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Comment by andygcook | Hacker News Reader

Surprised Stripe didn't explicitly make the list of notable startups from over the years. Bigger than even Dropbox by valuation (obviously not apples to apples vs. public market cap) and arguably has had a bigger positive impact on the world than any other YC startup by actively increasing the GDP of the internet.

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It's probably because Stripe didn't go through the traditional YC program.

"What’s interesting is that unlike 99% of YC companies, Stripe didn’t actually go through the standard startup bootcamp process. Patrick had already been through it once and didn’t feel the need to do it again. The amount YC invested was in the $20k-$30k range." [1]

[1]: https://www.startupgrind.com/blog/the-collison-brothers-and-...

Interesting. I didn't realize that was the case. Makes sense and thanks for the additional context.

> YC startup by actively increasing the GDP of the internet

Sorry, but what does this actually mean? Before Stripe existed, you most certainly could process a payment online, so why would Stripe's existence increase the overall market for goods and services online?

I take it to mean that Stripe is easier to use than its competitors, which means new companies start that wouldn’t have, resulting in revenue through Internet sales that wouldn’t have happened online yet without those companies existing.

Obviously the premises can be debated, but developers do like Stripe’s API and products, and it seems plausible that some of those developers have been successful.

While Stripe is extremely developer-friendly, the alternatives aren’t that bad. They’re annoying to set up, but certainly not prohibitive to a determined founder starting out. Today, options like Braintree are comparable in terms of dev-friendliness.

Yes, but I’d credit Stripe for increasing the overall dev-friendliness of processors by introducing competition. And there were several companies started in the years before their competition caught up. I built two applications in 2012 using Stripe. One wouldn’t have existed otherwise, and the other would have cost my client a lot more money.

I’d also credit Atlas with new revenue. I don’t think that program has a peer yet.

Sorry for missing this thread. Stripe's mission is to "increase the GDP of the internet." It's the main headline on their About Us page. https://stripe.com/about

I take it to mean that by making setting up payments infrastructure easier for developers, more projects actually get started. Not to promote too much, but my brother's side project, NanaGram.co, would probably not exist without Stripe.

We actually used a pre-Stripe legacy payments gateway for our first startup (Rentabilities, now dead) and it was painful. I doubt he would have gone through that pain again to setup payments without Stripe. Yes, there are other providers that are good enough now like Braintree, etc, but I'd argue that Stripe forced the industry by raising the bar for developer UX.

Seems like kind of a weird thing to really take note of, but it wasn't just a general list, both parts had criteria that exclude Stripe ("household name" [i.e. consumer brand] and "funded in the last five years," respectively).

> [..] bigger positive impact on the world than any other YC startup by actively increasing the GDP of the internet

How is selling more stuff on the internet better for the planet? If anything online sales with all the additional packaging and logistics is worse than traditional retail (at least when looking at ecological factors).

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