I was quite surprised there wasn't more discussion of regulatory issues. I guess Patrick is trying to talk in more general terms about starting up in Ireland, b

I was quite surprised there wasn't more discussion of regulatory issues. I guess Patrick is trying to talk in more general terms about starting up in Ireland, but if the question is "Could Stripe have been started in Ireland?" then I would imagine the primary, if not the only, reason is because of financial regulations. The payment industry is highly regulated, and you would have to assume an Ireland-based Stripe would have to target the entire of the EU (the Irish market being simply too small). And that brings additional regulations - Stripe themselves clearly would like to support EU customers, but have no timeline themselves yet. Conversely, you'd have to be utterly nuts to base your online-gambling start-up in the valley (...although I'm pretty sure a couple have. I still maintain they're nuts). Whilst founders would probably like to be working on a business model that can be applied globally, there are many start-ups where scaling up outside of your home market can be very difficult. Square faces a similar problem with Chip & PIN in the EU. Given that, it makes sense to not just base yourself somewhere where investment is easily found, but to base yourself somewhere with a large number of potential customers. Ireland is probably not that place for Stripe!