4 ms·
Three things: 1) There are almost certainly a lot of inaccuracies in here. I saw a few on a quick skim of the article. 2) Exponential growth is a hard thing
by sama 13y ago
Three things:
1) There are almost certainly a lot of inaccuracies in here. I saw a few on a quick skim of the article.
2) Exponential growth is a hard thing for most people to wrap their minds around. The best tech investors--many of which invested in this round--understand it. Most bloggers do not. The former camp has a better track record on valuing companies like these, although of course a lot of investments don't work out. But I would much prefer to give money to the investors in this round to invest for me than the writers of this article.
3) It's easier to spew hate than it is to build value. While bloggers write stuff like this, companies can just ignore it and laugh about it over drinks in a few years.
- untog 13y agoThere are almost certainly a lot of inaccuracies in here. I saw a few on a quick skim of the article. Like what? It's easier to spew hate than it is to build value. It's also important to provide a viewpoint that isn't just blindly parroting what a party tells you. This is hardly 'hate'.
- sama 13y agoFor example, the liquidation preference is a standard 1x, not 2x, which is a very important inaccuracy.
- pbreit 13y agoIt says the 2x preference is "incredibly favorable" not "standard".
- aptwebapps 13y agoI believe sama is challenging the number and not the characterization.
- danso 13y agoCould you elaborate on the inaccuracies you found? Because your current comment contains not much more than an egregious and bald appeal to authority
- mcarney7 13y agoSama, you may have missed it in your "quick skim" but Stripe isn't actually growing that fast (~50% / yr). Braintree is growing much faster and even stodgy old paypal isn't too far behind in terms of growth rate. For its size and valuation, the growth story is fairly underwhelming. As for the trackrecord and judgement of the investors, no argument that they are among the best. But only Khosla is new money, meaning they are the only one that took significant new risk (although they got plenty of downside protection via liquidation preferences, as we explained). Sequoia and Founders Fund were already heavily invested in Stripe, thus making it a much easier decision to "re-up" in this new round and pad the company's war chest for the highly-competitive slugfest ahead. I/we don't hate Stripe. In fact, I think they're a great company. I just think the narrative around this funding round when it was announced on Wednesday glossed over the legitimate challenges that the company faces.
- sama 13y agoPer my earlier comment, the liquidation preference thing is just completely inaccurate. And the ~50% growth rate comment is just so insanely inaccurate I'm not even sure how to respond. (do have a look at this, though: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/403183731449413632 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/403183731449413632) I/we don't hate Pando. I just think the narrative around this article when it was posted this morning glossed over the legitimate facts the company faces.
- mcarney7 13y agoAs I wrote to Patrick above, they've been fundraising and having M&A talks over the last 6+ mo, meaning their numbers are "out there." The figures we reported may be outdated, something that we acknowledged, but I find it extremely difficult to believe that they're wildly inaccurate for the timeframe.
- mcphilip 13y agoBasically your comment boils down to "I skimmed the article and it seemed hateful and inaccurate". And then something strange about spotting exponential growth being left to the big boys. On the contrary, I read the entire article and found it useful. The author admits that getting accurate numbers on Stripe isn't possible at this point. I wish Stripe all the best, but it still has a tough road ahead.
- pg 13y agoSam knows Stripe's numbers. So the fact that he was able to see inaccuracies immediately is more meaningful than the fact that you read the entire article and found it useful.
- mcphilip 13y agoI clicked on his profile before replying just to make sure I wasn't countering someone in the know. I made the wrong assumption.