alt.hn

2/24/2026 at 2:37:52 PM

Stripe valued at $159B, 2025 annual letter

 https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/stripe-2025-update

by jez

2/24/2026 at 4:53:16 PM

The public can absolutely participate in this by way of syndication deals. Those syndicates are what's covering up the true extent of ownership and they're essentially charging for access with their fees. It's oddly shady, poorly regulated, and more expensive than just being public, but everyone can ride this ride.

by aliljet

2/24/2026 at 7:03:39 PM

The general public absolutely cannot. You have to be an accredited investor or qualified purchaser; you need to have access; you have to pay carry & fees (maybe multiple, stacked middlemen).

by beambot

2/24/2026 at 7:11:42 PM

The path to declaring yourself accredited is uniquely easy. Just say it. The whole space is deeply unregulated and unaudited. What makes it insane is that those middleman are making a small fortune exploiting this loophole protecting large companies from being forced to go public. The number is 2000 private investors. Rest assured, more than 2000 individuals have money in Stripe today. It's a total scam.

by aliljet

2/25/2026 at 4:54:21 AM

Yep. I know several people who became accredited investors through one simple trick: they lied. No one actually checks.

by nradov

2/25/2026 at 1:59:58 PM

And now they’ve thrown their legal rights away should any dispute arise. Wouldn’t recommend this strategy.

by bix6

2/25/2026 at 4:05:30 PM

“Rights”. If you’re lying about accredited investor status, you definitely don’t have the resources to pursue your adversaries in civil litigation, much less actually collect on any judgment.

But they had the option of buying VOO or whatever broad market index the entire time, so I don’t see the need to protect people who feel the need to gamble.

by lotsofpulp

2/25/2026 at 5:20:01 PM

No, that's not how the US legal system works. I don't endorse fraud (or dishonesty in general) but your claim that lying about being an accredited investor extinguishes all legal rights in a dispute is simply false and has no basis in law. Most rights would still be retained.

by nradov

2/25/2026 at 11:57:57 AM

Not really. You still have to be an accredited investor AND financially savvy enough to have the awareness of what syndicate deals are and how to find them and participate.

by rco8786

2/25/2026 at 1:07:15 PM

> You still have to be an accredited investor

Which means that you have to be able to repeat after me “I am an accredited investor”, that’s the actual full list of requirements.

by walletdrainer

2/25/2026 at 10:29:31 PM

Legally speaking that is not correct. Maybe in practice you can do that, but it opens you up to very real risk.

To your bog standard human being, trading Stripe stock has significant barriers vs trading a public stock.

by rco8786

2/25/2026 at 2:01:48 PM

No, the actual full list of requirements is on the SEC website site.

by bix6

2/25/2026 at 8:55:08 PM

I think they are trying to point out the seller may not be required to verify. Only ask.

Like the age check on logged out YouTube videos

by inemesitaffia

2/25/2026 at 10:10:44 PM

No, those are not actual requirements.

by walletdrainer

2/24/2026 at 5:33:49 PM

How exactly?

by dyauspitr

2/25/2026 at 1:40:10 AM

Robinhood just launched a new ventures vehicle and Stripe could be "supposedly" part of it. Robinhood Ventures Fund I (RVI),

by Sherl

2/25/2026 at 3:04:08 PM

Thank you for sharing this, I was unaware! It launches tomorrow.

This is the footnote regarding Stripe: "New deal incoming: RVI has entered a binding agreement to invest in Stripe, Inc. This investment is expected to close after RVI’s IPO, subject to meeting customary closing conditions. Note: This deal isn’t guaranteed to close."

by myvoiceismypass

2/24/2026 at 7:11:18 PM

This feels rich. Compare:

Adyen: $29.408B right now at Yahoo Finance.

PayPal: $41.51B right now.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ADYEN.AS/

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/PYPL/

by testfoobar

2/25/2026 at 7:47:47 AM

Stripe is reportedly proposing to buy PayPal.[1]

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/24/paypal-stock-stripe-acquisit...

by Animats

2/25/2026 at 1:33:17 PM

I hope they'll execute this one well.

Have been waiting for a wallet product from Stripe for a while, but maybe less juicy margins than on top of credit card fees?

by axelthegerman

2/25/2026 at 7:22:17 PM

They have Their Link.com product which integrates pretty seamlessly. It just doesn't store balances or anything akin to PayPal, Venmo, Cashapp, Apple Pay/Cash, etc.

by dabbz

2/24/2026 at 8:53:03 PM

It does seem like a lot, but if you look at growth rates, the differences are significant.

Stripe is also doing far more value-added stuff: If all you need is to process credit card Adyen is probably going to outbid Stripe. They almost always did last time I checked. But Stripe is offering a significantly larger product, especially to people running marketplaces. That was always the selling point for the doordashes and deliveroos of the world. Even for Amazon. So I bet that the skinny version that is just a payment processor would be worth a lot less.

They aren't the only ones trying to widen their horizons either: Paypal and Square/Block came up with plenty of plans to try to grow past boring payments. They just didn't execute on those things all that well, and somehow Stripe does.

by hibikir

2/24/2026 at 10:22:42 PM

Adyen is behind Stripe when it comes to small enterprises but ahead on large enterprises and especially global merchants. They also have scaled back on digital merchants which you can lose easily and focus more on unified commerce, their growth is a lot higher quality. They also report growth differently - ex fees to schemes and banks. Stripe will be on the hook if banks and schemes raise their fees. You also dont know what margin stripe has, just say robust which is enough for the crowd on wallstreet of course but I digress. The fact is Stripe is a good company, but its valuation is set in a room while Adyen's valuation is set on the market 80% of which is pods trading back and forth.

by antiford2049

2/24/2026 at 7:54:48 PM

PayPal is steadily decreasing in share of web payments, with the one redeeming part of their business being Venmo, which appears to be crushing Cash App.

Adyen competes primarily on price with no feature differentiation, and doesn't have the same ease-of-use.

Working at several large companies in payments areas who were Stripe customers, I'll sum up what the competition looks like by paraphrasing one of the executives I reported to: "we go to Adyen when we want to take a competing offer to Stripe for them to match".

by 0xy

2/25/2026 at 8:37:52 AM

This is purely speculation on my end but paypal has too much friction from a consumer standpoint for me.

I pay mostly with credit card (debit really but entering the number etc). When paying with PayPal, I need to click through several screens to even be able to enter my details. They almost always show a login screen, then I have to find the small text at the bottom that says I dont want one. Then by default they want my SEPA details, which Im not going to give them, before allowing me to select Credit Card. Even then I still have to double check that the "Create PayPal Account" checkbox is unchecked before paying.

Stripe immediately shows you a form and doesn't ask any questions.

by mschild

2/24/2026 at 11:29:27 PM

Of course, the thing to note about PYPL is the absolute jump it took today on rumors of a Stripe acquisition.

by fragmede

2/24/2026 at 7:57:05 PM

Visa is valued at $585B and Mastercard is valued at $444B. Is Stripe making more revenue per transaction than Visa and Mastercard?

by syedkarim

2/25/2026 at 3:06:13 PM

Yes. Stripe’s 2.9% fee minus interchange (interchange is variable, on average 1.9%) is higher than Mastercard or Visa’s take of .14%.

But it’s not so simple, because Stripe faces liability for merchant fraud. If you are high volume you negotiate IC+, where the plus is .1%-.4%.

The valuations price in expected growth as well as unit economics. Mastercard doesn’t have as much room to grow because cards already saturate consumer payments.

by rprend

2/25/2026 at 10:07:48 AM

valuation's are based on future returns, not current returns. If one believes they are growing and visa and mastercard aren't then the valuation might make a little more sense. (though I can't comment on the actualities, only the potentials).

by zipy124

2/25/2026 at 5:14:42 AM

I would be surprised if Stripe has made less per transaction. Visa and Mastercard make way more transactions though.

by notpushkin

2/24/2026 at 5:25:47 PM

1.6 percent of global GDP blows my mind.

by rprend

2/24/2026 at 7:14:06 PM

Well, it's not exactly a fair comparison, since they're comparing a volume number with GDP, which is total value produced in a year. Volume numbers are usually much bigger than production numbers, since money moves around a lot.

If I pay a restaurant $200 for dinner and my three friends each venmo me $50 for their share, then the exchanged volume was $350, but only $200 worth of value was generated.

by Centigonal

2/25/2026 at 8:40:27 AM

good argument, bad example. GDP is a net revenue number but Stripe is using a gross revenue number (their equivalent of "GMV"). so the numerator/denominator are as different as possible to make it impressive.

by swyx

2/25/2026 at 12:41:41 AM

Stripe doesn’t power money transfers, just commerce. So 100% of stripe volume is economic activity.

by rprend

2/25/2026 at 12:04:32 PM

With all due respect, this comment demonstrates a misunderstanding of basic economic concepts. Gross domestic product is not simply “economic activity” but a measure of value creation. The mere movement of existing value through transactions does not, by itself, constitute economic production, which is why comparing transaction volume to GDP is misleading.

by yanosc

2/25/2026 at 3:51:57 AM

If I buy something worth 17$ from an SMB's website, and the SMB buys their ingredients from their merchants via stripe for 10$, then those suppliers get a bill for 8$, then that's still only 17$ of GDP, but 35$ of stripe transactions.

by est31

2/25/2026 at 5:45:22 AM

You’re absolutely right i didnt think of that. Isn’t this what they call velocity of money? So we’d need to calculate the “velocity of stripe” (the flow of dollars within the system).

by rprend

2/25/2026 at 6:50:09 AM

I think the parent is correct in saying that’s an economic activity though it’s not GDP (Gross Product). It’s difficult to do circular transactions with no “economic value” in stripe the same you can do with bank accounts/wallets.

by csomar

2/25/2026 at 4:11:49 AM

Do you consider Wise.com to be 'commerce'? Love when people make up percentages and facts!

by Sebguer

2/25/2026 at 5:37:12 AM

Wise does accept cards for transfers, but I think most people use cheaper methods. (Also, last time I checked, they’ve used Adyen.)

by notpushkin

2/24/2026 at 6:24:58 PM

For comparison, Visa's stated FY 2025 (ended Sep 30, 2025) payments volume was $14.2T.

rough math, but:

$14.2T / $1.9T * 1.6% = 12% global GDP

by jez

2/24/2026 at 6:39:57 PM

I was curious, and the American Clearing House has a TPV of $93 trillion, which means ACH is 78%?? That seems too high.

Oh - not all bank transfers count in GDP. I often move money from one account to another.

Note that Visa has the same issue: withdrawing money from an ATM shouldn’t count towards GDP! Neither does Vemo-ing a friend to settle up a split restaurant bill (my Venmo is attached to my debit card).

by rprend

2/24/2026 at 6:41:26 PM

At least it’s not 24.9%

Americans and credit have an unhealthy relationship.

by reactordev

2/24/2026 at 11:45:23 PM

Not all VISA or Mastercard transactions are credit backed, I'd argue that the large majority aren't anymore they're more commonly debit VISA/Mastercard

by oliyoung

2/24/2026 at 10:24:17 PM

this number is a little misleading, to put it mildly.

by antiford2049

2/24/2026 at 6:42:46 PM

Why will a number blow your mind? Have you thought about how Universe exists from nothing?

by hwhehwhehegwggw

2/24/2026 at 6:47:41 PM

I find it inspiring. I relate to the Collison brothers. They're a couple of hackers from Ireland. It blows my mind that a couple young guys like that can build something and in 20 years capture 2% of the entire world's economic activity.

by rprend

2/25/2026 at 1:28:35 PM

They haven’t captured 2% of global economic activity any more than Visa has captured 30%.

by trollbridge

2/24/2026 at 4:53:35 PM

Congratulations.

But how is it 5x bigger than Adyen, which had 2.3B revenue and 1B earnings in 2025?

by throwaw12

2/24/2026 at 4:59:22 PM

It is not 5x bigger, it is 5x more valuable. Obviously Stripes 2x higher revenue is part of that equation, but not all of it.

by fastball

2/24/2026 at 5:11:33 PM

Also Adyen's processing volume grew just 8% (to $1.6T usd) in 2025, while Stripe's grew 34% (to $1.9T usd).

Stripe's bigger _and_ growing faster.

by sej1

2/24/2026 at 10:33:41 PM

the valuable part is with a caveat though. Klarna and Figma were very valuable. i find these comparisons a little pointless (private vs public company). they process similar volumes, but one is in hyper growth mode (imagine quality of it) while the other has been scaling down growth and focusing on profitable growth. Has spooked investors but I understand that Adyen are pretty focused and they are scaling nicely their capital offering. But Stripe has good focus on stablecoins, more product focused and aggressive (as all US firms are). Both have like single % of the global payment market, and if you have issues with Adyen look at others in the market - nexi, paypal, etc. I believe both stripe and adyem will grow market share at expense of others over next decade. Plenty of growth for both, and Adyen has a unified platform solution which is smth stripe doesnt. So all have advantages, and the gap in valuation isnt' something id read too much about.

Besides, if AI replaces all white collar jobs, and crashes high spending consumer economy, all payment vols will go down.

by antiford2049

2/24/2026 at 7:40:29 PM

5x more valuable in a private market is meaningless, until they go public it's all magic numbers used to push whatever narrative they need.

by shimman

2/24/2026 at 5:57:58 PM

yeah, my bad, wanted to say more valuable

by throwaw12

2/24/2026 at 6:20:35 PM

Not all revenue is equal. Payments is interesting because the processor’s growth is directly tied to the growth of its customers. Stripe captures the vast majority of high growth SF startups. Stripe has better customers.

by rprend

2/24/2026 at 7:15:31 PM

[dead]

by snowhale

2/24/2026 at 7:33:55 PM

> adyen is cleaner as a business but it's basically a payments rail. stripe's embedded finance products ...

Where in your comment authorship pipeline were these errors introduced?

by quesera

2/24/2026 at 7:47:08 PM

Same question, this is not the first time I’ve seen random 's.

I think it’s a bot, look at the post history with the weird repetitive hyphens.

by wasmainiac

2/24/2026 at 9:19:16 PM

The account is strange, two years old account with barely any comment for two years then a lot of comments in the last 3 days. The 3 first comments of the account capitalise the first letter, everything is lowercase in the last 3 days. He never replies to comments under his own comment. Sadly, a comment of someone who was telling it was a bot account has been flagged ...

by Rexxar

2/24/2026 at 9:39:00 PM

On top of that, almost every single recent comment has “—“, that is enough signal in opinion.

by anpat

2/24/2026 at 4:25:13 PM

It's insane that they aren't public yet. Their investors must be pressuring them like crazy to IPO.

by fourseventy

2/24/2026 at 4:44:05 PM

Stripe has been doing annual tender offers. Their stance on not being public yet is that they don't need to be, as an IPO is mainly a way to raise money.

As an ex-Stripe, I understand the sentiment, and the tender offers are a nice middle ground for now, but I still would like to see them go public eventually.

by jameskilton

2/24/2026 at 4:57:03 PM

I hope they never go public (also as an ex-Stripe!)

I can't really see a net-positive benefit to having public shareholders and reporting requirements. Do we think Stripe's leadership needs feedback from random investment advisors or analysts? Do employees need the distraction of daily-updating stock prices? Would quarterly reporting incentivize better decision making?

In my opinion: ehhhhhhhhhhhh

I see the benefit, but if you're joining Stripe you know the trade-off of RSUs in a company that doesn't provide daily liquidity. They provide it on a regular basis, so you're not locked in forever (a la my 2014 Gusto shares).

by tyre

2/24/2026 at 5:06:01 PM

I'm sure they already have more than the 500 non-accredited or 2000 accredited shareholder total that would trigger most of those reporting requirements anyways. So Stripe already has most of the drawbacks of being a public company without the benefits.

by bryanlarsen

2/24/2026 at 5:20:17 PM

The reporting isn’t the drawbacks of being public, it’s the investors.

They get to _choose_ who they let in if they are private (by definition).

They don’t need the public’s money and don’t want the headache of dealing with the public. I’d completely agree if I were them.

Disclaimer: ex-stripe who is still an investor.

by kasey_junk

2/24/2026 at 5:34:18 PM

The vast majority of public shareholders don't vote their shares. A VC is much more likely to apply unwanted pressure to the board/management than the general public is.

IMO, the best reason to avoid an IPO is to stay out of the media.

by bryanlarsen

2/24/2026 at 6:52:26 PM

The VC likely already has ownership, and a board seat - public companies are susceptible to activist-investors and hostile bids: outsiders who hold little/no stake, but an outsized influence.

by overfeed

2/24/2026 at 8:01:47 PM

Neither of which would be relevant in the Stripe case, because if Stripe IPO's they'll release a negligible number of shares. It'd be impossible for either group to amass a substantial number of shares.

by bryanlarsen

2/24/2026 at 8:18:29 PM

Why IPO at all, if they will release a "negligible number of shares"?

by overfeed

2/24/2026 at 8:35:43 PM

A low liquidity IPO would likely result in a massive share price increase: the number of interested buyers would vastly outnumber the number of shares available.

by bryanlarsen

2/25/2026 at 7:30:55 PM

So what? If you’re selling a low amount of shares, you are still generating a low amount of input to the company.

If it neither needs money nor guidance, then why IPO? The owners already have enough of both.

by true_religion

2/24/2026 at 6:02:53 PM

Harder for activist investors to get into a private company than a public one imho. Keeps out those who would squeeze the business and bail, and potentially kick out the founders. With sufficient cashflow (which Stripe most certainly has), you can buy out existing investors without going public.

(not ex-Stripe, but own startup equity and have no problem with them never going public if that is the choice; optimize for the enterprise and existing stakeholders, not the public market mechanics broadly speaking)

by toomuchtodo

2/24/2026 at 8:04:48 PM

You'd need to amass 50% of the shares to kick out the founders. That'd be impossible for a hostile party to do if Stripe IPO's because they wouldn't release anywhere close to that number of shares.

The only way to kick out the Collison's would be for the VC's to do it. They currently own 80%. It's easier for the VC's to do that if Stripe stays private than if Stripe IPO's.

by bryanlarsen

2/25/2026 at 12:37:39 AM

How do you know if they do/don't have a dual-class share structure?

by ahmetd

2/25/2026 at 4:23:39 AM

I'd say it has advantages and disadvantages.

One advantage is that whales can't play around with the stock price, say VCs dumping stocks at an unfortunate moment and putting pressure on the price. But it's also just wall street folks doing price manipulation for options schemes that can be an issue (it's illegal but has low enforcement if you are rich and well connected). Also lower chance of activist investors, and less of a quarterly pressure to show nice numbers, etc.

The advantage is also a disadvantage: minority shareholders of non-public companies have much less rights than those of public ones, and that includes employees. That's part of why you are dependent on the founder's goodwill on whether a startup exit can screw over rank and file employees or not. I'm not sure how much that danger is still out there if the company is doing tender offers, but it might still exist actually. Similarly, you can structure tender offers in a way that say former employees are disadvantaged, and many other arbitrary criteria.

Note that this depends greatly on the jurisdiction, e.g. in Germany there is legislation that's unfriendly to minority shareholders even for public companies, e.g. visible in the Varta takeover, imo part of why the idea of adding stocks to pensions will be ripe for money grabbing schemes of whales against the smaller owners.

Also employee of private company with tender offers, but not Stripe. Opinions my own.

by est31

2/24/2026 at 5:00:28 PM

Do very many companies provide daily liquidity? Most of my time getting RSUs have had trading windows, once a quarter if you're lucky.

by malfist

2/24/2026 at 5:29:16 PM

When I was an employee of a subsidiary of Infospace, my RSUs were always worthless (honestly, I don't remember if any vested while I was there), at Yahoo, we could generally trade, although one shouldn't trade immediately after earnings, but I don't remember if this was enforced at the affiliated brokerage. At Facebook, I think it was typically a three week window every quarter.

Of course, if you quit, the windows are no longer in force, although if you have material non-public information, you're still not allowed to trade. Maybe there'a a share price where you'd rather quit and sell than hold on until the window opens.

by toast0

2/24/2026 at 5:51:46 PM

Also ex-Stripe. This suggests an opportunity to build an exchange that addresses these problems. Could one build an exchange with deliberate "turn-based" liquidity to avoid the problem of daily stock price distraction, for example? (This is hard because there will always be secondary markets, but presumably this is already the case.)

by coffeemug

2/24/2026 at 6:44:26 PM

I get the feeling that the founders will not bend and invest for long term and not quarterly, as a non ex-stripe at least judging by their patience to IPO

by Rastonbury

2/24/2026 at 5:49:47 PM

The latest self funded tenders have been pretty tiny. I wouldn’t term it as “liquidity” as much as a symbolic gesture.

by fnordpiglet

2/24/2026 at 5:57:25 PM

AFAIK none of the recent tenders have been self-funded. They’ve matched external investors who want shares with employees.

Also, not sure what you mean by "tiny". It's been billions of dollars.

by tyre

2/24/2026 at 5:08:15 PM

Going public is the fastest way to turn a solid, functioning business into a hideous, infinite-growth chasing ghoul that everyone hates. Don't do it.

by coldpie

2/24/2026 at 5:23:00 PM

Instead they are mostly owned by VC's, who will more directly pressure them to do that than the general public owners will.

The important part is that the Collison's control Stripe now. When that changes things may go down hill. It won't matter if it is public or not.

by bryanlarsen

2/24/2026 at 6:39:41 PM

As opposed to VC owners, who are famously satisfied with slow growth. Right?

by WheatMillington

2/25/2026 at 10:23:15 AM

And VCs are what, patient angels who invest their money out of the goodness of their hearts expecting no returns?

by sensanaty

2/24/2026 at 4:53:55 PM

Above certain amount of shareholders, the rules for the public companies start applying, so you get all of the disadvantages of being a public company (like SEC filings, etc.) without the advantages (like ability to raise money.) IIRC this is what forced $MSFT to do IPO in 1986.

by maratc

2/24/2026 at 5:37:36 PM

I'm glad. I don't think every company needs to be on the stock market, and companies that are profitable like Stripe is, absolutely do not need to be on the stock market. Why? So people can buy and sell their stock on a whim?

by giancarlostoro

2/24/2026 at 5:35:43 PM

Are there caps on how much you could sell during the tender offer? I had one come through my email ~3 years ago for a company I previously worked for. IIRC it allowed you to sell up to 10% of your stock.

by johnny_canuck

2/24/2026 at 4:51:20 PM

> As an ex-Stripe, I understand the sentiment, and the tender offers are a nice middle ground for now, but I still would like to see them go public eventually.

This is an incredibly odd sentiment, imo. What’s the desire to see them go public unless you personally are profiting from it? Going public would quickly set Stripe on a pathway to potential enshittification and at minimum starting to squeeze the consumers and businesses it provides services to more.

by armadyl

2/24/2026 at 4:53:47 PM

If they are ex-Stripe they are likely holding shares, and so yes they would personally profit from going public.

by paxys

2/24/2026 at 5:00:05 PM

The tender offer announced in the article is open to former employees as well, so they personally profit regardless of Stripe being public (unless the claim is that by being public the valuation would be materially higher than the stated valuation for this offer).

by jez

2/24/2026 at 4:58:29 PM

There may be a conflict of interest with ex-Stripe folks wanting to see a move towards x or y.

by shevy-java

2/24/2026 at 4:51:04 PM

An IPO today is mainly a way for major investors - those that want out - to liquidate out in a big way by dumping to a very large mass of investors. There is no other means to do that without signaling a gigantic loss of confidence.

Raising money as a private entity is trivial these days if you're in the league that Stripe is. See: the comical AI private funding levels.

by adventured

2/24/2026 at 4:55:30 PM

> An IPO today is mainly a way for major investors

Major investors and insiders. Stay the hell away from IPOs if you're not an institution getting access to shares at a reasonable price.

by hypeatei

2/24/2026 at 4:37:33 PM

It’s sad.

Public companies allow the rest of us to participate in a success story like this.

Until IPO it’s only a selected group of affluent people who have access to these private companies.

by baxtr

2/24/2026 at 4:42:43 PM

IPOs also kill a lot of companies. Now you have a new list of investors you are obligated to attend to, and what those investors what is not always to make your company more successful, if it can make more money now.

by cwbrandsma

2/24/2026 at 5:29:48 PM

The reverse is much more true. When private equity takes a public company private, there's a 50% chance they'll kill the company.

Also, private companies fail at a much higher rate than public ones do.

by bryanlarsen

2/24/2026 at 6:07:10 PM

I don't think PE buyouts are the right comparison here; we're talking about companies that never go public versus the ones that do.

And, of course private companies fail at a much higher rate. The set of private companies includes every company that doesn't succeed to the point where it has the realistic choice to go public. Again: wrong comparison.

by tptacek

2/24/2026 at 6:31:57 PM

A general IPO is also not the right comparison. The events that kill companies are changes in control whether they happen from going public or going private. If Stripe IPO's, the Collison's will stay firmly in control, and approximately nothing will change at Stripe.

by bryanlarsen

2/24/2026 at 6:33:30 PM

I'm not coming down on either side of the public/private thing, just saying that take-privates and failed small private companies aren't meaningful comparisons to make.

by tptacek

2/24/2026 at 10:38:42 PM

when companies go public usually the easy money has been made, and for the growth to come back a lot of time might pass.

frankly i dont know why would one go public today unless money is needed badly. Quarterly calls, filings, are one thing, dealing with vest bros asking "so how should we think about" questions on round tables or "whats an incrimental margin" musings as they clack away at their mini keyboards filling out their model no body can make sense of.. and then someone will publish a blog saying their company is gonna be extinct because of AI ... this is not for everybody thats for sure...

by antiford2049

2/24/2026 at 9:08:56 PM

Private equity is vs not going public in the first place though. Private equity is also the wrong measure because there's good private equity and bad private equity, and we most commonly hear about bad private equity. Eg Toys'R'us. Typically when buying a company, in order to but the company in the first place, PE saddles the company up with debt in order to make the purchase in the first place (which is bananas in the first if you think about it). So then the distressed company now has additional debt payments to make. Making their already distressed situation even worse. Now, the theory is that PE is able to make the company more "efficient" with their PE know-how, and sometimes they do. There's no time machine too go back and undo the PE purchase of Toys'r'us and see what would have actually unfolded, but what we can say is having to make additional debt payments hastened their demise.

So it's true PE taking a company private has a high failure rate as far as the continuation of the company, the question is if the goal of PE is for the company to continue in the first place, or if that gets in the way of them extracting as money as possible as fast as possible. So 50% is certainly a statistic, but not useful for comparison, especially if we're looking at a private company staying private.

by fragmede

2/24/2026 at 4:46:55 PM

Not just the IPO. Being public at all subjects you to the perverse and destructive incentive of needing to maximize shareholder value. Just because some private companies take VC funding (and subject themselves to analogous forces) doesn't mean that's required or expected.

by kibwen

2/24/2026 at 4:58:53 PM

Needing to maximize shareholder value is a myth. There is no law that requires you to do that - people like to use the idea as an excuse to do scummy business.

by gmd63

2/24/2026 at 5:05:20 PM

Sure, it's a dubious legal requirement at best. But you try telling people that on an earnings call and watch your valuation plummet because you took a long position and the market wanted a next quarter position. And even if you don't care about selling your stock personally, it does impact your ability to raise funds.

by malfist

2/24/2026 at 5:43:26 PM

Short term investors don’t matter. They are going to pull out and move to the next thing.

by elictronic

2/24/2026 at 5:11:14 PM

Depends. In Michigan it is binding precedent, see Dodge v. Ford (1919).

Delaware corporations must act in the interests of shareholders.

by arcticbull

2/24/2026 at 5:54:07 PM

That's an incredibly vague standard and courts have repeatedly declined to get involved in second guessing management decisions. Aside from outright fraud or negligence executives can claim almost any business related decision is in the interest of shareholders because they have a reasonable expectation that the future benefits outweigh the costs. Judges aren't going to be delving into financial projections and expense reports to override the leaders of a business.

A widget company could sponsor a soccer team or whatever and say the costs are worth it. Or that same company could not do that and say it's not worth it. Two opposite decisions that both would count as acting in the interest of shareholders.

by rurp

2/24/2026 at 6:27:24 PM

> That's an incredibly vague standard and courts have repeatedly declined to get involved

Which courts? Corporate law is state-level. Delaware generally has some affordances for long-term strategic decisions.

by arcticbull

2/24/2026 at 5:49:55 PM

This case was specifically about dividends and long term shareholder value, not quarterly results.

by elictronic

2/24/2026 at 5:30:18 PM

So keep the profits only for the rich then? I rather see more IPOs for the rest of us.

by baxtr

2/25/2026 at 5:28:40 AM

IPOs result in companies cutting corners and offering worse service so they can offer more benefits to rich stockholders this quarter, so they can cash out and burn the company to move on to the next one. Private companies plan for their existence 10 years down the road.

Why should anyone be entitled to stocks of a company?

by kdheiwns

2/24/2026 at 5:31:53 PM

[dead]

by OGEnthusiast

2/24/2026 at 4:51:28 PM

High risk high reward - I think if I ponied up capital, I'd rather not feel obliged to 'share the success' unless it were part of a needed capital raising.

by RobRivera

2/24/2026 at 4:48:54 PM

I see it differently, and not in a particularly popular manner. Public companies allow those that are already pretty well off to rocket past those who can't afford shares, therefore adding to the disparity. I despise sudden or inherited wealth though so I'm not the best barometer for how things should work when it comes to this. I can't count how many times I've been made almost physically ill hearing about the next meme stock that made some nobody a millionaire overnight.

by WarcrimeActual

2/24/2026 at 5:19:48 PM

Private companies have the right to be private until if or when they decide not to be private.

Navigating the risk and growth allows them to navigate their growth and rewards while maybe in the drivers seat a bit more.

by j45

2/24/2026 at 5:31:56 PM

No one said they don’t have the right.

But for the good of all of society, it would be better if they did.

by baxtr

2/24/2026 at 7:44:33 PM

How would becoming a public company be better for all of society?

Stock markets are not entirely logical from my understanding.

by j45

2/25/2026 at 7:32:33 PM

I agree. The large equity investment groups that hunt on public markets don’t represent the public interest.

by true_religion

2/24/2026 at 4:54:07 PM

IPOs really only benefit already wealthy people as well. It's not like poor people can dump tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock.

by thinkingtoilet

2/24/2026 at 5:25:19 PM

Working class people have 401ks and pension plans

by derektank

2/24/2026 at 4:55:38 PM

We usually hear about the success stories, but public markets have killed wayyyy more companies than they have helped. Unless they really need the money it's always in a company's own best interests to stay private for as long as possible.

by paxys

2/24/2026 at 4:27:54 PM

Why ask for IPO to dillute the effective investor pool if you are already making a ton of money consistently?

by rf15

2/24/2026 at 4:35:49 PM

To give liquidity to investors.

by fourseventy

2/24/2026 at 4:43:07 PM

The cost of that liquidity is missing out on realizing future growth though. It's fairly safe to assume that as there isn't an IPO yet the investors want to hold rather than cash in returns. They probably believe there's more growth potential, and that the board are the right people to deliver it.

by onion2k

2/24/2026 at 5:00:53 PM

If you bought Stripe at a 95b valuation in 2021 your returns are barely keeping up with the SP500 after this latest round. Not exactly an elite capital growth machine.

by 303space

2/24/2026 at 5:18:50 PM

Perhaps infrastructure has a different kind of long term upside.

by j45

2/25/2026 at 7:42:50 AM

You forgot to mention its valuation grew by 2.6x in the previous 3 months. 2021 was different thing altogether with the money printing.

by YetAnotherNick

2/24/2026 at 5:04:58 PM

Even for good investments, investors will want to sell at some point rather than owning an investment forever, if only to diversify.

by skybrian

2/24/2026 at 5:11:16 PM

Sure, at some point. Maybe that isn't now though.

by onion2k

2/24/2026 at 9:26:37 PM

The early VCs have been in Stripe for 16 years already. They need Stripe to IPO so they can get liquidity in order to provide returns to their LPs. VCs can't hold onto the stock forever, they need to provide DPI otherwise they won't be able to raise future funds.

by fourseventy

2/24/2026 at 4:54:18 PM

> The cost of that liquidity is missing out on realizing future growth though.

Why would it be? I don't believe an IPO has to be dilutive, it can be done with already issued shares. I grant you that's not usually how they're done though.

by KK7NIL

2/24/2026 at 5:18:02 PM

Maybe certain types of growth aren't the goal for Stripe at present.

by j45

2/24/2026 at 4:38:49 PM

Don’t they already get to participate in secondary markets to liquidate?

by Cyph0n

2/24/2026 at 4:52:02 PM

They can, but it's orders of magnitudes less liquid than the public stock market.

Liquidity!= ability to liquidate or not, BTW, it's more of a continuous spectrum.

by KK7NIL

2/24/2026 at 6:48:15 PM

I see, thanks for the clarification.

by Cyph0n

2/24/2026 at 4:34:42 PM

Everything's public appearance until S1 is filed

by jameson

2/24/2026 at 4:29:28 PM

I hope they hold off - going public tends to kill innovation and replace it with bureaucracy

by mercwear

2/24/2026 at 4:37:47 PM

Almost as if there's a lot to innovate in a "dumb pipe" a payment processor naturally is.

by anovikov

2/24/2026 at 4:50:42 PM

At scale, payment processors are amongst the most difficult things you could do because every two bit crook out there is going to try to scam you somehow.

by jacquesm

2/24/2026 at 4:44:50 PM

Can probably build it in a weekend.

by dewey

2/24/2026 at 5:03:43 PM

You let me know when VISA lets you colocate into their rack for processing payments with your built in a weekend vibe coded project.

by malfist

2/24/2026 at 5:18:23 PM

I guess I should've added "/s" :P

by dewey

2/24/2026 at 5:19:23 PM

dewey was joking.

by pestaa

2/24/2026 at 5:51:32 PM

Management reading a thread like this need the /s.

by elictronic

2/25/2026 at 6:25:51 AM

I know you mean this with a /s, but hey, we just need a proper File Transfer Protocol, an SQL-lite database server, and some simple vibe coded python business logic, no test cases required.

What can go wrong... (/s just in case as well)

by xarope

2/24/2026 at 6:19:12 PM

in 2 hours with claude code

by ggregoire

2/24/2026 at 5:03:31 PM

The thing is they have "tooling" to help create their own customers:

https://stripe.com/atlas

They also have a tax product, and a few other things that are in the orbit around payment processing.

Their product offerings are a bit more than just the "dumb pipe" portion of the transaction.

by zer00eyz

2/24/2026 at 5:49:25 PM

The markets are skeptical at the moment. A bunch of tech IPOs in the last few years have tanked 70+% since the IPO and that can be devastating to a company.

Also there’s a ton of overhead associated with being public that nobody really wants to do so companies now stay private as long as they can get away with.

by cmiles8

2/24/2026 at 4:58:53 PM

I wonder if there will be a class of VC that intends to provide LPs with income in addition to capital appreciation. If it doesn't make sense to go public, then focus on cash flow and kick of steady income to investors.

by mattas

2/24/2026 at 5:59:03 PM

How do you ruin a good company? Simple. Go public

by pewpewp

2/24/2026 at 4:28:58 PM

Will they ever have to go public? I imagine there's a way they can buy everything back.

by ndr

2/24/2026 at 5:15:04 PM

Investors can pressure you when you are worth single digit or low double digit billions. At $100B+ you are calling the shots, and if investors aren't happy they can sell their shares in the next tender offer.

by paxys

2/24/2026 at 6:12:53 PM

The cynic in me thinks they don't want to crash their valuation.

by StopDisinfo910

2/24/2026 at 4:42:24 PM

Companies that keep delaying going public generally do so to keep hidden unfavorable data.

Private companies can say whatever they want about their performance as long as they don't lie to their own investors; public companies can't.

by gamblor956

2/24/2026 at 4:45:40 PM

You don’t have to go public at all. If you’re profitable and your investors don’t want an exit, then you can stay private in perpetuity. Epic is a great example of that.

by darth_avocado

2/24/2026 at 6:33:19 PM

why do you figure? in some sectors, IPOs were literally 10x larger in 2023 than 2016, but i am not sure specifically about fintech. ask pitchbook. that increases IRR by a whole +1.4, just by waiting.

by doctorpangloss

2/24/2026 at 5:08:27 PM

Might be too late already, seeing how we are well past "peak SaaS" (and frankly Stripe have slowed down and lost a lot of the glitter in years past).

by stefan_

2/25/2026 at 4:58:01 PM

stripe has done a lot of impressive work in terms of opening up commerce on the internet.

however as a comparison -- how much JP Morgan payments would be valued if a separate entity ?

by dzonga

2/24/2026 at 5:52:27 PM

I remember when Stripe started and it was super fun to set it up as a developer and build stuff.

Today I find it does way too much for small projects and the fees are too high. Does anyone knows of good alternatives for that? (Someone recently shared https://astrafi.com/ with me and it seemed promising, with much better fees, but I haven't tested or used anything other than Stripe)

by hmokiguess

2/24/2026 at 6:36:32 PM

I find Stripes fees excessive too, but I don’t think I’ll ever switch. I’ve been running a small SaaS product on the side of other work for >15 years and if it taught me one thing, it’s that I need to reduce the things I have to maintain, reduce manual work, reduce the things that can go wrong. There’s nothing worse than having to fix a bug in a codebase you haven’t touched for a year and possibly in a feature you haven’t touched in many years. I simply love that Stripe handles not just the payment, but the payment application, the subscription billing, the price settings, the exports for bookkeeping. I’ve had a few instances where my site was used fraudulently to check stolen credit cards and it was quickly flagged and I could resolve it with Stripe. I’m sure someone can mention alternatives and I’m sure that I could build something that would work myself, but they keep a big part of what it takes to run the business out of my mind and I’m willing to pay for that.

by Stromgren

2/24/2026 at 6:52:07 PM

Fair point, though a lot has changed from 15 years ago. A lot of what you mentioned is sort of the new baseline most payment gateways ship with, and working on code you haven't touched in a while is certainly a lot easier nowadays with agents too. All that said, if you're satisfied with the price and the product I am not here to convince you to swap.

by hmokiguess

2/24/2026 at 7:12:58 PM

Yea it wasn’t meant as a counter argument either.

To be honest I haven’t even looked at competitors for some years. I guess one drawback of using third-parties for such a big part of the responsibilities is the lock in. The benefits of switching would have to be rather big for me to put in the effort.

by Stromgren

2/25/2026 at 6:58:34 PM

I'm using Helcim here in Canada. It's not great. Stripe used to be far nicer to use, has become fairly bloated and messy, yet it's still far nicer to use in general. The developer-first roots are still apparent.

Helcim takes ages to respond to tickets. They still haven't fully set up my account after weeks. You can't just do sandboxes or dev mode by default; you have to speak to a human via email who sets it up for you and provide the test card numbers. It takes ages.

The rates are much better and once it's fully set up and integrated, I guess it'll be fine? I'm not looking forward to needing support and adding further integrations.

I guess the moral here is that Stripe has gotten worse for small projects, but it's still really good.

by steve_adams_86

2/24/2026 at 7:43:45 PM

In the EU and had to switch from Stripe to Mollie due to Stripe thinking the client was a cruise company because they rent 'cruiser' boats for river leisure. Mollie was super easy to implement for them, and fees much better

by jamesdelaneyie

2/24/2026 at 6:12:31 PM

You can't really do better than stripe. The onboarding overhead is because of fraud and the costs are basically barely above interchange.

by krainboltgreene

2/24/2026 at 6:34:28 PM

Sure, though not every small project needs to worry about that. Perhaps the payment workflow is a tight loop that has KYC through physical memberships (ID + Photo), say a gym membership for example, and the entire system is private just needs a gateway to do transactions.

by hmokiguess

2/24/2026 at 11:07:15 PM

Even if that was true literally no payment processor cares about what a small project worries about and they never will.

by krainboltgreene

2/24/2026 at 9:42:37 PM

Stealing someone's identity and pretending to be them and buying a gym membership with a fake id and a stolen credit card might seem far fetched to you, but Stripe doesn't want to be on the hook for that, especially if the scammer signs up for, say, Equinox and it isn't discovered for year+. (ex-Stripe; didn't work directly on fraud, however)

by fragmede

2/24/2026 at 10:59:37 PM

Again, scale matters here. I'm talking about small projects, think a local small city gym, run by maybe one person, family business, probably knows all the customers closely, used to run on cash, but wants to get their bookkeeping in order, needs credit card recurring transactions to avoid late payments from some of their members, and doesn't want to increase their pricing because of high fees on a brand new system.

Equinox Fitness is a major conglomerate and likely wants and cares about fraud detection software.

by hmokiguess

2/24/2026 at 6:17:02 PM

Stripe needs all that byzantine fraud prevention, on top of what they had a decade ago, because they are a huge concentrated target.

A smaller firm could be way simpler. Because they simply wouldnt have enough money to provide a decent payday for dozens of malicious geniuses going at them 24/7/365.

by MichaelZuo

2/24/2026 at 6:28:33 PM

Is this true? I would expect most of Stripe's fraud overhead to be statutory in nature, not something they hire for because they're a concentrated target.

(They certainly have more staff because more volume, but the actual regulatory requirements I'd expect to be roughly the same for the service they provide.)

by woodruffw

2/24/2026 at 6:44:56 PM

When we used Stripe, we opted out of all their fraud prevention stuff to save money (not sure if that's still an option). As a b2b SaaS where payment happens after a free trial (not at signup), we're just not a target for fraud, so it was totally fine.

I can't speak to why Stripe's fraud protection is so expensive. Is it because they're a target? Or maybe because they realized people will pay for it (it seems valuable for something like ecommerce)? I dunno, but I can confidently say that as of ~5 years ago, it wasn't required by any regulation, and my business was perfectly fine without it.

Now we use Paddle, and they also try to sell us a bunch of stuff we don't need at ridiculous prices. We're just using them because we wanted a merchant of record (where they handle taxes and stuff), but no, I'm not going to pay a % of my revenue for basic dunning emails, fraud prevention, vague "optimizations" that "increase conversions" (lol no they don't), etc.

by the_bear

2/24/2026 at 9:11:26 PM

Look at what happened to, say, Cards Against Humanity: You don't have to be a really bit store for some random card tester to ruin you.

by hibikir

2/24/2026 at 11:08:36 PM

what happened with them? I'm not aware of it

by hmokiguess

2/24/2026 at 7:23:31 PM

Oh, that makes sense. I was thinking fraud as in AML requirements, not fraud as in scammers and card theft.

by woodruffw

2/24/2026 at 9:10:13 PM

Stripe was already a big target for basically anyone and anything 10 years ago. Fake merchants, card testers, the works. People were selling guides to defraud Stripe. And we are not even counting just losees due to nonsense like the Fyre festival.

You really don't have to be that big a payment processor for dozens of malicious geniuses to decide that they want to fleece you. If anything, the ROI is better in less sophisticated companies. Most ways to trick a payment company are, if anything, standardized. The smaller company can often be attacked by just changing the API calls, but otherwise taking basically the same actions you would to try to defraud a bigger fish.

by hibikir

2/25/2026 at 3:56:01 PM

I meant geniuses in the real sense, not colloquial sense.

If someone could reasonably expect a cushy 40 hour/week seven figure job, even a malicious personality wouldn’t risk criminal fraud without a much much bigger payout.

And to have dozens focusing on one company…

So anyone handling under a few hundred million per day are safe from that kind of coordinated attack.

by MichaelZuo

2/24/2026 at 11:08:42 PM

> Stripe needs all that byzantine fraud prevention, on top of what they had a decade ago, because they are a huge concentrated target.

This is not true. Every payment processor needs this effort because as soon as you broadcast that you're a payment processor you're going to get about 3-5 scammers a day.

As an aside I really think Mercury bank should audit their onboarding process.

by krainboltgreene

2/24/2026 at 4:57:17 PM

> Businesses running on Stripe generated $1.9 trillion in total volume

I think we hackers in general also need to have a value assigned. Even open source authors generate real value but right now I see an imbalance as to who makes money and who does not. I'd even almost go as far as say that taxes (a state gathers) should go to a certain percentage value back to the open source community. There are a lot of details missing here, of course, but from a core view this only seems fair.

I'l also never forget Bill Gates anti-open source letter. That should instantly yield a 99.999% extra tax on him.

by shevy-java

2/24/2026 at 5:06:45 PM

If a maintainer has chosen to open source and use a permissive license (key word chosen, this isn't a default), they are explicitly saying via their license that they are not charging for the use of the code. What's the issue here?

If a maintainer wants to make money directly from their code, they are free to charge for it, or for services around it (examples: Sidekiq, Oban, Tailwind, not to mention large examples like RedHat or Ubuntu).

Everyone involved is making informed choices.

by atonse

2/24/2026 at 5:04:20 PM

Well when you're giving away your product for free... maybe open-source maintainers who want payment for their "free" products should consider going to business school?

I'm in favor of funding the arts, for example, but I'm not sure open-source is something we should tax/fund for. There is real business value in the projects that are created, but open-source maintainers insist on "giving them away for free". Start charging and then we don't need to fund/tax.

by ericmay

2/24/2026 at 5:51:49 PM

We have a bunch of socially minded people providing free value in the form of open source that enjoy the gift they are giving to others. When they become aware that their charity disproportionately benefits selfish people who have opposite inclinations - who employ people to search for exploits, without fixing them, to suck up as much wealth as possible - I'm not surprised they would want to take a step back and ask for a share of that.

And that's totally fine under the same market mechanics you're recommending. If you want maintainers to stop complaining and filing potential petitions asking for funding via taxes etc, just pay them.

by gmd63

2/24/2026 at 7:52:41 PM

> If you want maintainers to stop complaining and filing potential petitions asking for funding via taxes etc, just pay them.

That's exactly what I want. If you want to give your product away for free, that's great! You're a better person for doing so. If you want to sell it, that's great too! You should be rewarded and compensated for building great stuff just like anyone else is.

But what I do not want to see as a citizen and taxpayer is "we want to build this for free, ope now we want to get paid and it's totally not fair that Meta took our free thing and did something productive with it and we need taxpayer dollars.". That's not fair to anyone, and solving that by "mandating" or "requiring" things is anti-free market, and against the free spirit of human creativity and entrepreneurship.

> When they become aware that their charity disproportionately benefits selfish people who have opposite inclinations

Let's not call it all charity though. You get invited to conferences, you get job opportunities you otherwise wouldn't get, you get to feel great about the thing you are working on - there's a lot of unpaid benefits, and under-the-table ones too.

by ericmay

2/24/2026 at 8:08:02 PM

I'm saying if the populace wants taxes to fund open source and votes for it, and maintainers just stop working on open source otherwise that's also the free market. Doing stuff for free and then complaining about when it benefits greedy folks in an outsized way is a negotiation tactic with the public that people are allowed to do.

by gmd63

2/24/2026 at 9:04:41 PM

Sure, people can do anything. As a person/citizen/voter I would probably vote against using tax dollars for open-source work. I'd prefer a less convoluted and more honest approach. Doing something for free and then complaining about not getting paid for it later is super cringe and passive aggressive regardless as to whether or not "greedy people" are using it.

Being an open-source maintainer is just some thing people decide they want to do. There's nothing special about it. If you want to get paid, figure out that arrangement for yourself. If you want to do it for free and give it away because you love it, that's great too. That's what free association is all about.

Taxing me to pay for other people to fund their hobby seems ripe for 2 bad things: 1. if the government is funding it, the government gets a say - doesn't bode well for open-source, and 2 it creates market inefficiencies in a bad way - we fund thing we shouldn't fund and we do so to support a lifestyle or hobby instead of what is truly economically valuable for all.

by ericmay

2/24/2026 at 6:59:56 PM

Not sure what that letter said but open source^ isn’t good and I’m what people would incorrectly stereotype as someone who would love open source as a Marxist [sympathizer].

^outside of specific scenarios where it fights back against the status quo like open source AI models.

by skinnymuch

2/24/2026 at 5:57:07 PM

Braintree had $1.53 trillion TPV in 2023[0], and it's just a subsidiary of Paypal which has tanked to $40 billion market cap despite revenue and profit that are probably lightyears ahead of Stripe.

Honestly, I wouldn't touch Stripe with a ten foot poll at this valuation. Fintech is an industry that just disappoints in the end.

[0]https://www.paypal.com/us/braintree

by purple_ferret

2/24/2026 at 6:09:52 PM

Paypal TPV YoY growth for 2025 was 7%[1].

Stripe cites 34% growth for the same period and metric.

[1]: https://s205.q4cdn.com/875401827/files/doc_financials/2025/q...

by jez

2/24/2026 at 6:27:28 PM

Thats not bad for a mature business like paypal

by christkv

2/25/2026 at 10:07:44 AM

I mean it's not like Stripe was founded yesterday. Stripe: 2010 Paypal: 1998

I'd argue that 99% of the "internet gdp" happened after Stripe was founded

by valzam

2/24/2026 at 6:34:52 PM

I’m not the most well versed but isn’t that still insane to be 4x valuation of PayPal? Maybe it’s more PayPal valuation being crap vs Stripe being too high. Adyen is close to PayPal with a PE of 30 (vs PayPal’s sub-10) and Adyen like PayPal is close to being back to its IPO level.

PayPal seems crazy when it has acquired businesses like Honey (probably hasn’t helped) and Braintree/Venmo since then. Pretty funny PayPal was spun off as the better growth stock but eBay has tripled since then and their market caps are the same now.

by skinnymuch

2/24/2026 at 6:09:01 PM

I don't know you have paypal and stripe in the same sentence. Paypal is not a great service at all.

by boringg

2/24/2026 at 6:32:23 PM

This multiple is indirectly a bet on AI growth , because Stripe is the payment processor for the vast majority of AI startups.

by rprend

2/25/2026 at 9:15:32 AM

Is it OK that these firms aren't public?

by fergie

2/24/2026 at 6:28:29 PM

Sounds like an IPO in 6-18 months.

by jppope

2/24/2026 at 5:38:22 PM

Weak. They should pivot to AI.

by miohtama

2/25/2026 at 10:03:37 AM

I cannot comprehend why there are so few companies dominating the payments sector. It doesn't seem competitive. Anyone can build a payment processor, nobody can get regulatory approval.

I also don't understand the fear around SaaS recently... People believe some weird narrative about AI replacing SaaS apps... Oh boy, people actually think that building the thing is the hard part. The entire software industry is pure crony-play; the people who run the big corporations own shares of their SaaS providers so they have no incentive to cut those contracts. Same with payment processors. I can't believe people still think we have a free market.

You can point to any company that's successful and there will be conflicts of interest all over the place. It doesn't even matter what the company does TBH. It's irrelevant.

People are just competing on who can make the money move around in circles within their group the fastest. Money certainly seems a lot more abundant when it passes through many hands and people are just buying stuff from each other.

by jongjong

2/25/2026 at 10:19:12 AM

> "anyone can build a payment processor, nobody can get regulatory approval."

If you want to become a bank regulatory approval is hard. If you don't then its necessary but not the biggest barrier by far. Building trust with card networks, merchants & banks, interfacing with card networks, optimizing acceptance rates to a high level against the black box of card networks etc.

And then you still wouldn't make any money because the margins are extremely low on processing payments themselves - so either you have to have massive scale or have a bunch of value added services that you charge more for. For which you also need a serious commercial engine to be able to sell to either loads of enterprises or some very large ones (who will rarely sign exclusive deals - they will just give you a share of wallet so they can transfer traffic over at will).

Card networks are another story...

by alexmorley

2/25/2026 at 12:12:58 PM

good question

i list for you the main problems with entering this space:

criminal liability for mistakes (AML rules), you have to manage fraud, the banks which are your custody providers will constantly try and shut you down, clients expect your service on day one to be equal to mastercard, your margins are almost nothing, it is one of the most competitive industries in the world, you need to go through central bank regulations/SEC equivalent every time you enter a new market, governments in countries like Vietnam or Bangladesh or China are actively hostile to your business model, and it is HYPER competitive. anything you do well, stripe/airwallex/etc will clone immediately

Airwallex is one of the most powerful stripe competitors and the CEO is a psychopath that seems like a tv parody of a silicon valley CEO. he has to be though because so many governments, banks, competitors etc are trying to crush him constantly.

note that stripe differentiates itself heavily on checkout technology, basically making the experience of paying for things easier for the consumer.

by DaedalusII

2/24/2026 at 4:46:41 PM

Private markets is where the wealth is (if you invested at the bottom), as soon as Stripe goes public you're getting dumped on.

Unfortunately you need to be an accredited investor to access these markets.

This is the real gatekeeping here as rich pop stars, actors, sports stars and musicians who aren't versed in tech has more access to investing in these private companies than the academics, students in europe creating the algorithms that power them.

An 11 year old can inherit $100 million and be more "accredited" than you, even though they (may) have no knowledge of the industry, no investing experience and no years of industry experience.

Even if you have knowledge in the tech scene and you know which companies are going to go big in the future, unless you're ultra rich already to qualify as accredited, you're shut out early on.

by colesantiago

2/24/2026 at 4:54:15 PM

Something like 20% of American households meet the accredited standard. It isn't some ultra-elite bar.

Stripe being able to find all the capital they need in private markets is the actual indicator of wealth disparity.

by triceratops

2/24/2026 at 5:00:41 PM

Not to mention: Stripe doesn't want your money, whether or not you're accredited.

by tptacek

2/24/2026 at 5:25:04 PM

"Private markets is where the wealth is (if you invested at the bottom)"

Stripe might not need your money now, but they certainly needed it at the pre-seed, seed stage where if you were an angel/seed investor you would have been able to participate.

by colesantiago

2/24/2026 at 5:51:47 PM

No they didn't. They were picky at the seed stage. They were picky in their first priced round. They were picky in every subsequent round. There was never a point where they wanted your money. The most promising companies fight off investors when word gets around they're raising.

There is never a point in the lifecycle of any of these companies where they wanted random retail investors with no network on their cap tables. The kinds of companies that do want those investors tend, for clear reasons, not to be the kind you want to invest in.

You don't want accreditation rules relaxed or eliminated. You simply want Stripe to be a public company instead of a private one. Fair enough, but Stripe doesn't want to be a public company.

by tptacek

2/24/2026 at 6:08:56 PM

Even worse. This means that no wealth will be created for people who actually want to invest.

With Stripe's non IPO example, many will follow and will stay private.

So more gatekeeping.

by colesantiago

2/24/2026 at 6:14:45 PM

Again: you can make a coherent case that companies should be required to be public at a much earlier stage (I don't think it's going to happen, but you do you). It has nothing at all to do with accreditation though. You're pining for access to companies that wouldn't take your money even if you were a well-known institutional investor. They get to pick which VC/PE firms they work with, and they know it, and it is their job to pick the ones that best serve the interests of their firms.

I mean this respectfully, but: you do not sound, in this thread, like someone whose registration on Stripe's cap tables would be a service to Stripe. To society? Maybe? Who knows. But that's not how Stripe makes decisions.

I also think you drastically overestimate how much broad wealth creation would follow from letting retail investors into private tech companies. You're debating entirely based on a survivor artifact and ignoring the fact that most tech companies --- even most of the highly-capitalized ones --- return $0 to investors.

by tptacek

2/24/2026 at 9:45:29 PM

I love this projection you're providing to me, how much money did you lose on these companies?

I am in and have invested in YC startups, because I know which ones have growth potential and upside.

> you can make a coherent case that companies should be required to be public at a much earlier stage (I don't think it's going to happen, but you do you)

I didn't say they had to be a public company, you can invest in Stripe via the secondary market (which I have done before with other companies) but even then this is for accredited investors.

There are lots of unprofitable public companies on the stock market that also return $0 to investors and have no dividends.

But this trend of many private companies choosing to stay private obviously isn't going to help those except the very rich and accredited investors.

by colesantiago

2/24/2026 at 11:18:20 PM

I'm a principal at Fly.io (W20). I'm familiar with the dynamic.

I don't invest in tech companies.

Most funded tech companies don't return funds to investors. Noncontroversial claim.

Investors invest in tech companies as a/in a portfolio strategy. They don't expect any one investment to succeed, and they allocate to the asset class in part to get exposure to decorrelated assets.

That's not at all what retail investors are doing.

You keep talking about accreditation. The companies you want to invest in don't want your money and they don't care that you're accredited.

by tptacek

2/25/2026 at 4:45:27 AM

> You keep talking about accreditation. The companies you want to invest in don't want your money and they don't care that you're accredited.

You don't know that 100% and unfortunately for you the YC companies accepted my money and I now hold stock in these companies.

by colesantiago

2/25/2026 at 4:46:24 AM

Congratulations?

by tptacek

2/25/2026 at 5:47:28 AM

So why are you projecting "The companies you want to invest in don't want your money." when this is obviously not true at all.

I don't know which companies you tried to invest in (tech or not) but I am assuming most of them rejected you given your constant projecting towards me.

I don't want smart people/investors who saw the future early (most that are retail and some are academics who actually build this tech) who want to get exposure to the growth companies making an impact to use extremely risky and shady financial vehicles like Multi-Layer SPVs and tokenized private stocks just to get some exposure.

When all in all it isn't the real thing and they get rugged anyway.

As long as people like you are in favor in excluding these people who just to buy a private company stock on secondary markets, then the gatekeeping will continue.

by colesantiago

2/25/2026 at 5:49:53 AM

I don't even understand what this thread is about anymore. The claim of mine that you're trying to rebut is "dealflow is a thing". If you want to argue that it isn't, be my guest, but I'm not going to sign up to hash it out with you.

by tptacek

2/25/2026 at 6:09:10 AM

ok?

I and may other angel investors are proof you're obviously wrong so...

by colesantiago

2/25/2026 at 6:09:47 AM

Because you managed to get a couple of YC companies to take your money?

by tptacek

2/25/2026 at 6:11:01 AM

You said "The companies you want to invest in don't want your money."

Your words, you should own them.

I only want more smart people I know to have the chance to be angel investors in these companies and to be able to access secondary markets to buy and sell these shares.

What's wrong with that?

by colesantiago

2/25/2026 at 6:23:19 AM

The companies we're talking about here, like Stripe. Broadly speaking, promising companies do not want random strangers on their cap tables. They barely want random venture capitalists on their cap tables.

I'm glad you have friends at other startups that want to work with you. That's not something you're going to be able to say about a random person.

by tptacek

2/24/2026 at 5:06:04 PM

If you don't meet the financial requirement ($200K annual income or $1M net worth), you can also qualify as an accredited investor by passing the Series 65 exam and filing a form with the SEC.

So you have to prove that either you can afford to lose some money or you have enough investing knowledge to know what you're getting into. Seems fair.

by jonas21

2/24/2026 at 5:21:04 PM

So someone who inherits $100 million (11 year old or not) doesn't have take the exam, but someone who knows about the industry inside out has take an exam to participate?

Seems "fair" to be honest.

I have a few friends that that have told me about certain companies they would like to invest in and they are knowledgeable about but they cannot access them but I can and not give them any shares.

by colesantiago

2/24/2026 at 5:59:09 PM

We don't care if people with $100MM make a bad bet on a tech company.

by tptacek

2/24/2026 at 7:41:21 PM

Maybe we should, seeing how disastrous unregulated tech has been for society.

by shimman

2/24/2026 at 9:30:05 PM

If you'd like to petition the SEC to make it so that you also have to be, say, 25 to be accredited so as to remove that particular loophole and make it even harder to become a accredited so 11 year olds don't get accredited because of a rather specific scenario, send me the change.org petition. I don't think 11 year olds should be accredited. Might make me elitist, but I've been called worse things.

Still, the theory is that having $100 million, even as an 11 year old, means you have about $90 million more than most people to lose before it even becomes an issue. Hence "accreditation". Accreditation isn't about "can you make smart investments" but about "will you be broke and destitute soon", and having $100 million makes it harder than I'd $400k is your life's savings, and you're about to put it all into NFTs.

Is the theory, anyway.

by fragmede

2/24/2026 at 5:00:28 PM

You need an annual income of $200K to become an accredited investor. If you don't have that, you anyways shouldn't be participating in risky private markets.

If anything they should also restrict options trading, sports gambling, prediction markets etc. to accredited investors.

by paxys

2/24/2026 at 5:26:27 PM

Why don't we extend this to the risky public manipulated stock market?

by colesantiago

2/24/2026 at 5:57:11 PM

Because the odds of you losing all your money on private tech company shares are nearly 100%, and the odds of you losing all your money in SPDR or VFINX are nearly 0%.

by tptacek

2/24/2026 at 6:51:05 PM

Still seems silly when meme stocks exist and the establishment (like entire media and news apparatus) can and do collude to mess with things (like “Black Monday” ~2021 when all the media and news lied and said wall street bets and meme stonk people had moved on to silver) and within days all the meme stock gains across over a dozen companies were entirely wiped out.

Not saying meme stocks should be a thing but no one gets investigated or in trouble. Nothing is done. If they cared about the average person something would be done.

by skinnymuch

2/24/2026 at 7:35:49 PM

When people investigate meme stocks the people complaining that they can't get on Stripe's cap table take the side of the meme stocks!

by tptacek

2/24/2026 at 8:57:45 PM

Why do you think that is?

by colesantiago

2/24/2026 at 8:58:50 PM

Because they watched a small group of people win a roulette straight bet when the ball landed on 32 and now think federal action is needed to allow everybody to bet straight 32 on everything.

by tptacek

2/24/2026 at 9:28:53 PM

There is no other way for that group of retail investors to build wealth other than go into these highly and extremely risky assets that you and I hate and do not recommend. (even more risky than secondary markets)

Sure, they can invest in public companies but if lots of these high growth companies stay private, the gains will not be shared towards retail especially for their pensions.

by colesantiago

2/24/2026 at 11:15:17 PM

This is obviously not true. Most wealthy people do not build their wealth by gambling on meme stocks and tech companies. That's an extraordinarily Twitter-blinkered thing to believe.

by tptacek

2/25/2026 at 6:05:45 AM

> This is obviously not true. Most wealthy people do not build their wealth by gambling on meme stocks and tech companies. That's an extraordinarily Twitter-blinkered thing to believe.

I never said wealthy, I said "retail investors", and most retail investors are not wealthy. Maybe you've been reading off Twitter and got that mixed up.

Your words not mine, but I'll just say the wealthy have more options than retail.

Shame, because I know some smart people who want to invest in the same companies as me and cannot and have to wait until it goes public for a that chance (if that ever comes)

Now with most growth companies staying private these people won't get a stake in the future and obviously you're fine with that.

I wonder if you would think it would be fine (if not great) if Google, Apple and other companies would just stay private in another universe.

by colesantiago

2/25/2026 at 6:08:51 AM

You said "there is no other way for that group of retail investors to build wealth other than go into these highly and extremely risky assets". Obviously, no, that's not true.

by tptacek

2/24/2026 at 5:49:53 PM

Because that is what the SEC was created for, and (in theory) it is their job to protect regular invesors from market risks. Now how effectively that works is a different conversation, but at the very least you have reporting requirements, earnings releases, material disclosures, insider trading laws, SIPC insurance, circuit breakers etc. It is very unlikely that you are going to lose all your money in a stable blue chip company or broad index fund, but a regular joe trying to invest in a hot "private investing opportunity" is absolutely going to be taken for a ride.

by paxys

2/24/2026 at 7:50:44 PM

Another leech piggybacking on the bloated corpus of the greatest leeches in all of consumerdom: credit-card companies.

Disgusting rip-off of consumers, yes, but even worse is the rip-off of merchants.

by MoonWalk

2/24/2026 at 6:53:48 PM

Ludicrous valuation

by 2OEH8eoCRo0

2/24/2026 at 7:11:06 PM

It would help a lot if you elaborated why it's a 'ludicrous' valuation rather than asserting that it simply is. What method are you using to value the enterprise and why does your expected result not match the actual result?

by s_dev

2/24/2026 at 5:42:17 PM

[flagged]

by gjgtcbkj