Stripe: Patrick and John Collison (2018)

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 March 2020

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Brothers Patrick and John Collison founded and sold their first company before they turned 20. They created software to help eBay users manage inventory online, which set them on a path to help make e-commerce frictionless. Today, John and Patrick are the founders of Stripe, a software company that used just a few lines of code to power the payment system of companies like Lyft, Warby Parker, and Target. PLUS in our post-script "How You Built That," we check back with Kirby Erdely, who saw a problem with flying beach umbrellas and developed a new kind of tent stake—with a twist. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	New years is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.
0:13.0	As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.
0:17.0	So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.
0:24.0	Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
0:27.0	Hey, so before we start the show, I want to tell you about today's episode, and it's about software, a seemingly simple payment system that was actually so complicated that none of the big tech companies wanted to take it on.
0:41.0	And the two guys who did were recent transplants from Ireland.
0:44.0	Two brothers, both college dropouts, and as you're about to hear, both super, super smart.
0:50.0	This episode first ran about two years ago. It is one of my favorites, and I say that a lot, but it really is. I hope you enjoy it.
0:58.0	We built the first prototype back in October of 2009, and it really was apparent to us that it wouldn't be easy.
1:07.0	It was not going to be possible for it to be some sort of well.
1:11.0	We code furiously for two months, we launch this thing, and then it's off to the races.
1:16.0	Like, from when we started working on it full time, when we publicly launched, it was almost two years.
1:22.0	And so, yeah, going to be hard, but it is actually possible.
1:30.0	From NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
1:39.0	I'm Guy Ross, and on today's show, how two brothers from Ireland wrote seven lines of computer code, and built it into a $9 billion business.
1:55.0	So, the Holy Grail for Adventure Capitalist is the elusive unicorn.
2:08.0	This is what hundreds or thousands of business school graduates working at venture firms search for every day.
2:15.0	They sit through pitch after pitch, PowerPoint after PowerPoint, hoping that today will be the day.
2:23.0	One of these pitches will be the next Uber or Airbnb, and opportunity so rare, so coveted.
2:30.0	It's like a unicorn.
	...

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