Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.

Download the app today.

New Year's is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.

As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.

So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.

Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.

Hey, really quickly, just want to let you know that we're building a brand new place for you to share ideas, advice, and encouragement about the things you are building.

Kind of like a speakeasy for entrepreneurs, except it's online, and it's not illegal.

It's a Facebook group called How You Built That.

So if you're a fan of the show or someone who just wants to connect with people like you around the world, go to Facebook and search for How You Built That, or go to n.pr-builder.

That's n.pr-builders.

We built the first prototype back in October of 2009, and it really was a parent to us that it wouldn't be easy.

It was not going to be possible for it to be something that, well, we code furiously for two months, we launch this thing, and then it's off to the races.

Like, from when we started working on it full time, when we publicly launched, it was almost two years, and so, yeah, going to be hard, but it is actually possible.

From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

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.

So, the Holy Grail for a venture capitalist is the elusive unicorn. This is what hundreds or thousands of business school graduates working at venture firms search for every day.

They said through pitch, after pitch, PowerPoint, after PowerPoint, hoping that today will be the day that one of these pitches will be the next we work, or Uber, or Airbnb.

An opportunity so rare, so coveted, it's like a unicorn.

Well, welcome to today's story, because Stripe is basically a unicorn with extra whipped cream and cherries on top. This was a company that went from zero to $100 million in value in a matter of months.

And today, barely seven years after its founding, Stripe is valued at more than $9 billion.

So now your next question, what is Stripe? Well, Stripe isn't a thing you buy. It's not like underarm or shirts or warbuy Parker glasses, but it is what allows you to buy those things online.

...