
The CEO of Stripe reveals what it's really like running a $9.2B startup - ezekg
http://www.businessinsider.com/stripe-ceo-patrick-collison-on-running-a-startup-2018-6
======
ezekg
I read this and listened to the NPR podcast episode this morning, and just
wanted to say: Patrick and John, you guys have done a great job with Stripe
and have made starting an online business simple. I don't think I would have
started the businesses I have if it weren't for Stripe making payments so
simple. (I saw that you mentioned the negative emails that you get every
morning, so if you're reading this, here's a positive message.)

------
ironjunkie
One must love the selection bias of all those articles about startups.

If you were the head of a 9B$ "startup", would you really say you "made it" ?.
No , you would probably do like Patrick and John and say it is "so hard
everyday", and we never "made it" to better subscribe to the startup
narrative.

In summary, there is no content in this article as it is usually the case
whenever successful founders are interviewed.

~~~
segmondy
if you are smart you must talk about how hard it is not how hard you work and
how lucky you are. anything else will earn you scorn from the people.

~~~
flashgordon
I get the difficulty component but surely acknowledging the luck component
cannot be the scorn magnet? What is so bad about acknowledging that there was
a component in the success (how ever small you want to make it) that wasnt
truly you but just kismet?

------
epberry
No discussion at all of the actual content of what he was saying. In my
experience he was right on the money. Problems just keep coming at you and you
gotta deal. The only way to truly be successful and be able to look back and
relax is to leave the business. Seems most founders aren't built that way
though.

~~~
Silhouette
I tend to agree, though I doubt there's anything specific to unicorn success
levels about that. Even the smallest business I ever started, with positive
but very modest results financially, felt like that. I think it's probably the
sense of building something completely new and open-ended that attracts a lot
of us in the first place, and that drive doesn't disappear just because you
finished your MVP or shipped v1 or hit this or that financial milestone.

------
vntok
> Patrick Collison, 29, and his brother John, 27, famously turned seven lines
> of code into a startup called Stripe, which has been valued in fundraising
> at $9.2 billion.

And it's the first sentence no less.

~~~
windows_tips
> $1 billion per line

------
eanzenberg
"startup"

~~~
Itaxpica
I came here to say this, once you're calling a 9+ billion dollar company is
'startup' the word has no meaning.

~~~
s_dev
Depends on the definition of startup and what definition is most meaningful to
the user.

I find the definition of startup: "A business in the early stages" very
limited and not that useful. Lots of old school business folk and baby boomer
use startup with this in mind.

Paul Graham's definition is one where the number one priority is growth. A
business in contrast the number one priority is the bottom line.

Priorities are a good way to differentiate between companies because they're
trade offs and are specific/measurable. Companies will make decisions that
reveal their priorities even if they profess to adhering to other priorities.

~~~
eanzenberg
PG definition is a shitty definition. Many public and private businesses you
ask will tell you their number one priority is growth. Startup by the literal
name being used means a relatively new company. If you want to differentiate
among the general public use "tech startup" instead.

~~~
ams6110
Agreed. If your company is 9 years old and making billions in revenue, it's
not a startup. If it's still very growth-oriented, call it a growth-oriented
corporation.

~~~
s_dev
People seem quick to provide criticism of definitions without presenting their
own definition for reciprocated criticism.

So far your definition so far is limited to just precluding anything greater
or equal in age to 9 years or anything above 2 Billion in revenue.

Typically what happens as companies scale is they switch priorities from being
growth oriented to being a profit oriented one -- the reason being is not
looking after bottom line is simply not sustainable.

Focusing on growth at the expense of profitability is sustainable for early
stage companies as a someone will pay to see if the growth can be realized.

~~~
gamblor956
PG's definition is but one bastardization of the word "startup" and it is by
far the most useless one.

A startup is a company that hasn't identified a profitable business model.
Legally, the definition is further restricted to a company which hasn't begun
revenue-generating activities.

It's okay to be a startup for a few months while you're getting everything
together and launching. Once you've launched, if you're still a startup,
that's an embarrassment--it means your product (or products) isn't generating
sufficient revenue to be a real business.

~~~
civilitty
_> A startup is a company that hasn't identified a profitable business model._

That seems like an equally useless definition. The profitability of many
business models, especially ones in tech and manufacturing, is dependent on
their scale so there's a circular dependency. More importantly, the meaning of
"identifying a profitable business" is itself unclear. If I open up a new
coffee shop in town, is my business model selling beverages, selling coffee,
or selling coffee to the ~20k people who walk through my main street location
(I'm using a small business example for simplicity's sake)?

That's why I often hear the term "product-market fit" as a way to describe
startups. A coffee shop's market is set based on location and the product is a
combination of the coffee and atmosphere but the area might be too competitive
or too low volume to be profitable. In my opinion, even a coffee shop can be
considered a startup until it is in the black and a small business afterwards
because there is little opportunity to grow.

 _> Legally, the definition is further restricted to a company which hasn't
begun revenue-generating activities._

This is better but then what is "revenue generating" activities? Putting up a
Stripe form? Sending out sales people? Doing some marketing? Several of my
previous startups had early stage partnerships which paid out a decent amount
of money in exploratory contracts before we pivoted to the final iteration of
the product. We may have even been profitable for a short while but I'd find
it hard to argue that we weren't a startup or that we were a small
business/established corporation.

------
mxschumacher
Both in terms of content and technology of the site, I've been consistently
disappointed with Business Insider. Given its large reach, I consider it one
of the worst outlets on the internet. Do others share this opinion?

~~~
anonytrary
The linked article uses ~300 cookies and ~30 ads. I'm starting to realize that
with news sites, we're not looking at the news -- we _are_ the news!

~~~
gordon_freeman
I am Print+Digital subscriber of NYTimes and I consistently get reminders to
disable ad-blocker on desktop site and consistently get terrible ads on their
Android app.

