Sama, 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.
Per 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)
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.
As 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 The figures we reported may be outdated, something that we acknowledged, but I find it extremely difficult to believe that they're wildly inaccurate for the timeframe.
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.