything really.

kareemsabri 4y ago
For sure. I understand why stories are told the way they are. I stand by my point though. And I do think there's a happy medium between Ayn Rand'ian style hero entrepreneur and telling the story of thousands that can be achieved with modest effort, since I've read a few of them. Admittedly the absurdity of the headline is what triggered the initial thought for me, but the article lived up to the headline in this case.

AlchemistCamp 4y ago

> I've used their Golang API client as inspiration many times in my own code For the last five years, I’ve requested an Elixir client. I wish they would either build one or greatly improve the docs for people who aren’t using one of their first party API client libraries. It’s not like Stripe lacks the resources. In fact an argument could be made that ignoring all but the most popular handful of languages runs counter to their goal of increasing the GDP of the internet. Increased friction for adopting new and productive languages means fewer do and devs remain in a slightly more ossified ecosystem.

andy_ppp 4y ago
Completely agree, I also had this problem but I guess that is one downsides of using a language that isn't particularly mainstream. Still with thousands of programmers it would be worth the return on the small investment.
- reducesuffering 4y ago
  They have libraries for: iOS, Android, React Native, Javascript, Ruby, Python, Go, PHP, Java, .NET. Have you seen how prevalent Elixir is statistically? It's actually pretty niche and downtrending[0]. Where do you draw the line? Where's the Nix, Julia, Nim, Rust, and Crystal libraries? It's good to express the desire for it so that it might be next in line, but these comments make it seem like it's an expectation, even when those libraries are all open source and are able to be whipped up by the community. You're correct that these are the downsides in building on something that isn't very mainstream. [0] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=java%2Cjavascript%2C.net%2Cpython%2Cgo%2Cphp%2Cruby%2Celixir https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=java%2Cjavasc...
  - AlchemistCamp 4y ago
    I don't think it's down trending at all. Just look at the most recent Hiring thread on this forum! Based on what I've been seeing, Elixir has been growing faster the past year or two than it was previously. Elixir Forum's posts and active users are going up and that's where people tend to ask their questions, rather than Stack Overflow. In fact, the lack of support from companies like Stripe is the single top complaint I hear. Most users are very happy with the language, tooling and community. FWIW, I'd like to see a Stripe Rust lib, also. But it's far more important to just be make the guides better for people who aren't using a Stripe API client and maybe even make a guide for making a compliant API client. That way, you can be programming in something truly niche like Janet and still have a great experience with Stripe. The information is all there, but it takes way more digging than it should to get at it.

andy_ppp 4y ago

Being able to hire brilliant people is a difficult skill too. I don't suspect Adyen have the same ability to hire great people that Stripe do and while they have a lot of complex problems a payments API is not the most glamorous of companies to work for.

lifeisstillgood 4y ago

I think that this is not just a story-telling problem. It is a wealth-sharing problem as well. I don't know much about stripe, but think of Bezos as a pretty good example - to a O(n) rounding he has 100 billion dollars and 1 million employees. Why is he getting 100,000 from each employee ? Not because those employees send him a cheque. But because of particular outcomes of share capital, and corporate law. Decisions made in UK / US legal circles since before the USA was a USA. These decisions have been part of 200 years of the most phenomenal growth in global human wealth ever, so there is a lot of baby in the bathwater. But look at say the German mittelstand - a different approach to local business banking. And compare european social-democracy to US welfare states. There is a lot of room and flexibility between "totally dampen growth and human innovation" and "more equal sharing of life's burdens". Oh and lest we forget, it is in the main scientific advances that have bought us the last 200 years, not founders or entrepreneurs, and those advances were funded almost fully by government out of ... tax revenue. So the last 200 years of growth can be seen as a story of government funded and directed scientific achievement, given reign to rollout in a benign business climate, and the workforce provided via mass education and health programs, all of which funded by taxing the successful companies. Is that an over simplification - hell yes. But so is "young founder has great idea and works hard".

l33t2328 4y ago
To an O(n) rounding error he also has 0 dollar and 100000000 employees
jdavis703 4y ago
If Amazon’s board decided to reallocate the CEO’s compensation package and grant it to employees, it would increase the entry level salaries of warehouse workers from $18/hour to $18.45/hour. Not a bad bump, but also historically low by Amazon pay bumps. But it’s also not going to solve income inequality… And very likely there are few people qualified to be CEO of Amazon who’d do the job for $18.45/hour.
- daenz 4y ago
  Not to mention the financial fallout of not having an experienced leader at the helm. Sure, it would coast for awhile without a leader, and I'm sure someone will try to explain to me how it could be run completely democratically, but eventually a competitor with a competent leader would eat their lunch.

polote 4y ago

> Surely many others were brilliant contributors to Stripe's becoming a $95B unicorn, and staying one, beyond just the Collison Brothers. From my experience working at several saas unicorns, in each companies there was 2-3 max people who where responsible for the success of the company. It is not that all others were useless but they all could have been replaced easily without having any impact in the success of the company. I know this is difficult to hear as an employee but this is the truth. 99% of us are replaceable. In my opinion and experience, working with skilled and nice people VS working with stupid and coward people for example has only an impact on the happiness of the employees but has no link with company performance. (company culture has no impact on company performance)

kareemsabri 4y ago
It's not difficult to hear, it's just not true. I don't know what sort of companies you've worked at where employees are completely fungible, but I've had the opposite experience, working with many talented and hard working people who make major contributions that help deliver hundreds of millions in revenue. Perhaps you joined them when they were already unicorns and the playbook / moat was already developed, but at startups there's nothing BUT the people. You think the Collisons are writing all the code and conceptualizing all the new products and figuring out how to take them to market, or creating and maintaining a high performing engineering culture, or [50,000 other things that need to happen to reach $95B]? If that were true, it would be weird that companies work so hard to acquire, retain, and develop talent.
- polote 4y ago
  You can be very talented and do a ton of work without having a bigger business impact than another person doing 50% less than you. At the end whether you have a design system, if you have infinite scalability, if you use node or Ruby, having that feature or that other feature it doesn't matter. The only thing that matter is the revenue the company make. If what matters was the people then ngo would be unicorns
  - Cederfjard 4y ago

choppaface 4y ago

“Founder Lore” like this, especially from Forbes, assumes an audience of investors who have money and non-investors who have essentially no power. These articles are purely about marketing and looking for lift among those who have money. The list of names who were involved in creating the article are a lot more important than the content.

Abishek_Muthian 4y ago

>but it's kind of unfortunate how founder lore really minimizes employees Yes it is, And none more pronounced than those involving celebrity founders like Elon Musk; The achievements of SpaceX and Tesla are often showcased like 'his' alone in media like Iron Man waving his hand and Jarvis building the products. One thing these founders are proven to be good at is getting very talented people to work for them and perhaps lately taking credit for all their efforts. P.S. Not implying that Collison Bros are like that, I don't know enough about them and I like Stripe as a product.