Stripe: The Quiet Engine Behind the Internet's Economy

The Thread Begins: Two Brothers and a Hackathon

In 2010, in a small apartment in Palo Alto, two Irish brothers—Patrick and John Collison—were facing a problem every developer hated: integrating online payments.

They had already built and sold a company (Auctomatic, acquired for $5M), but this new problem was bigger. Setting up payments was a nightmare: merchant accounts, gateways, fraud detection, bank negotiations. All of it was fragmented and slow.

So they wrote seven lines of code.

That prototype let any developer accept credit card payments with just a few lines. Stripe was born, not with a pitch deck, but with a commit.

From Side Project to API That Changed the Web

Originally called /dev/payments, Stripe officially launched in 2011. The pitch? "Start accepting payments with just one API call."

It worked.

Early adopters included Shopify, Kickstarter, Lyft, and Foursquare—fast-moving startups that needed easy payment solutions. Stripe’s onboarding took minutes, not weeks.

By 2012, they were processing millions of dollars in payments each month.

By 2015, it was billions.

The Fundraising Frenzy

Stripe's early momentum attracted tech royalty. In its seed round, Stripe raised from:

• Peter Thiel

• Elon Musk

• Sequoia Capital

• Andreessen Horowitz

It was an all-star cap table. But the Collisons stayed heads-down. Product was priority #1.

In 2016, they raised at a $9B valuation.
In 2021, Stripe became the most valuable private tech company in the U.S. with a valuation of $95B.

Stripe never chased hype. It earned it.

Infrastructure as a Competitive Moat

Stripe evolved beyond payments. Their strategy? Build the entire financial stack.

Some major launches:

• Stripe Atlas: Incorporate a U.S. company from anywhere in the world for $500.

• Stripe Radar: Real-time fraud detection using machine learning.

• Stripe Issuing: Create physical or virtual cards for your business.

• Stripe Tax: Automate global tax compliance.

The result? Over 1 million businesses now use Stripe across 46 countries, and it powers transactions for Amazon, Zoom, Google, Shopify, and more.

This full-stack ecosystem made Stripe nearly irreplaceable. Switching costs became massive.

Culture of Builders, Not Talkers

Stripe’s culture is famously intellectual and high-performance. Patrick Collison once said they wanted to attract people “who read footnotes.”

Inside Stripe:

• Writing > Meetings. Long-form memos are preferred over PowerPoints.

• Product reviews are rigorous. Even error messages are A/B tested.

• Every new hire gets a 200+ page internal handbook called "The Stripe Press Manual".

Their developer docs are widely considered best-in-class. Stripe doesn’t just build products; it obsesses over clarity, simplicity, and polish.

The IPO That Never Came (Yet)

Despite hitting $14B in payment volume by 2016, and likely crossing $1B in revenue by 2019, Stripe stayed private.

In 2023, it raised $6.5B at a $50B valuation to offer employee liquidity—not to fuel growth.

Why delay an IPO?

• Stripe is cash-rich.

• It avoids quarterly scrutiny.

• It can operate long-term without market pressure.

The Collisons believe in default alive, not growth at all costs.

The Bank of the Internet

Stripe now processes payments for millions of companies, moving hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

They’re the invisible layer beneath businesses, enabling:

• Subscriptions

• One-click checkouts

• Global invoicing

• Marketplace payouts

They aren’t just a payments company.
They’re economic infrastructure.

Patrick once said, “Our mission is to increase the GDP of the internet.”

With tools like Atlas, Issuing, and Treasury, Stripe is building the rails for a digital-first, borderless economy.

In a noisy world of tech giants, Stripe scaled quietly—with code, clarity, and conviction.

And it’s still just getting started.