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Leaving Stripe
- brandonb 11y agoCongrats to Greg on everything he's accomplished! Stripe has always chosen to think different about culture and organization, and as a result have built one of the most interesting companies around. Greg is a huge part of what makes that work.
- foobarqux 11y agoWhat does it say about the question "Why do you want to work on this company for the next 10 years of your life?" when it turns out even the founders of the most successful startups in the world don't want to?
- saikat 11y agoGreg's not a founder of Stripe. And who asks that question?
- foobarqux 11y agoYC for one.
- troels 11y agoOf founders or employees?
- foobarqux 11y agoI think it's a pretty pedantic distinction in Greg's case and not germane to the point.
- troels 11y agoI feel that either you misunderstood me or I misunderstand you. I'm leaning towards the first option. By which I mean - There's a distinction between the kind of interview that happens between a founder and an investor and the one that happens between an employee and an employer. I wouldn't be surprised if an investor asked that kind of question, but if an employer did, I would think it was rather arrogant.
- foobarqux 11y agoThey ask it of founders. I thought you meant the point was irrelevant because Greg Brockman wasn't there at the very beginning.
- dang 11y ago> They ask it of founders. Correct, so it isn't relevant here. Please stop taking this thread off topic.
- foobarqux 11y agoIf we imagine Greg was a founder what would be different exactly? (Also I'm curious, does anything I have said in this thread count as "gratuitously negative"?)
- dang 11y agoI'd be happy to discuss this with you at hn@ycombinator.com, but don't want to take the thread further off topic.
- adrianpike 11y agoMany interviewers have asked me that question. I generally reply openly about my ten-year plan, I promise that it's going to change, and I restate how large a challenge it is to maintain excitement and interest at their company for the next ten years of my life.
- sergiotapia 11y agoThere are ambitious people and people who enjoy steady income. I feel like the ambitious people (the kind that start these sort of companies) do not feel comfortable working on the same thing for more than a couple of years. They get that itch, understandably.
- codegeek 11y agoAs a founder, that question has merits. As a potential employee, if someone asks me that question, my answer frankly is "I don't know. It is hard to predict the future. I can tell you that whatever time I am with the company, you will see 100% commitment but 10 years is too far out". I have actually used this in a real interview. It is ridiculous to even ask this question to anyone who is worth the money.
- Thaxll 11y agoBecause it's a stupid question, you never ask someone his plans for the next 10 years.
- foobarqux 11y agoYC and Sam Altman do.
- AwesomeGriffin 11y agoSounds more like a "let's see how their mind works" rather than a question of serious intent.
- boomzilla 11y agoDoh, that's ironic. Did Sam apply to YC too? Did he answer: "I plan to flip this company in a year or so and become one of you"?
- sama 11y agoI did apply to and do YC, and then I ran that company for 7 years. Had it been going better I would have been happy to run it for 3 more!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- sama 11y agoGreg isn't a founder of stripe. Larry and Sergey have been working on Google for 17 years. Mark has been working on Facebook for 11. Drew and Arash have now been working on Dropbox for 8 years. Brian, Nate, and Joe have been working on Airbnb for 7 years. Things change, of course, and you shouldn't work on a company that isn't working for 10 years. But I think it's a reasonable question to ask. If you go into something with a plan to do it for only a couple of years, you are unlikely to create anything important. I don't buy public or private equities I don't want to hold for 10 years (I have held some Apple shares 17 years now!), and I don't do jobs I can't see myself doing for 10 years (I ran my company, which was an ok but certainly not huge success, for 7+ years). I think more people would benefit from taking a long-term view on where they decide to spend their time and money--it's a really useful way to think about opportunity.
- rezistik 11y agoPersonally I think founders should plan to do it for at least 5 or 10 years. If a founder doesn't think a company will be worth running in 5 or 10 years what does it say about their long term plans for it? Are there many examples of successful start-ups where the founders left within the first few years?
- foobarqux 11y agoPayPal
- rezistik 11y agoPayPal was founded in '98, they sold in '02. About 4 years. I guess that meets my criteria. I'd think PayPal was a special case though.
- loopbit 11y agoAlthough I agree with you, I'd like to add a caveat: Pivots. The idea you end up implementing is rarely the idea you started with. Almost every startup pivots several times during its lifetime. Usually they are small pivots, small tweaks to the business plan, a market that you hadn't though of opening, a market not being as good as you thought... But big ones also happen. But even with very small pivots, the process might leave you somewhere you didn't expect. And sometimes this is good, too! You might end up with a much more solid business and doing work you love. Sometimes, this leaves you somewhere you no longer find exciting. That's exactly my case: I started a company 3 years ago with some friends, we pivoted a few times, found what we think is a nice product-market fit and the business is growing nicely. However, I find myself in a similar position to Greg: I'm not in a critical position (all the critical work is handled by my team, I only oversee it and guide it) and the role is not something that would interest me if it was offered to me. Basically, I'm here because I founded the company, I love the ideas it was founded on and I like my coworkers. I've talked long and hard about this with my co-founders, I've found a replacement and, if it works out, I'll leave the day to day running of company in the next few months.
- bcg1 11y agoIf your question wasn't rhetorical, the answer would be "nothing". Quite obviously that question is more about how you answer than it is about what you answer.
- yinyinwu 11y agoGood luck with your next steps!
- shubhamjain 11y agoThe general advice is - "Don't force it! It won't get you anywhere." However, I feel, smart ambitious people, can't avoid the anxiety to do their own thing. Leaving a high-paying job on a vital position might not make a lot of sense but I believe, when you are surrounded by people making multi-million dollar enterprises with almost-similar skill-set (maybe, with a better business sense), you can't avoid that feel of not finding a single reason to not to replicate the same level of success.
- gdb 11y agoStarting a company because "everyone else is doing it" sounds like a bad idea. For me, it's been something I've wanted to do since my first side project got 1500 uniques via StumbleUpon, and suddenly I realized how much fun it is creating something new that has real users.
- wenbin 11y agoSame feeling when seeing side projects that went to front page of hacker news :)
- smeyer 11y agoI don't think that looking at people making "multi-million dollar enterprises" is necessarily going to cause much envy or anything. Brockman presumably has equity worth quite a lot and was key to the level of success Stripe has seen so far.
- exelius 11y agoWell, building a billion dollar business requires a different skill set than running a billion dollar business. Often when a business is in transition from "explosive growth" to "organic growth", the guys who got you there are no longer the right fit. If you're financially secure, why force it to stay in a position you don't enjoy? Besides, having a C-level title from a successful startup makes it a whole lot easier to get funding for the next thing you want to build...
- krat0sprakhar 11y agoGdb had a critical role to play in popularizing Stripe's CTFs and making them interesting as they are. I really hope that his departure from Stripe this doesn't change the CTF. Wishing him the best with whatever he's planned! Edit: Typos
- Bootvis 11y agoLet me also say thank you for the CTF's! I enjoyed them immensely. Please get in touch with the Starfighter guys ;)
- tptacek 11y agoHey, Greg! Get in touch! :) (We're three equal founders and not all male, for what it's worth).
- danellis 11y agogdb had a critical role in solving some of them, too ;-)
- danellis 11y agoWhile he did promote them, they were all built by Siddarth Chandrasekaran, who is still at Stripe. So hopefully he'll keep that up.
- siddarthcs 11y agoThis is said Siddarth Chandrasekaran. :) I proposed the first Stripe CTF, inspired by SmashTheStack (http://smashthestack.org/ http://smashthestack.org/), but the resulting Stripe CTFs are the result of many, many hours of several folks' work (Andy Brody, Carl Jackson, Christian Anderson, gdb, Jonas Schneider, Jorge Ortiz, Ludwig Petterson, Nelson Elhage, Philipp Antoni, Steve Woodrow, and myself). And yes, it's certainly a tradition that we hope to keep up!
- dencold 11y agoSiddarth, any word on when the 2015 edition of CTF will be out? I check the stripe blog every week or so hoping for some mention of timeline. I loved CTF3. You guys do a fantastic job on these. THANK YOU.
- grandalf 11y agoGreg is a super smart, super nice guy. Can't wait to find out what he ends up working on next.
- tptacek 11y agoCongratulations on what has by all available accounts been an extremely well executed tenure as engineering leadership for one of the most significant new tech companies in the world. Will be avidly watching whatever your next move is!
- leothekim 11y agoBest of luck to Greg. I find this poignant but not surprising. His previous blog post was very thoughtful, if somewhat existential. I was actually watching for updates to see if he had successfully evolved his role into something meaningful and productive. In the end, and no offense to him, it seems like some variant of the Peter Principle just played out here.
- afarrell 11y agoCongrats Greg! I still owe you a 50lb bag of rice!
- endlessvoid94 11y agoCongratulations, Greg! Onward!
- mderazon 11y agoCongrats and good luck. Their api is truly a piece of art and one of my favorite software projects to look at. I always find myself taking example from it when building an api. Reading the preceding post to the one mentioned here, his decision suddenly seems not so surprising. Like his role in the sprint of building a company is done now and not all people make the transition once the company grows up to the next level
- ilikerashers 11y agoDear Greg, Please fix the payments industry by building something that just plugs into a site without having to care if it's Stripe/Datacash/Paypal/Sagepay et al. The costs of switching are too high in this industry and a "nicer API" isn't a good enough feature for any of my clients to want to switch. A product which lets customer failover and chase competitive pricing is what's needed.
- jonathancordeau 11y agoWell put. Greg and the Collison's have built an amazing product, helping to pave the way for innovation in the space. However, we agree that there's a larger fundamental issue that can't be addressed by the processors themselves. That's why we're building http://accepton.com http://accepton.com I'd love to hear the challenges your clients are facing: jonathan <AT> accepton DOT com
- captn3m0 11y agoEver since I've participated in the first Stripe CTF, I've had a massive respect for Greg. It has been great to read his blog posts and insights over the years, and see the great work he has been a part of at Stripe. A few days back, I actually realized that I had never seen a talk by Greg, and actually googled for one, and found one about hiring at Stripe[0]. I can't wait to see what comes next. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zoq085zVhA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zoq085zVhA
- tonyspiro 11y agoCongrats and happy trails on your new adventures.
- gxespino 11y agoStripe was the first API I ever hooked into and it was a breeze. I've since tapped into a dozen other APIs and I've yet to find one as simple as Stripe. Kudos and good luck in the future. Would love to tag a long whenever you start hiring!
- zimbrato 11y agoA no-name executive leaving a failing startup. He knows well that the blood sea of insolvency is his responsibility. He's trying to escape his failure. DO NOT TRUST
- bachback 11y agoI'd be curious to learn more about this mentioned S-Curve and possible institutional inertia. Stripe is an inspiring company - but ultimately a kind of mixed company in that it bridges the Internet to Credit card companies.
- Yadi 11y agoCongrats Greg, You ROCK! time to start a new chapter! The codebase you have contributed to (built), is just incredible.