4 ms·

It hurts a little that stripe is an American company since it was founded by two Irish brothers. It could have been an EU company to begin with

halapro 4mo ago
People don't make a company. Stripe exists as is because it's not a EU company.
- chinathrow 4mo ago
  Why though? Because they raised a lot of capital in the US? Or because they had access to better talent in the US? As I see, there are many payment providers in the EU, just not API first as Stripe ever was.
  - pembrook 4mo ago
    People will blame the EU’s nightmarish fragmentation and regulatory headaches (all true)…but ultimately all factors ladder up to one thing: the availability of risk capital to invest in new ventures. When Stripe was founded Venture Capital in Europe was even more nonexistent than it is today. Regardless of the regulation, if the EU dumped 2X as much risk capital into payments startups at the same time the U.S. did, Stripe would be a European company. Talent flows to where the money is. Then once talent starts aggregating in one place it produces network effects (gravity), that gravity pulls in more capital and talent in a virtuous cycle, until fast forward a few decades and suddenly you have almost all the most valuable companies in the world being from Silicon Valley. Hence the present time we live in. Who’s fault is it Europe is so far behind? Ultimately WW1 and WW2 destroying European wealth, assets, talent and risk tolerance. If you look at the countries who stayed out of both wars (Sweden, Switzerland)…they are currently the tech hubs of Europe. They both have more unicorns per capita than the US. Spain also stayed out of both wars but had a domestic Civil War in the 30s, which had the same net effect of destroying their prospects.
    - mathgeek 4mo ago
      > Spain also stayed out of both wars but had a domestic Civil War in the 30s, which had the same net effect of destroying their prospects. The Spanish Civil War was arguably just a proxy opening of WW2 between the USSR and Germany. Doesn’t change your point, just came to mind while reading your comment.
      - pembrook 4mo ago
        Very true, I preemptively assumed someone would reply 'What about Spain?' but then whether you consider the civil war part of WW2 or not is irrelevant given it had the same effect. Ultimately, a company like Stripe sits on top of a fragile patchwork of societal/technological abstractions that are a byproduct of generations of compounded wealth. Humans battling in the marketplace builds this compounded value, humans battling in warfare destroys it and makes you start from zero. Just as the industrial revolution started decades before humans began leaving the farm en masse, the digital revolution started decades before anyone had a personal computer on their desk. Europe was busy rebuilding firebombed cities and industrial capacity, while Americans were free to birth the next layer of abstraction post-WW2 (the digital one). This early lead compounded. Moral of story: don't get in wars on your soil.
        mathgeek 4mo ago
        > Americans were free to birth the next layer of abstraction post-WW2 (the digital one) The "on your own soil part" is even more complex than this implies. America spent decades waging wars across the world to reduce the chance that Russia could do the same.
    - gib444 4mo ago
      > If you look at the countries who stayed out of both wars (Sweden, Switzerland)…they are currently the tech hubs of Europe. They both have more unicorns per capita than the US. And in absolute terms, the UK has the #1 number of unicorns in Europe, 4th globally.
    - taffydavid 4mo ago
  - roysting 4mo ago
    It’s the whole system. It takes many characteristics for something to happen in a specific manner. Even the global empire of the USA extracting competent people from all over the globe, depriving the source countries of that talent, is one of the characteristics of this particular system. It is a double edged sword, in different ways, but one of those is that it not only deprives the vassal territories of the empire of its most competent people, it also undermines and sabotages the competent people of the empires own people because it’s easier, faster, more profitable. In many ways it’s a similar voracious and parasitic mindset of private equity using leveraged buyout type methods to extract everything and give/provide nothing, a parasitism. So the founders are Irish, but the Irish or even European system was probably not ready to super something like Stripe for all the apparent and obscure reasons, and America was a good host for it for many apparent and obscure reasons all the same. But that’s what this “American Empire” relies on in many ways, both extracting talent and capable “human resources” from its vassals and at the same time suppress its own people internally. It’s why even all these years after slavery and continued “immigration” narrative that did the same to provide profits and support of a decadent lifestyle to the ruling class, we still import brown people in a different way for the same reason, while we also still import competent Europeans around the “immigration” propaganda story of the type that led to two Irish brother “immigrants” founding Stripe and not doing so in Europe. It’s one of those things narcissistic systems are really good at doing, making you support it even against your own best interests, and then aggressively supporting and defending it doing so; usually because of some emotional delusion or a compromising benefit. For example, how could someone aspiring to achieve something like the Stripe protests not support “immigration” when they have dollars in their eyes? It’s not a coincidence that there is only an emoji with $ in its eyes, not any other currency . And that’s only one tiny aspect of what you asked about. You have to free yourself of the narcissistic system that is Americas primary source of power if you want to change that or even understand it. It’s a conundrum, understanding enough and then being able to free oneself of the narcissistic system, all while the narcissistic system/people will try to lure you back into the narcissistic system they use to dominate people. One of the hardest aspects of that is being able to say “no” to one of the most powerful forces of a narcissistic system, flattery and facilitation. Don’t you smart, good, wonderful, intelligent, saintly… far better than Americans… immigrants not also want to come to America to empower and enrich the American ruling class and thereby undermine and deprive your own societies and cultures??? Well come on in, America is open for business to enrich the American ruling class and expand its global empire with your help!!! Uncle Empire needs you!
  - vanviegen 4mo ago
    Sure there are. Both Mollie and Adyen are API-first. Mollie developer experience has always been on par with Stripe in my experience. And they existed 6 years earlier.
    - epolanski 4mo ago
      I've used Mollie and can confirm that DX is not any different than Stripe's.
- promiseofbeans 4mo ago
  Quite to the contrary: all a company is (at least as originally conceptualised) is the formalisation of a group of people, usually working together towards a shared goal. It’s in the name - just like you have a troupe of actors, you may have a company of engineers and accountants (though to keep in the vein of live stage production, you also have a theatre company). This is why we tend to use collective pronouns when referring to a company - Meta just announced that they are planing share dilution (though to weaken my own case, one can also use singular nouns, likely due to the increased modern perception of a company as a single entity due to the increased anonymity afforded by the internet)
dbbk 4mo ago
But it is Irish. Its HQ is in Dublin.
- herculity275 4mo ago
  It has dual HQs. The one in Dublin is tiny (or at least it was the last time I visited), all the executive leadership is based in SF.
  - haaz 4mo ago
    So why do they say they are dual HQd in Dublin/SF? Is it purely for tax purposes? How is it any different to other tech companies having their EU HQ in Ireland? I've tried researching this but I can't seem to find info on it
draw_down 4mo ago
[dead]
sublimefire 4mo ago
Stripe is dual headquartered in the US and in Ireland afaik. They tried to avoid having just a satellite in Irl, which other companies do but which makes it harder to take decisions independently.
- sparkling 4mo ago
  That may be true, but the Irish corporate entity (Stripe Payments International Holdings Ltd.) is ultimately owned by Stripe, Inc. in the U.S. If you are looking for payment processors that are ultimately owned and incorporated in the EU: https://eualternative.eu/categories/payments/ https://eualternative.eu/categories/payments/
- handle584 4mo ago
  [dead]

halapro 4mo ago

People don't make a company. Stripe exists as is because it's not a EU company.

chinathrow 4mo ago
Why though? Because they raised a lot of capital in the US? Or because they had access to better talent in the US? As I see, there are many payment providers in the EU, just not API first as Stripe ever was.
- pembrook 4mo ago
  People will blame the EU’s nightmarish fragmentation and regulatory headaches (all true)…but ultimately all factors ladder up to one thing: the availability of risk capital to invest in new ventures. When Stripe was founded Venture Capital in Europe was even more nonexistent than it is today. Regardless of the regulation, if the EU dumped 2X as much risk capital into payments startups at the same time the U.S. did, Stripe would be a European company. Talent flows to where the money is. Then once talent starts aggregating in one place it produces network effects (gravity), that gravity pulls in more capital and talent in a virtuous cycle, until fast forward a few decades and suddenly you have almost all the most valuable companies in the world being from Silicon Valley. Hence the present time we live in. Who’s fault is it Europe is so far behind? Ultimately WW1 and WW2 destroying European wealth, assets, talent and risk tolerance. If you look at the countries who stayed out of both wars (Sweden, Switzerland)…they are currently the tech hubs of Europe. They both have more unicorns per capita than the US. Spain also stayed out of both wars but had a domestic Civil War in the 30s, which had the same net effect of destroying their prospects.
  - mathgeek 4mo ago
    > Spain also stayed out of both wars but had a domestic Civil War in the 30s, which had the same net effect of destroying their prospects. The Spanish Civil War was arguably just a proxy opening of WW2 between the USSR and Germany. Doesn’t change your point, just came to mind while reading your comment.
    - pembrook 4mo ago
      Very true, I preemptively assumed someone would reply 'What about Spain?' but then whether you consider the civil war part of WW2 or not is irrelevant given it had the same effect. Ultimately, a company like Stripe sits on top of a fragile patchwork of societal/technological abstractions that are a byproduct of generations of compounded wealth. Humans battling in the marketplace builds this compounded value, humans battling in warfare destroys it and makes you start from zero. Just as the industrial revolution started decades before humans began leaving the farm en masse, the digital revolution started decades before anyone had a personal computer on their desk. Europe was busy rebuilding firebombed cities and industrial capacity, while Americans were free to birth the next layer of abstraction post-WW2 (the digital one). This early lead compounded. Moral of story: don't get in wars on your soil.
      - mathgeek 4mo ago
        > Americans were free to birth the next layer of abstraction post-WW2 (the digital one) The "on your own soil part" is even more complex than this implies. America spent decades waging wars across the world to reduce the chance that Russia could do the same.
  - gib444 4mo ago
    > If you look at the countries who stayed out of both wars (Sweden, Switzerland)…they are currently the tech hubs of Europe. They both have more unicorns per capita than the US. And in absolute terms, the UK has the #1 number of unicorns in Europe, 4th globally.
  - taffydavid 4mo ago
- roysting 4mo ago
  It’s the whole system. It takes many characteristics for something to happen in a specific manner. Even the global empire of the USA extracting competent people from all over the globe, depriving the source countries of that talent, is one of the characteristics of this particular system. It is a double edged sword, in different ways, but one of those is that it not only deprives the vassal territories of the empire of its most competent people, it also undermines and sabotages the competent people of the empires own people because it’s easier, faster, more profitable. In many ways it’s a similar voracious and parasitic mindset of private equity using leveraged buyout type methods to extract everything and give/provide nothing, a parasitism. So the founders are Irish, but the Irish or even European system was probably not ready to super something like Stripe for all the apparent and obscure reasons, and America was a good host for it for many apparent and obscure reasons all the same. But that’s what this “American Empire” relies on in many ways, both extracting talent and capable “human resources” from its vassals and at the same time suppress its own people internally. It’s why even all these years after slavery and continued “immigration” narrative that did the same to provide profits and support of a decadent lifestyle to the ruling class, we still import brown people in a different way for the same reason, while we also still import competent Europeans around the “immigration” propaganda story of the type that led to two Irish brother “immigrants” founding Stripe and not doing so in Europe. It’s one of those things narcissistic systems are really good at doing, making you support it even against your own best interests, and then aggressively supporting and defending it doing so; usually because of some emotional delusion or a compromising benefit. For example, how could someone aspiring to achieve something like the Stripe protests not support “immigration” when they have dollars in their eyes? It’s not a coincidence that there is only an emoji with $ in its eyes, not any other currency . And that’s only one tiny aspect of what you asked about. You have to free yourself of the narcissistic system that is Americas primary source of power if you want to change that or even understand it. It’s a conundrum, understanding enough and then being able to free oneself of the narcissistic system, all while the narcissistic system/people will try to lure you back into the narcissistic system they use to dominate people. One of the hardest aspects of that is being able to say “no” to one of the most powerful forces of a narcissistic system, flattery and facilitation. Don’t you smart, good, wonderful, intelligent, saintly… far better than Americans… immigrants not also want to come to America to empower and enrich the American ruling class and thereby undermine and deprive your own societies and cultures??? Well come on in, America is open for business to enrich the American ruling class and expand its global empire with your help!!! Uncle Empire needs you!
- vanviegen 4mo ago
  Sure there are. Both Mollie and Adyen are API-first. Mollie developer experience has always been on par with Stripe in my experience. And they existed 6 years earlier.
  - epolanski 4mo ago
    I've used Mollie and can confirm that DX is not any different than Stripe's.
promiseofbeans 4mo ago
Quite to the contrary: all a company is (at least as originally conceptualised) is the formalisation of a group of people, usually working together towards a shared goal. It’s in the name - just like you have a troupe of actors, you may have a company of engineers and accountants (though to keep in the vein of live stage production, you also have a theatre company). This is why we tend to use collective pronouns when referring to a company - Meta just announced that they are planing share dilution (though to weaken my own case, one can also use singular nouns, likely due to the increased modern perception of a company as a single entity due to the increased anonymity afforded by the internet)

dbbk 4mo ago

But it is Irish. Its HQ is in Dublin.

herculity275 4mo ago
It has dual HQs. The one in Dublin is tiny (or at least it was the last time I visited), all the executive leadership is based in SF.
- haaz 4mo ago
  So why do they say they are dual HQd in Dublin/SF? Is it purely for tax purposes? How is it any different to other tech companies having their EU HQ in Ireland? I've tried researching this but I can't seem to find info on it

draw_down 4mo ago

[dead]

sublimefire 4mo ago

Stripe is dual headquartered in the US and in Ireland afaik. They tried to avoid having just a satellite in Irl, which other companies do but which makes it harder to take decisions independently.

sparkling 4mo ago
That may be true, but the Irish corporate entity (Stripe Payments International Holdings Ltd.) is ultimately owned by Stripe, Inc. in the U.S. If you are looking for payment processors that are ultimately owned and incorporated in the EU: https://eualternative.eu/categories/payments/ https://eualternative.eu/categories/payments/
handle584 4mo ago
[dead]