It's very possible that advertising business models will simply never do as well on mobile devices as those oriented around transactions.
One of the important lessons of the Internet is, how easy it is to get things done completely shapes what gets created. For that reason, technologies like Amazon's cloud service are very important. Even if they aren't technically impressive, they make things easy to do.
The part of Stripe that I've always found most interesting is the idea of facilitating new commerce that wouldn't otherwise happen. Payouts is turning out to be a big part of that. These new networks are efficient, intelligent replacements for offline behemoths.
I watch virtually no TV. All my screen time is computer time for me. When I'm not doing that I'm reading or talking to my friends who I got to know through computers.
In 2007, there weren't any other accelerators, at least that I was aware of. We were almost the prototypical Y Combinator founders: We were highly technical but had never done a startup before. We also didn't know anyone in the Valley - investors, other entrepreneurs, potential hires. YC seemed like a great way to bootstrap that network.
In life, in the media, and everything, people focus way too much on founders.
I myself am not religious, but yes, I certainly grew up in a very Catholic environment.
Silicon Valley does not breed great technology. Instead, the smartest people from around the world tend to move to Silicon Valley.
It's a common case with high-growth startups where the co-founding team breaks up - generally, it's hard to get the team to persist. It's easy to stick with it when you have known the person for decades either as a friend or family.
It was very clear, if you grew up in the middle of Ireland, just how potent a force the Internet was and could be. I was always seduced by the potency of computers and the possibilities for which they could be leveraged.
The promise of the Internet is around this transcendence of physical geography. To a large degree, the Internet has delivered on that promise, but when it comes to the movement of money and the ability to start and operate a business or needing to purchase from a business, it really hasn't.
There is a higher degree of operational excellence and rigor demanded of Stripe than of most companies.
'Entrepreneur' is a long, fancy French word, but it didn't seem like something you aspire to. It seemed normal, because whatever your parents do seems normal.
What interests us in Stripe is the idea that there could much more commerce happening on the Internet.
In general, I have a lot of issues with the mythology of the founder.
