My favorite thing about the Collisons is how down to earth they seem in spite of their incredible success. And that humility seems to permeate throughout the corporate culture of the company as well. I have not seen a single comment on HN by a Stripe that broke that image.
And it's not a PR-designed-totally-artificial-image like Sheryl Sandberg. But they seem to be the real deal.
No complaints about Stripe from me, but I have no doubt their image is very carefully orchestrated and managed. It's not a spontaneous accident, its just great PR.
the best marketing doesn't feel like marketing. of course it helps that the marketing is backed by a genuinely great product and competent team. but at one time, Google used to be that way and if Stripe ever loses customer trust, their branding will ring just as hollow as Googles "don't be evil" does today.
This is true but with the caveat that it's not contrived.
They both have 'natural born PR' instincts so it's both disingenuous and honest at the same time.
Patrick is open, and way over-intellectual in many circumstances, I see that quite a lot in the Valley where nobody respects anyone else unless they are sure if their IQ/chops. And so you see a lot of overt displays of slightly off topic, overly specific, quixotic communication style, like an professor thinking faster than they can speak. And it's on purpose.
His brother is a more natural corporate communicator.
I'm not saying anything against them, but they are definitely putting on a display.
Without knowing a single thing about their upbringing or personal heritage, I would wager that it's a learned trait ie 'it's their upbringing'.
17 year old kids don't sell their companies alone, usually, their parents are behind the scenes.
Microsoft's 1st important sale to IBM was related to the fact his mother was a colleague of IBM board members, i.e. 'elite networks'.
Another comment in this thread summarizes my position:
> It's not really an either-or situation. They can be genuine, but also heavily trained and coached by PR professionals. It's a misconception that all PR initiatives are attempts to mislead or lie to people. The best PR work is completely transparent.
I’m not casting stones or claiming anyone is being disingenuous. They are both nice people and good at PR.
Based on my interactions with Patrick it seems to be genuine. When I interned at Stripe he randomly sat down with me at lunch and we talked about taxes for half an hour.
People who care about status see "intern" as a low-status label, and well below their "CEO" high-status label.
The fact that he spent time with an intern indicates that he doesn't care particularly about the status of these labels. In many cases this is called "being nice".
I really don't think they see intern as a low status label, especially if they have an MIT jacket on, for example.
I worked at a company with a CEO that did something similar and asked interns to come to his desk to chat, which I did. This practice didn't exactly shield him from being cast as an out of touch billionaire when he ran for President.
Or maybe they're just being genuine. If I were in their shoes, I like to think I would just keep being me and not have any role as the company for crafting my PR image. I'm sure some founders are like that.
Anyone would know stripe's plan for cryptocurrencies?
They've invested in stellar[1] in 2014, a blockchain network that facilitate to move money more easily. And then stopped bitcoin support in 2018[2]. Then no news. I'm wondering if the efforts were only pushed by @gdb[3], then when he left (now openAI's CTO), they've somehow lost interest ? I'm really curious about what they think internally.
When I talked with Patrick Collison about Bitcoin in late 2013 (prior to Stellar's release), he kept asking (paraphrased) "Why use Bitcoin instead of making your own cryptocurrency so you could own the whole thing?"
The Collisons are totally like the Weasely twins from Harry Potter. Brothers, funny, good natured, smart, entrepreneurial and at least one is red headed.
Heya, I'm a product manager at Stripe working on just the thing! You're right, historically we have not helped out much here, but we've been working on some new products to remedy that. I'd be happy to share more and see if it meets your needs, or more importantly understand exactly what you would want to see from Stripe w/r/t tax. Email: kmoriarty@stripe.com
I spent a chunk of the Christmas period figuring out international B2B and B2C invoicing requirements, the rules for cross-border VAT/GST/BTW (UK [pre- and post-Brexit]/Australia/Netherlands/EU) sales tax, and when sales tax may be reclaimed on "invalid" invoices.
It was a surprisingly engrossing endeavor. There is a satisfying underlying logical consistency (from the point of view of a non-accountant). I even toyed with codifying the rules in a machine-executable form...
This interview with John Collison is very timely for me. My little "holiday" project of these days is to work on a memo on corporate strategy that I intend to submit to John for review. Who knows, maybe an opportunity will arise from it.
After doing some work and some digging on Stripe (despite I knew the company quite well already), I completely agree that there's still a ton of opportunities for them to expand.
It's actually hard to select a single expansion opportunity, as there are too many to pick from. Well, as said, a nice holiday project.
p.s. if you're willing to help me with some ideas, email me ($my_hn_name at gmail) and I'll happily share the document with you, as long as you can promise to be nice and not share it elsewhere.
It could be that people think you're some random person on the internet trying to get an audience with someone you have no chance of meeting. I'm not saying that's what you are — obviously you have quite a resume behind you — but at a first glance on HN it might appear a little delusional.
I'd be interested in reviewing your doc! Sent you an email.
Agreed, the original comment doesn't really provide value to the reader - it mostly just states the memo thing, and then the opinion that stripe has lots of verticals to expand into
I'm sure it did but the brothers have something that is pretty rare: they are utterly focused, very smart, humble and nice people all in one. That combination was destined for success of some kind.
I love Stripe and everything about it: their main product, docs, website, risk-taking with new products. They are one of the very, very few net-positive VC-backed companies to come out of Silicon Valley. I'm going to be sad when they go public though and things inevitably start changing for the worst. I hope the 2 brothers stay active with the company and continue to steer it in a good direction even when all the shareholders are breathing down their necks.
If the fund raises are being done on favourable terms, which is quite likely given they’re likely doing billions in revenue, they probably still maintain voting control. They won’t be subject to much pressure if they are.
And it's not a PR-designed-totally-artificial-image like Sheryl Sandberg. But they seem to be the real deal.
Wish you guys the best!