This is John Collison. He was 20 when he co-founded Stripe.
Stripe’s story began back in 2010 when John and his brother Patrick started debating why it was so difficult to accept payments on the web.
Patrick was working on several side projects at the time but decided to give this a shot. They started working on a way to solve this problem.
For the first 6-months, they focused on learning everything they could about the industry and the problems users faced with the solutions available at the time (Paypal).
They played a lot with the idea, sharing it with friends and family, seeing how people interacted with it and iterating along the way.
The first prototype wasn’t much to look at.
And Patrick agrees.
He has an answer here on Quora where he talks about how the first version of Stripe looked like. That was back when the app was still called /dev/payments.
Still, within 2 weeks of building the prototype, they had their first transactions with a Y Combinator company called 280 North.
Eventually, its founder Ross Boucher (their first customer) would join Stripe as one of the first employees.
The importance of building a strong team was always there for John. A few years later, he attributed most of Stripe’s success to their employees: "There is not a sliver of a chance that we would be here without the hard work of hundreds of employees building Stripe."
They were testing the market but there was still a lot they weren’t sure about, namely how to address very specific problems like fraud, non-US payments, etc.
To overcome that, John and Patrick tried a partnership with a payments company, but quickly got upset with the lack of control over the entire experience and brought everything in-house again.
After those initial 6 months, they accomplished enough to know they were on to something big so both John and Patrick started working on it full-time.
Their original plan was to bootstrap the company, but they realized that as a payment startup they could greatly benefit from the credibility a big investor could provide.
Stripe raised a few rounds from VCs and quickly grew into one of the largest mobile payment processing companies in the US, with big clients such as Lyft and Shopify and partnerships with Visa, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter.
By 2016 the Collison brothers had become the youngest self-made billionaires in the world. In September 2019, Stripe was valued at $35 billion and in February 2020 Manhattan Venture Research referred to Stripe as “ripe for an initial public offering (IPO)".
So, to answer your question, here’s what you should do to become a successful young entrepreneur:
- Tackle a real problem - focus on solving a problem bothering a big number of people. If you can do it in an industry you already know, even better. It will save you some time and you’ll be able to avoid some of the pitfalls.
- Surround yourself with the right people. Patrick already had an interesting network from previous experiences, including Y Combinator. Also, remember John’s words. A great team is often what makes the difference between success and failure - it’s all about execution.
- Start small. Listen, learn, iterate. Prove you have something before committing all your time and money into an idea.
- Raise money when you need to. Either to fuel growth or to add credibility. Look for smart money and avoid doing it too soon.
- Keep listening to your clients. Keep improving the product. Keep using it yourself and make your managers use it too. Don’t lose sight of what you’re delivering and never stop improving it.
- Stop reading answers on Quora or articles on Medium. Nothing you will read can prepare you for this journey. Just go for it. Today if possible.
Enjoy. :)
