How I Built This with Guy Raz

Stripe: Patrick and John Collison (2018)

Mar 9, 2020

Patrick and John Collison, the brilliant brothers behind Stripe, share their entrepreneurial journey from coding in their family’s hotel to revolutionizing payment processing. They discuss their early successes, including a startup that catered to eBay users, and the challenges they faced securing investor trust post-financial crisis. The duo also highlights how they transformed payments into a seamless part of online shopping, showcasing the blend of skill and luck in their relentless pursuit of innovation.

42:00

Episode guests

John Collison

Patrick Collison

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Intro

6min

Brothers in Business: From Memories to Stripe

16min

Navigating Skepticism: The Early Days of a Technology Startup

4min

Navigating Payment Evolution

12min

The Relentless Journey of Startups and New Promotions

3min

Innovating the Ground Anchor: A Journey from Frustration to Success

7min

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.