Stripe, the payments infrastructure company founded by Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison, became one of the most valuable private startups in history with a $95 billion valuation (March 2021)—powering the internet economy’s payments backbone.
The Origin
Founded in 2010 as “/dev/payments,” Stripe promised to make online payments simple for developers: seven lines of code to accept credit cards vs. weeks of traditional merchant account setup. Y Combinator backed the Collison brothers’ vision.
Early adopters included Lyft, Kickstarter, and OpenAI. Stripe’s developer-first approach—exceptional documentation, APIs, webhooks—built a cult following among engineers. “Stripe is what developers wish all software was like” became common refrain.
The Rise
Stripe expanded beyond payments:
- Stripe Atlas (2016): Incorporate a startup from anywhere globally ($500)
- Stripe Connect (2012): Marketplace payments for platforms
- Stripe Capital (2019): Small business lending
- Stripe Treasury (2020): Embedded banking
- Stripe Tax (2021): Automated sales tax calculation
By 2021, Stripe processed $640B+ annually for millions of businesses across 120+ countries. The company became critical infrastructure: 90%+ of SaaS companies used Stripe.
The Valuation Peak
Funding rounds:
- 2014: $1.75B valuation
- 2016: $9.2B valuation
- 2019: $35B valuation
- 2020: $36B valuation (pandemic boost)
- March 2021: $95B valuation ($600M Series H)
At $95B, Stripe was more valuable than Goldman Sachs or PayPal. The Collison brothers, both under 35, became two of the world’s youngest self-made billionaires (Patrick $11B+, John $11B+).
The Correction
Like all high-growth tech, Stripe faced reckoning as interest rates rose and fintech valuations crashed 2022-2023:
July 2023: Internal valuation cut to $50B (-47% from peak) in secondary share sale. Stripe laid off 14% of staff (1,000+ employees) in November 2022, citing overhiring during pandemic.
Despite correction, Stripe remained private (unusual for a company of its size) and profitable on some metrics. Rumors of IPO persisted but Patrick Collison showed no urgency, citing public market short-termism.
The company continued innovating: Stripe Checkout, Stripe Link (faster checkout), and AI-powered fraud detection kept Stripe ahead of PayPal, Square, and Adyen.
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