Patrick and John Collison have got the luck of the Irish.
Stripe — the Irish brothers’ digital payments brainchild — has reportedly raised $600m at a $95B valuation, making it the most valuable private company ever to come out of Silicon Valley.
Here’s why: It’s the platform other platforms use to process money
Some 90% of US adults have bought from companies that use Stripe.
The company counts Amazon, Salesforce, Microsoft, Shopify, Uber, and Zoom among its customers — and at least 50 of these customers process $1B+ on Stripe annually.
In 2020, the company signed up 200k+ new European customers and handled 5k requests per second.
All this success is a boon for Ireland
Stripe plans to invest heavily in Europe and create 1k jobs at its Dublin HQ, a plus for a budding Irish startup community that saw total VC funding jump 13% in 2020.
CEO Patrick Collison, still just 32, was especially proud of a $50m investment in Stripe from Ireland’s National Treasury Management Agency.
But Stripe didn’t even need the funding…
… “It will just sit on the balance sheet” as a “rainy day fund,” according to Mike Moritz, partner at Sequoia and a Stripe board member.
Stripe, whose mission is to increase the GDP of the internet, sees a wide-open road ahead, with just 14% of commerce happening online today, up from 10% a year ago.
Stripe’s already done well at achieving that mission: The company has greater payment volume today than the entire ecommerce market when it was founded a decade ago.
Patrick and John, the next round of Guinness is on you.
