WEBVTT - John Collison 0:00:03.400 --> 0:00:05.960 One of the most valuable tech startups that's still private 0:00:06.160 --> 0:00:08.720 is Stripe. It was started about a decade ago by 0:00:08.720 --> 0:00:11.200 two brothers, both of them dropped out of college to 0:00:11.240 --> 0:00:14.160 start the company. The company is reimagining the way people 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:16.400 make their payments and had a chance to sit down 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:19.240 with one of the founders, John Collison, in his offices 0:00:19.280 --> 0:00:20.120 in New York City. 0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:22.960 So tell me what Stripe actually is. 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:28.320 So Stripe makes it easy for businesses to accept payments online. 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:29.920 We got the idea. 0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:32.320 When we actually had started our own internet business and 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:34.839 we found this so much stuff is getting better, you know, 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:37.400 the tech is getting better at programming, language, is cloud hosting. 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:39.640 But when it actually comes to running a business and 0:00:39.640 --> 0:00:42.000 taking payment from people all over the world, that was 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:44.360 something that was really challenging. And so today, if you're 0:00:44.360 --> 0:00:46.280 setting up a business online, if you decided that you 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:51.200 wanted to, you know, start a media company and charge subscriptions, 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:53.000 you know, twenty dollars a month to access all the 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:55.360 back catalog, how do you actually go and do that 0:00:55.480 --> 0:00:57.840 and take people's you know, credit card details or bank 0:00:57.880 --> 0:00:58.680 account details. 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:01.720 Stripe provides the infant structure to do So. 0:01:01.720 --> 0:01:03.240 Where did the name Stripe come from? 0:01:04.400 --> 0:01:05.320 We okay. 0:01:05.360 --> 0:01:08.959 Stripe was originally called slashtev slash payments like with the 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:11.399 you know, forward slashes in there, which was kind of 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:16.960 a wry software engineering joke, and you can imagine it 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:19.959 just like baffled everyone. You know, people in the flang 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:22.280 industry thought we were some kind of dodgy fraud thing, 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:24.160 and so okay, it was clear that this would work. 0:01:24.240 --> 0:01:25.960 So we went through the entire. 0:01:25.760 --> 0:01:29.120 Company went through a renaming exercise where you tried to 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:31.080 come up with, you know, the best names we could 0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:33.480 and find out domain names were available. You know, we 0:01:33.520 --> 0:01:36.240 consider the name paid Demon for a while. Again, you know, 0:01:36.280 --> 0:01:38.400 we attracted a bad names for some reason, but we 0:01:38.760 --> 0:01:39.559 settled on Stripe. 0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:42.440 Before you started the company, how did people get this 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:45.520 service in? Otherwise, there was business being done long before Stripe, 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:47.720 So how did people deal with this problem? 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:50.400 The most common way is people went to banks. 0:01:50.480 --> 0:01:53.040 You would go to Bank of America or Chase or 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:56.080 someone like that, and you would get a merchant account 0:01:56.400 --> 0:01:59.720 from them. But you can kind of imagine banks didn't 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:03.120 really understand internet companies that well, this is much more 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:06.160 about providing the software to plug into your website. They're 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:08.240 not in the software business. And honestly it was a 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:10.040 bit of a hobby. It's a sideline from them. You 0:02:10.080 --> 0:02:12.200 won't hear when you hear a bank ceo talk about 0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:14.280 their business. This will never be front and center as 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:16.239 something they really care about. And so there was no 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:19.760 one who really specialized in making life easy for internet businesses. 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:22.720 So your company was started, was doing business with a 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:25.360 lot of entrepreneurial companies, but then you started doing business 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:28.520 with Fortune five hundred, Fortune one hundred, Fortune fifty companies. 0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:29.519 Was that a transition? 0:02:29.840 --> 0:02:31.120 You have to wear a coat and tie when you 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:33.640 go see the CEOs of Fortune fifty companies, And how 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:34.240 did that work? 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:35.040 You might. 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:38.840 Association, you know, a Fortune one hundred company, but like 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:40.560 the tech is a bit out of date and the 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:42.760 user experienced a little bit clunky. If you talk to 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:45.280 people inside those businesses, that's obviously not what they want. 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:49.080 And so what we found is large companies coming to 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:52.600 us because they want to offer a really compelling user 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:55.320 experience that's as good as all the tech guys might do. 0:02:55.639 --> 0:02:58.000 And so you know we're talking to Forward about you know, 0:02:58.040 --> 0:02:59.600 they obviously want to make it where you can just 0:02:59.760 --> 0:03:01.680 buy a car online. You know, you don't have to 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:05.320 necessarily go through the dealership. You know, we're working with Hurts. 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:08.519 They want to modernize the car rental experience, like why 0:03:08.520 --> 0:03:10.760 can't you have everything within the Hurtz app and have 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:12.960 that be the payment experience rather than having to wait 0:03:13.040 --> 0:03:15.600 in line at the car rental counter. You know, Amazon 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:17.800 similarly making it easy for people all around the world 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:21.680 to pay urban outfitters. They want to make it easy 0:03:21.680 --> 0:03:23.639 to you know, buy something online a return store or 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:26.560 vice versa. And so we found all these large companies 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:30.720 tended to almost kind of look at the startups and 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:32.520 what they're doing and say, we want to be able 0:03:32.560 --> 0:03:34.960 to deliver that caliber of customer experience. And so I 0:03:35.000 --> 0:03:38.560 think our foundations in the tech world and the startup 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:40.560 world we are actually quite useful as we went to 0:03:40.600 --> 0:03:41.720 go talk to the large companies. 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:45.200 Now, there's a phrase in the Silicon Valley world called unicorn, 0:03:45.480 --> 0:03:48.480 which means a giganic companies come from nowhere, got it 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:51.080 a lot of value. I guess you were about the 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:54.640 biggest unicorn out there because one time you raise money 0:03:54.640 --> 0:03:58.160 at evaluation of about ninety some billion dollars more recently 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:01.720 a little bit lower than that, but ninety billion dollars valuation. 0:04:02.120 --> 0:04:04.840 Many times people would say, if company's worth ninety billion, 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:07.280 now maybe less than that, want not take a public 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:08.600 You're a privately owned company. 0:04:08.600 --> 0:04:09.960 Why have you not taken in public? 0:04:11.720 --> 0:04:13.160 I get the sense that. 0:04:15.000 --> 0:04:18.520 Some tech companies, maybe a lot of tech companies, go 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:21.000 public a bit too early. And what I mean by 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:24.839 that is in Strip's case, I mean we still see 0:04:25.120 --> 0:04:29.760 tons of opportunity to change and. 0:04:28.640 --> 0:04:29.920 Grow the business quite a lot. 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:34.840 We're still constantly inventing new products and developing new business lines, 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:37.279 and also you can do that in the public markets. 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:39.960 But I think culturally we have ended up. 0:04:40.360 --> 0:04:42.719 You know, you look at analysts following public companies and 0:04:42.760 --> 0:04:45.200 obsessing over guidance and what will be this quarter and 0:04:45.240 --> 0:04:45.800 things like that. 0:04:46.040 --> 0:04:47.000 Culturally we've ended up. 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:48.880 I think in a bit more of a world where 0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:52.760 public companies are suited for the extract stage of the 0:04:53.279 --> 0:04:57.479 sigmoid curve rather than the expand stage. And Stripe is 0:04:57.520 --> 0:05:01.240 still growing very quickly reinvesting in new products. I don't 0:05:01.279 --> 0:05:02.880 think it's actually better in terms of how you can 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:06.520 compensation employees, where you can give a better instrument for 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:09.960 employee compensation and attracting the top talent as a private 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:12.880 company because a public company one, it's an instrument that 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:15.400 everyone else has access to. You know, a public company stock, 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:17.760 you can just buy it in the public markets if 0:05:17.760 --> 0:05:18.000 you want. 0:05:18.000 --> 0:05:20.320 There's no rarity to us. 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:23.000 But also you see various public companies that go through 0:05:23.000 --> 0:05:24.919 a kind of hype cycle and then spend you know, 0:05:25.760 --> 0:05:27.960 a long period of time with you know flat or 0:05:28.279 --> 0:05:30.800 evaluation going down, whereas I think as a you know, 0:05:30.800 --> 0:05:33.040 a private company or less likely to run into that. 0:05:33.279 --> 0:05:36.320 So you had a CFO who retired and when she 0:05:36.440 --> 0:05:40.320 did so you became her successor acting CFO. What was 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:42.640 that like to be the CFO as well as the president. 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:46.840 Yeah, well, luckily now we have a real CFO, a 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:50.680 fellow named Stephen Thomlinson who joined last year. But as 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:53.600 your reference, for the best part of a year, I 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:55.960 was our interim CFO. 0:05:56.200 --> 0:05:58.400 It's actually very useful experience. 0:05:57.920 --> 0:06:01.039 Where I think all founders should be a CFO of 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:03.560 their own businesses for you know, a period, because it 0:06:03.600 --> 0:06:07.080 really lets you get a quite hands on sense of 0:06:07.120 --> 0:06:10.000 the business. But you know, that was during twenty twenty three, 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:12.600 which was a funny time where you know, we did 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:17.120 this kind of large fundraise in the beginning of the year. 0:06:17.600 --> 0:06:19.919 It was a quite large, you know, private market fundraise, 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:22.600 and it was a weird time. Like you remember the 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:25.880 start of twenty twenty three, everyone was nervous. Everyone's hiding 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:28.320 under their desks. They didn't want to invest money, and 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:30.599 so I think we had to kind of draw people 0:06:30.600 --> 0:06:32.640 out and be willing to make investments. And then that 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:34.800 was a year where we also had to kind of 0:06:35.279 --> 0:06:38.120 tighten up a loss on kind of expenses and things 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:40.400 like that, because everyone is battling down the hatches a 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:42.400 bit for a recession. The recession didn't end up coming, 0:06:42.440 --> 0:06:44.359 but I think that was useful prep regardless. 0:06:44.400 --> 0:06:45.880 So you had a point at some point where you 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:47.480 had to say, lay off some employees. 0:06:47.800 --> 0:06:49.560 Was that difficult to do well? 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:52.000 Of course, I think in particular because you know, the 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:55.279 company's fault at some level where we had been trying 0:06:55.320 --> 0:07:00.120 to project forward how many people we'd need and and 0:07:01.560 --> 0:07:03.839 you know at something that we've gotten that wrong, especially 0:07:03.839 --> 0:07:05.560 as it looked like things were looking kind of quite 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:07.120 a bit weaker for twenty three and twenty four. 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:09.720 So this was in twenty twenty two. But you have 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:14.560 a whole bunch of people who are very good and yes. 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:16.200 Just like it's not the right kind of structure for 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:18.240 the company to have them, and so of course it's 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:18.760 going to be hard. 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:21.680 Now, sometimes the companies in Silicon Valley, they're seen as 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:25.160 having postpone an IPO if they wait four years, five years, 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:28.840 six years, ten years, waiting fourteen years is a long time. 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:32.160 Is something like an IPO ever on your horizon, or 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:33.800 it's just something you don't even think about or don't 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:34.520 talk about. 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:36.720 Yeah, I mean, look, presumably at some stage, but. 0:07:38.960 --> 0:07:43.560 I think the kind of broad narrative gets very transaction focused, 0:07:43.600 --> 0:07:46.160 because that's like the interesting media moment or something like that. 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:48.880 If you were to look at Amazing inside of Stripe, 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:51.120 you can probably imagine themb it is. We're very focused 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:53.840 on is the product working well for customers, How is 0:07:53.880 --> 0:07:54.840 new customer growth growing? 0:07:54.920 --> 0:07:55.560 How are kind of. 0:07:55.480 --> 0:08:00.760 The fundamental financials of revenue growth and even for the business. 0:08:00.880 --> 0:08:02.240 We don't spend a lot of time on kind of 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:03.760 transactions and kind of those. 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:06.560 So when you get some professional investors, and many of 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:09.240 them are among the leading venture capital firms in the 0:08:09.320 --> 0:08:13.400 United States, like Sequoia for example, at some point venture 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:16.080 capitalists say, well, this is a great product. 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:17.640 You're doing a great job. 0:08:17.840 --> 0:08:19.520 We'll give you more money, but we would like to 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:22.120 actually get our money back at some point. You don't 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:24.920 get any pressure from them saying after ten years or 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:27.600 so you should get public or get our money back. 0:08:29.520 --> 0:08:33.360 I mean all of our venture investors kind of own 0:08:33.440 --> 0:08:37.520 a stake in the company that is compounding and continue 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:40.760 to appreciation intrinsic value. And so I think that is 0:08:40.800 --> 0:08:42.679 the business they're in. That's what they're excited about. And 0:08:42.720 --> 0:08:44.840 you have to remember, you know, someone like a Sequoia. 0:08:44.880 --> 0:08:46.720 I don't think it's an open question as to whether 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:49.560 Sequoia is a good venture investor. I think that they're 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:52.320 not worried about having to prove themselves to okay. 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:53.640 I think that's a known thing. 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:56.240 So I think at the peak of the tech I 0:08:56.280 --> 0:09:00.199 won't say bubble, but the frenzy on tech companies, your 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:02.839 company was valued I thought around ninety five billion or 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:05.520 something like that. So ninety five billion dollars for a 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:08.559 startup is pretty impressive. But then they melt down the 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:11.880 tech world occurred. I think your last valuation was probably 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:15.240 something closer to sixty billion, So is that depressing when 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:17.200 you're from ninety five to sixty or sixty is still 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:19.840 very high, and where people upset or you say, this 0:09:19.960 --> 0:09:21.760 is just the tech world and it'll go back up. 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:22.480 Yeah. 0:09:22.640 --> 0:09:28.559 Look, people have a funny relationship to prices. Where first off, 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:32.160 in the entirety of the public market space, you had 0:09:32.440 --> 0:09:35.080 a lot of enthusiasm in twenty twenty one, especially for 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:37.520 things like you know, SaaS and fintech and things like that. 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:40.320 If you look at companies in a similar space to 0:09:40.559 --> 0:09:45.079 Stripe but that are public vius, you know, Shopify or 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:47.120 Square or anyone like that, they also had kind of 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:49.760 much higher valuations in twenty twenty one. Then those came 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:53.080 down because interest rates changed, the environment change, and so 0:09:53.480 --> 0:09:54.240 of course. 0:09:54.040 --> 0:09:55.480 That should flow through to valuations. 0:09:55.640 --> 0:09:58.719 But we find in the private market world people get 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:00.920 very funny about you and I see other companies trying 0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:02.520 to preserve evaluation. 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:03.880 That doesn't make sense anymore. 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:06.600 Like prices are based on you know, you're at the 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:10.400 midpoint of supply and demand, and they're kind of the 0:10:10.520 --> 0:10:13.600 imputed value of all the future cash flows. But I 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:15.880 don't think it serves anyone to be in denial about 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:16.480 lot of prices. 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:18.720 Okay, so let's suppose somebody came to work at your 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:21.120 company the very beginning. They don't own as much as 0:10:21.160 --> 0:10:24.240 you do, but presumably they own some and they're not 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:26.120 going to be maybe as wealthy as you and your 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:27.880 brother might be, but they might say, I'd like to 0:10:27.920 --> 0:10:31.040 sell some stock. I don't have as much reserves as 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:33.480 other people. How do they get to sell their stock 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:35.640 if you're not going public? You buy their stock back 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:36.040 from them. 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:39.760 Yeah, So what we've done twice now is tender offers 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:46.000 where we match together you know, investors, and you know, 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:48.160 sometimes they also use the kind of company's own cash 0:10:48.200 --> 0:10:51.160 that it generates, and you know, do a buyback program 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:53.440 for people at the opportunity to sell their shares. And 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:54.880 so we did that last year, we did that this 0:10:54.960 --> 0:10:56.319 year again. I think we'll probably do it again in 0:10:56.360 --> 0:10:56.720 the future. 0:10:57.280 --> 0:10:59.559 So let's suppost somebody's watching this and says, this is 0:10:59.559 --> 0:11:00.559 a very't man. 0:11:00.800 --> 0:11:02.560 I've heard of Stripe. It's a great company. 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:06.000 Evaluation might be sixty seventy eighty billion, whatever the next 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:08.320 roound round might be, I'd like to invest in it. 0:11:08.360 --> 0:11:10.880 How does somebody invest in Stripe other than going through 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:12.240 the venture firms you already have. 0:11:13.160 --> 0:11:14.040 I mean, they don't. 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:17.680 In some cases, they might have exposure because they're you know, 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:21.440 a shareholder in you know, some entity that owns a 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:24.680 stake and strike and so you know, Fidelsy owns some 0:11:24.760 --> 0:11:26.640 shares and Stripe, and so maybe people have looked through 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:29.559 exposure based on that. But remember also we are not 0:11:30.840 --> 0:11:34.240 The business does not do kind of primary equity raiss anymore. 0:11:34.800 --> 0:11:38.720 The business generates cash, and so the only shares the 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:41.040 trade hands are just in the secondary markets where we want. 0:11:40.880 --> 0:11:41.960 To give employees liquidly. 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:44.560 But you haven't sold his shares and I've you know, 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:46.760 showed sold shares at some point in the past and 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:49.160 you know, the tender offer or something like that, but 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:50.160 certainly we're not. 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:51.880 We're along the company now. 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:54.760 You are the co founder and president. Who is the 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:56.679 other co founder and CEO? 0:11:57.360 --> 0:12:00.400 So our CEO and my co founder is my brother Patrick. 0:12:00.440 --> 0:12:04.040 So we've been working together for a long time. We 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:07.240 started the business fourteen years ago, and we actually started 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:09.960 a business together previously. That was part of how we 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:10.960 got the idea for Stripe. 0:12:11.160 --> 0:12:14.160 You've heard the phrase sibling rivalry, So do you have 0:12:14.200 --> 0:12:16.720 a sibling rivalry with your brother as a year older brother. 0:12:16.960 --> 0:12:17.840 He's my older brother. 0:12:18.320 --> 0:12:20.080 No, it's nice, you know, it mightn't work that well 0:12:20.120 --> 0:12:22.439 if we were particularly rivalrous. 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:26.400 I actually think it's quite valuable for us. 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:29.920 Look, everyone's co founders relationships are different. View of co 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:35.600 founders at Carlisle in our case, in Silicon Valley broadly, 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:40.000 co founder relationships can be. 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:43.040 Unstable inherently. 0:12:43.240 --> 0:12:45.720 You know, you look at all of the large companies 0:12:46.040 --> 0:12:50.959 you know, Apple, Microsoft, Google, you know, pick your example, and. 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:52.160 You know Facebook. 0:12:52.840 --> 0:12:56.760 In a lot of cases the original co founding team 0:12:56.960 --> 0:12:59.920 did not stick together. And again in Stripe's case, we 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:02.559 get really excited about this idea of growing the GDP 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:06.400 of the Internet, expanding the Internet economy, and fourteen years in, 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:09.200 we actually like we now are at the you know, 0:13:09.280 --> 0:13:11.400 the table stakes part. We feel like we've done some 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:13.880 good groundwork, but we can do some really interesting stuff 0:13:13.920 --> 0:13:15.800 over the next ten or twenty years. 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:18.359 I think that's much more fun. 0:13:18.040 --> 0:13:21.520 And you have much more opportunity to work on it 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:25.400 with a long term perspective. If you have very trusting 0:13:25.400 --> 0:13:28.000 co founder relationships, it makes us, I think, more stable, 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:30.520 more enjoyable, So you're more likely to stick at doing this, 0:13:30.600 --> 0:13:33.959 and so I feel pretty fortunate for the relationship that Patrika. 0:13:34.160 --> 0:13:36.800 Let's talk about your background and how this came about, 0:13:36.880 --> 0:13:38.360 so I can tell prem er accent. 0:13:38.400 --> 0:13:41.640 You're not from New York City exactly. Yeah, so originally 0:13:41.720 --> 0:13:42.800 you're from where. 0:13:42.760 --> 0:13:44.640 I'm from, Ireland, and I grew up there and then 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:46.520 I ended up coming to the United States for college. 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:50.400 You grow up in Ireland, Limerick, I assume you did 0:13:50.480 --> 0:13:53.160 okay in school what you got into Harvard, which is 0:13:53.160 --> 0:13:55.760 probably not that easy to do from Ireland. So why 0:13:55.760 --> 0:13:57.680 did you go to Harvard and why did you drop 0:13:57.720 --> 0:13:58.360 out of Harvard? 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:02.040 I went to Harvard's I don't know. At that time. 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:04.800 I just had some wonderlust. I wanted to get out 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:06.040 and explore the world. 0:14:06.120 --> 0:14:08.600 As you say, I was pretty academic, like, I liked school, 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:13.680 I liked studying, and I just really wanted to get 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:16.240 out to somewhere else. And I think that's sometimes for 0:14:16.280 --> 0:14:19.280 people who grew up somewhere kind of small, in a 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:24.000 small community. That's a common sentiment. And so that's why 0:14:24.000 --> 0:14:27.600 I ended up at Harvard. We actually started stripe when 0:14:27.600 --> 0:14:29.880 we were in college, so I was at Harvard, Patrick 0:14:30.000 --> 0:14:31.160 was down the road at MIT. 0:14:31.800 --> 0:14:33.520 We had been talking about this idea. 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:36.480 And again this was two thousand and nine, where there 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:38.360 were a huge number of Internet businesses. But if you 0:14:38.440 --> 0:14:42.240 talk to any internet entrepreneur again, they would tell you 0:14:42.280 --> 0:14:45.320 that this was their biggest frustration. But we were, you know, 0:14:45.480 --> 0:14:48.800 nineteen and twenty one at the time, we were not 0:14:49.520 --> 0:14:50.720 experienced in the industry. 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:51.720 And I think what's interesting is. 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:56.840 Stripe is obviously regulated financial services firm. It was probably 0:14:56.880 --> 0:14:59.840 helpful that we had no idea of what it would 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:03.240 because you know, it's actually pretty complex to build something 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:03.600 like Strip. 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:05.200 But we gradually got into it. 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:07.920 All right, So you did one year at Harvard and 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:08.640 you dropped down. 0:15:08.760 --> 0:15:10.840 Yeah, and did you say to your parents, I'm going 0:15:10.880 --> 0:15:12.840 to be the next Bill Gates from Mark Zuckerberg or 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:15.480 they didn't say anything about the importance of going and 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:16.240 getting your degree. 0:15:17.040 --> 0:15:19.000 Quite the opposite of what I said to my mom, 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:22.200 who I was leaving Ireland for colleges. You know, she said, okay, 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:25.040 because Patrick had dropped out previously. She said to me, 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:26.680 you know, if you're going, you're going for four years. 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:27.520 You got to do the whole thing. 0:15:27.560 --> 0:15:30.200 I said, yes, absolutely, I'm going four years. I will graduate. 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:32.880 And that was about two months before we started writing 0:15:32.880 --> 0:15:33.480 the code for Strip. 0:15:33.680 --> 0:15:35.760 So where did you get your initial money to get 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:36.600 the company started? 0:15:37.120 --> 0:15:38.960 So we did like a lot of people. 0:15:39.080 --> 0:15:41.720 We did, you know, a little bit of kind of 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:44.840 friends and family fundraising from anyone we could get connected to. 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:49.960 And then the very first investors were Paul Graham, Sam Altman, 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:50.960 and then Peter Teel. 0:15:51.280 --> 0:15:52.680 Okay, so they came in early. 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:55.160 At that point, you had no revenue, You had nothing 0:15:55.200 --> 0:15:55.840 but an idea. 0:15:56.800 --> 0:15:59.160 We had a few customers, and so I guess we 0:16:00.320 --> 0:16:02.440 had a little bit of revenue, but minimal wouldn't be 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:03.400 impressive to you, right. 0:16:03.320 --> 0:16:05.880 So you get the company off the ground, and at 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:08.360 what point do you get some enough customers to go 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:11.080 to a professional venture capital firm and say. 0:16:11.000 --> 0:16:12.200 We have a real business here. 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:14.920 I think with the early stage investors, they're very much 0:16:14.960 --> 0:16:17.200 focused on the found and team, the product, things like that. 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:19.720 And so when you look at those early early investors 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:22.160 to Stripe, I think basically what they looked at is 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:25.280 they saw the product. We might have had, you know, 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:27.680 fifty customers at the time or something. We are quite 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:31.800 compelling demo showing how quickly you could get started accepting payments. 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:33.880 And this is still like if I want to sell 0:16:33.880 --> 0:16:36.040 someone on Stripe today, I just showed them, you know, 0:16:36.080 --> 0:16:38.040 you go to Stripe dot com, You log on and 0:16:38.080 --> 0:16:40.000 you can be set up to start accepting payments from 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:43.000 customers all around the world in a matter of five minutes. 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:44.480 You know, that's kind of the demo now, and it 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:47.000 was the demo back then. And then we would encourage 0:16:47.040 --> 0:16:52.200 investors to talk to any kind of tech entrepreneurs they 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:54.960 know and just ask them how the experience of dealing 0:16:54.960 --> 0:16:57.240 with payments was. And so, you know, we talked to investor, 0:16:57.280 --> 0:17:00.320 we'd show them the product whatever, and then they would 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:02.800 maybe go call on their portfolio companies and you know, say, 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:04.719 you know, hey, do you guys have any problems accepting payments? 0:17:04.760 --> 0:17:06.400 They have to hold the phone away from their ear. 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:08.080 They got so much yelling at the other end about 0:17:08.080 --> 0:17:11.160 how crummy the existing providers were. But I think that's 0:17:11.200 --> 0:17:13.560 really what they were underwriting in the airly investments was 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:16.760 just this seems like a good idea, This product seems good, 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:18.879 and it seems like it's addressing a real problem that 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:19.280 people have. 0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:22.880 Many companies struggle with a couple issues like ESG DEI 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:25.320 let's talk about that. Yeah, do you care about ESG 0:17:25.480 --> 0:17:27.399 at stripe? But is that a major focus or not 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:28.560