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Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen still thinks about a 2012 essay written by Paul Graham called 'Schlep Blindness.' Every startup founder of a certain era of went through the misery of applying to accept credit card payments. But only Patrick and John Collison (Patrick Collison and John Collison) started Stripe....

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Alex Konrad

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69,560 次观看 • 5 个月前 •via X (Twitter)

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Flexport Founder Ryan Petersen recounts telling Paul Graham that he was stepping down as Flexport CEO "I said 'I think he's going to be better for the company than I am.' And PG said 'that's like saying some other guy is going to be a better husband for your wife.' No one has ever been more disappointed in me than when I told PG that I was hiring a CEO." Ryan Petersen talking about his conversation with Paul Graham about stepping down as Flexport CEO, before eventually returning to the company a few month later Source: Grit Podcast
1:29

Flexport Founder Ryan Petersen recounts telling Paul Graham that he was stepping down as Flexport CEO "I said 'I think he's going to be better for the company than I am.' And PG said 'that's like saying some other guy is going to be a better husband for your wife.' No one has ever been more disappointed in me than when I told PG that I was hiring a CEO." Ryan Petersen talking about his conversation with Paul Graham about stepping down as Flexport CEO, before eventually returning to the company a few month later Source: Grit Podcast

Overlap: Business & Tech

99,692 次观看 • 1 年前

Ryan Petersen on what Paul Graham told him when he stepped down as Flexport CEO Y Combinator founder Paul Graham was Flexport’s first investor. Ryan Petersen recalls telling Paul that he was hiring Amazon’s Dave Clark to replace him as CEO in 2022: “No one has ever been more disappointed in me than when I told PG that I was hiring a CEO,” Ryan remembers. Paul first asked Ryan if Flexport was his life’s work, to which he answered “Yes.” “Then why would you ever leave?” Paul asked. Ryan said he thought the new CEO would be better for the company. “That’s like saying some other guy is going to be a better husband for your wife!” PG exclaimed. “It might be true, but you don’t act on it!” Then PG offered Ryan the following advice: “If this is your life’s work, and you think he’s better than you. You need to go learn all of the things that he’s better than you at so that you can come back and do the job.” And that’s exactly what Ryan did. After a year, he returned as CEO of Flexport. Video source: Kleiner Perkins (2025)
1:35

Ryan Petersen on what Paul Graham told him when he stepped down as Flexport CEO Y Combinator founder Paul Graham was Flexport’s first investor. Ryan Petersen recalls telling Paul that he was hiring Amazon’s Dave Clark to replace him as CEO in 2022: “No one has ever been more disappointed in me than when I told PG that I was hiring a CEO,” Ryan remembers. Paul first asked Ryan if Flexport was his life’s work, to which he answered “Yes.” “Then why would you ever leave?” Paul asked. Ryan said he thought the new CEO would be better for the company. “That’s like saying some other guy is going to be a better husband for your wife!” PG exclaimed. “It might be true, but you don’t act on it!” Then PG offered Ryan the following advice: “If this is your life’s work, and you think he’s better than you. You need to go learn all of the things that he’s better than you at so that you can come back and do the job.” And that’s exactly what Ryan did. After a year, he returned as CEO of Flexport. Video source: Kleiner Perkins (2025)

Startup Archive

146,019 次观看 • 1 年前

Ryan Petersen on what Paul Graham told him when he stepped down as Flexport CEO Y Combinator founder Paul Graham was Flexport’s first investor. Ryan Petersen recalls telling Paul that he was hiring Amazon’s Dave Clark to replace him as CEO in 2022: “No one has ever been more disappointed in me than when I told PG that I was hiring a CEO,” Ryan remembers. Paul first asked Ryan if Flexport was his life’s work, to which he answered “Yes.” “Then why would you ever leave?” Paul asked. Ryan said he thought the new CEO would be better for the company. “That’s like saying some other guy is going to be a better husband for your wife!” PG exclaimed. “It might be true, but you don’t act on it!” Then PG offered Ryan the following advice: “If this is your life’s work, and you think he’s better than you. You need to go learn all of the things that he’s better than you at so that you can come back and do the job.” And that’s exactly what Ryan did. After a year, he returned as CEO of Flexport. Source: Kleiner Perkins (Apr 2025)
1:35

Ryan Petersen on what Paul Graham told him when he stepped down as Flexport CEO Y Combinator founder Paul Graham was Flexport’s first investor. Ryan Petersen recalls telling Paul that he was hiring Amazon’s Dave Clark to replace him as CEO in 2022: “No one has ever been more disappointed in me than when I told PG that I was hiring a CEO,” Ryan remembers. Paul first asked Ryan if Flexport was his life’s work, to which he answered “Yes.” “Then why would you ever leave?” Paul asked. Ryan said he thought the new CEO would be better for the company. “That’s like saying some other guy is going to be a better husband for your wife!” PG exclaimed. “It might be true, but you don’t act on it!” Then PG offered Ryan the following advice: “If this is your life’s work, and you think he’s better than you. You need to go learn all of the things that he’s better than you at so that you can come back and do the job.” And that’s exactly what Ryan did. After a year, he returned as CEO of Flexport. Source: Kleiner Perkins (Apr 2025)

Startup Archive

45,553 次观看 • 1 个月前

Last week, Flexport released an AI agent that can audit bills from shippers and truckers against the actual logs to ensure its customers are invoiced correctly. The product was just an idea 3 days before. "We probably pivoted 30% to 40% of our engineers now just to building agents," founder Ryan Petersen (Ryan Petersen) says. "There's way less planning than there used to be at Flexport in the roadmap. It used to be a one year strategic plan. Now you're like, ‘Alright, let's go see if you can make this work, come back to me two days later.' And it works, because of AI.” Catch the full interview on The Upstarts Podcast: YouTube: Apple: Spotify:
1:29

Last week, Flexport released an AI agent that can audit bills from shippers and truckers against the actual logs to ensure its customers are invoiced correctly. The product was just an idea 3 days before. "We probably pivoted 30% to 40% of our engineers now just to building agents," founder Ryan Petersen (Ryan Petersen) says. "There's way less planning than there used to be at Flexport in the roadmap. It used to be a one year strategic plan. Now you're like, ‘Alright, let's go see if you can make this work, come back to me two days later.' And it works, because of AI.” Catch the full interview on The Upstarts Podcast: YouTube: Apple: Spotify:

Alex Konrad

121,951 次观看 • 5 个月前

Founder of Bridge Zach Abrams tells a Stripe acquisition story: “I walked into Stripe to meet John Collison and Patrick Collison. First thing John says: 'Can I tell you a joke? What’s the difference between a bank and Tether? … One of them is this big institution that holds a ton of money and you have no idea where it is, and if you want your money back you might not be able to… and the other one is a stablecoin.’”
1:47

Founder of Bridge Zach Abrams tells a Stripe acquisition story: “I walked into Stripe to meet John Collison and Patrick Collison. First thing John says: 'Can I tell you a joke? What’s the difference between a bank and Tether? … One of them is this big institution that holds a ton of money and you have no idea where it is, and if you want your money back you might not be able to… and the other one is a stablecoin.’”

Bankless

59,908 次观看 • 11 个月前

20 years ago, every founder feared one tech company: Google. Even when Patrick Collison (CEO of Stripe) was building a startup back then, he got the same question in every meeting: "What if Google does this ?" But the truth is, Google still didn't build most of what people expected. Because no company can chase 100 priorities at once. Cause the teams get in each other's way, and everything slows down. Today the same question is aimed at the AI labs. Patrick is honest that better models will wipe out some products. That part is real. But the fear is far bigger than the record deserves. — Patrick Collison (.Patrick Collison), founder of Stripe, at Y Combinator's startup school
1:47

20 years ago, every founder feared one tech company: Google. Even when Patrick Collison (CEO of Stripe) was building a startup back then, he got the same question in every meeting: "What if Google does this ?" But the truth is, Google still didn't build most of what people expected. Because no company can chase 100 priorities at once. Cause the teams get in each other's way, and everything slows down. Today the same question is aimed at the AI labs. Patrick is honest that better models will wipe out some products. That part is real. But the fear is far bigger than the record deserves. — Patrick Collison (.Patrick Collison), founder of Stripe, at Y Combinator's startup school

GeniusThinking

113,494 次观看 • 7 天前

Ryan Petersen (Ryan Petersen) has turned posting like he's tech's 'hurricane reporter' around all things shipping and trade into a big platform, with 310K followers on X. His lesson for startups: nobody cares. "In general, nobody cares about your startup," Flexport's CEO tells The Upstarts Podcast. "They care about things that are happening that are relevant in their world, and they're only gonna care about you to the extent that you are." Audiences are also wise to self-promotion, he adds. "You have to figure out, okay, what, what's the thing that we can provide unique insight into?" Catch the full episode 👇 YouTube: Spotify: Apple:
1:05

Ryan Petersen (Ryan Petersen) has turned posting like he's tech's 'hurricane reporter' around all things shipping and trade into a big platform, with 310K followers on X. His lesson for startups: nobody cares. "In general, nobody cares about your startup," Flexport's CEO tells The Upstarts Podcast. "They care about things that are happening that are relevant in their world, and they're only gonna care about you to the extent that you are." Audiences are also wise to self-promotion, he adds. "You have to figure out, okay, what, what's the thing that we can provide unique insight into?" Catch the full episode 👇 YouTube: Spotify: Apple:

Alex Konrad

40,072 次观看 • 5 个月前

The biggest startup advice (The Lean Startup Method) you've been following is broken. 1) Launch something small and cheap 2) Win one narrow group of users 3) Grow outward slowly Patrick Collison (CEO of Stripe) says it was only relevant 20 years ago, for two reasons he names: A) Raising money back then was genuinely hard B) And nothing let you spin up a company able to do many things at once But today, AI removed both limits. Which is why he thinks you can now start something far more ambitious on day one. Look at who actually won the last decade. The AI labs. Anduril, the defence company. So many of them did the opposite of lean. If your plan feels too small, check whose advice you're following. — Patrick Collison (.Patrick Collison), founder of Stripe, at Y Combinator's startup school
1:25

The biggest startup advice (The Lean Startup Method) you've been following is broken. 1) Launch something small and cheap 2) Win one narrow group of users 3) Grow outward slowly Patrick Collison (CEO of Stripe) says it was only relevant 20 years ago, for two reasons he names: A) Raising money back then was genuinely hard B) And nothing let you spin up a company able to do many things at once But today, AI removed both limits. Which is why he thinks you can now start something far more ambitious on day one. Look at who actually won the last decade. The AI labs. Anduril, the defence company. So many of them did the opposite of lean. If your plan feels too small, check whose advice you're following. — Patrick Collison (.Patrick Collison), founder of Stripe, at Y Combinator's startup school

GeniusThinking

27,669 次观看 • 7 天前

Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen explains why your initial vision for your company is probably wrong When Ryan first applied to Y Combinator he wanted Flexport to be “TurboTax for customs.” But that vision changed a lot. As Ryan explains: “The more you learn and the more customers you talk to and the more vendors you talk to, the more you realize how screwed up the world is in this space. Then [the vision] actually gets bigger and bigger and keeps expanding.” Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan says this is a common pattern he sees in startups too: “There’s a misconception that you wake up from a haze and you’re like ‘This is it. This is the vision.” But the story is actually ‘Oh here’s this thing that I know I can solve.’ And then once you solve it and people really like it, it sort of expands and expands.” Ryan concludes: “If a founder is too certain of exactly what the vision is and what the product’s going to look like and how it’s all going to work, they’re probably wrong. The world is super messy.” Source: Garry Tan (Mar 2022)
0:54

Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen explains why your initial vision for your company is probably wrong When Ryan first applied to Y Combinator he wanted Flexport to be “TurboTax for customs.” But that vision changed a lot. As Ryan explains: “The more you learn and the more customers you talk to and the more vendors you talk to, the more you realize how screwed up the world is in this space. Then [the vision] actually gets bigger and bigger and keeps expanding.” Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan says this is a common pattern he sees in startups too: “There’s a misconception that you wake up from a haze and you’re like ‘This is it. This is the vision.” But the story is actually ‘Oh here’s this thing that I know I can solve.’ And then once you solve it and people really like it, it sort of expands and expands.” Ryan concludes: “If a founder is too certain of exactly what the vision is and what the product’s going to look like and how it’s all going to work, they’re probably wrong. The world is super messy.” Source: Garry Tan (Mar 2022)

Startup Archive

26,029 次观看 • 6 天前

Why going direct is about telling a story much bigger than your company's: Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸: "The story of you and your startup is not inherently an interesting story, but there is almost certainly an interesting story that involves your startup, and this is sort of the cheat code of it." benahorowitz.eth: "The grand wizard of this is Alex Karp. If you watch his interviews, he never talks about Palantir. The only thing he ever says about Palantir, Marc pointed this out to me, is 'ontology' and 'orchestration,' two words that nobody knows what they mean." "Nobody knows what Palantir does as a result, but it doesn't matter because it's the future of the US military, Palantir. Superintelligence, Palantir. Whatever the story is that's really good, Alex will go tell that story. Neurodivergence." "Whatever is interesting, he'll just start talking about. And then because he's this founder of Palantir, the CEO of Palantir, like that just works." "When something happens in the world, something happens involving US military, AI in the military, or this or that, geopolitics with China, he's the first phone call, right? Because he's the guy who's been out there talking about that." Erik Torenberg: "Ryan Petersen... has done a phenomenal job of that." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸: "The difference between talking about freight versus talking about 'the global supply chain is completely collapsing' during COVID, and 'we're all gonna starve to death.'" "And then therefore, he's the guy who literally goes on 60 Minutes to explain to the world that in fact, yes, we all are about to starve to death." Ryan Petersen
2:10

Why going direct is about telling a story much bigger than your company's: Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸: "The story of you and your startup is not inherently an interesting story, but there is almost certainly an interesting story that involves your startup, and this is sort of the cheat code of it." benahorowitz.eth: "The grand wizard of this is Alex Karp. If you watch his interviews, he never talks about Palantir. The only thing he ever says about Palantir, Marc pointed this out to me, is 'ontology' and 'orchestration,' two words that nobody knows what they mean." "Nobody knows what Palantir does as a result, but it doesn't matter because it's the future of the US military, Palantir. Superintelligence, Palantir. Whatever the story is that's really good, Alex will go tell that story. Neurodivergence." "Whatever is interesting, he'll just start talking about. And then because he's this founder of Palantir, the CEO of Palantir, like that just works." "When something happens in the world, something happens involving US military, AI in the military, or this or that, geopolitics with China, he's the first phone call, right? Because he's the guy who's been out there talking about that." Erik Torenberg: "Ryan Petersen... has done a phenomenal job of that." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸: "The difference between talking about freight versus talking about 'the global supply chain is completely collapsing' during COVID, and 'we're all gonna starve to death.'" "And then therefore, he's the guy who literally goes on 60 Minutes to explain to the world that in fact, yes, we all are about to starve to death." Ryan Petersen

a16z

110,154 次观看 • 1 个月前

In 2009, Patrick Collison and John Collison went to Startup School in Berkeley, got sushi in Potrero Hill afterward, and decided on the walk home to start Stripe. The reasoning, as Patrick remembers it, was that “we might as well because it probably won’t be that hard.” It took them two years to launch. Seventeen years later, at Startup School 2026, he talks with YC's Harj Taggar about dropping out of MIT twice, why founders should ask what happens if they succeed, and what Stripe’s own data says about the best time to start a company. 00:07 — What Should You Still Learn in the Age of AI? 02:01 — Knowledge Still Matters 05:12 — Should You Drop Out of College? 09:58 — Why Stripe Worked 12:10 — Building Stripe Before Launching 17:20 — Is the Lean Startup Still the Right Playbook? 19:07 — The Hidden Reward of Building Stripe 22:36 — Will AI Kill Your Startup? 25:17 — Why It's Never Been a Better Time to Start a Company 29:23 — What Stripe's Data Says About the AI Economy 30:45 — Build Something People Truly Need
30:59

In 2009, Patrick Collison and John Collison went to Startup School in Berkeley, got sushi in Potrero Hill afterward, and decided on the walk home to start Stripe. The reasoning, as Patrick remembers it, was that “we might as well because it probably won’t be that hard.” It took them two years to launch. Seventeen years later, at Startup School 2026, he talks with YC's Harj Taggar about dropping out of MIT twice, why founders should ask what happens if they succeed, and what Stripe’s own data says about the best time to start a company. 00:07 — What Should You Still Learn in the Age of AI? 02:01 — Knowledge Still Matters 05:12 — Should You Drop Out of College? 09:58 — Why Stripe Worked 12:10 — Building Stripe Before Launching 17:20 — Is the Lean Startup Still the Right Playbook? 19:07 — The Hidden Reward of Building Stripe 22:36 — Will AI Kill Your Startup? 25:17 — Why It's Never Been a Better Time to Start a Company 29:23 — What Stripe's Data Says About the AI Economy 30:45 — Build Something People Truly Need

Y Combinator

57,906 次观看 • 14 天前

Stripe co-founder John Collison on the two types of people who will thrive in the AI era over the next 10 to 20 years: He identifies two categories of people he's "super bullish on": First: high-agency people. "We know this at Stripe. The people who are like, I've been talking to customers. I know exactly what we should do. We got to go fix this. But the people who have that pep in their step and they want to go make Stripe better." The idea is simple. The people who don't wait around for permission, who figure out what needs doing and go do it, now have leverage they've never had before. AI lets them execute faster without needing to assemble a huge team behind them. Second: double majors. "I think if you understand software and understand finance or if you understand software and understand marketing, you now can go massively improve the entire marketing funnel for your company and one person can do." John Collison connects this to a famous Paul Graham observation: "Typically an entrepreneurship team a founding team has a collection of like five or six skills between two founders three founders." He also points to Charlie Munger's case for multidisciplinary thinking, noting it's easier than ever to pick up a functional grasp of new fields: "He thinks getting a functional understanding of many disciplines is not that hard you can just go read the books now you know you can talk to your AI about it and so I think multidisciplinary thinkers are going to do incredibly well." The throughline is the same for both: AI closes the gap between knowing what to do and being able to do it. One person can now move at the pace of a full team, and combine skills that used to require entire departments.
1:00

Stripe co-founder John Collison on the two types of people who will thrive in the AI era over the next 10 to 20 years: He identifies two categories of people he's "super bullish on": First: high-agency people. "We know this at Stripe. The people who are like, I've been talking to customers. I know exactly what we should do. We got to go fix this. But the people who have that pep in their step and they want to go make Stripe better." The idea is simple. The people who don't wait around for permission, who figure out what needs doing and go do it, now have leverage they've never had before. AI lets them execute faster without needing to assemble a huge team behind them. Second: double majors. "I think if you understand software and understand finance or if you understand software and understand marketing, you now can go massively improve the entire marketing funnel for your company and one person can do." John Collison connects this to a famous Paul Graham observation: "Typically an entrepreneurship team a founding team has a collection of like five or six skills between two founders three founders." He also points to Charlie Munger's case for multidisciplinary thinking, noting it's easier than ever to pick up a functional grasp of new fields: "He thinks getting a functional understanding of many disciplines is not that hard you can just go read the books now you know you can talk to your AI about it and so I think multidisciplinary thinkers are going to do incredibly well." The throughline is the same for both: AI closes the gap between knowing what to do and being able to do it. One person can now move at the pace of a full team, and combine skills that used to require entire departments.

Big Brain AI

96,360 次观看 • 3 个月前

The founders of Stripe and Pinterest on how to convince people to join your startup Stripe CEO Patrick Collison argues that part of the reason startups resonate so much is because the outcome is not guaranteed: "If it were guaranteed, it would be boring... Whether or not you're the best person in the world at what you do, you're probably not going to alter Google's trajectory. But if you really want to benchmark yourself and see how much of a contribution and impact you can make--which is a really compelling prospect for a lot of the best people--a startup is a much better place to test that." Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann emphasized this as well: "No smart person that you're hiring is under the illusion that you have a crystal ball into the future and that joining is a guaranteed thing. In fact, if you're telling them that and they select in, you shouldn't hire them because they didn't pass a basic intelligence test. I think it's important to tell them what's exciting and where you think the company can go. But also tell them where it will be hard and chart your best plan. And then tell them why their role can be instrumental--because it will be... What I would discourage doing is whitewashing all of that. If people are joining your company because they want all of the certainty and safety of working at Google but also the perks of working at a small startup with lots of responsibility and transparency, that's a really negative sign." Apparently in the early days of PayPal, Peter Thiel and Max Levchin would tell people after they interviewed all the reasons that the company would fail: "Visa and MasterCard want to kill us. We also might be doing something that's illegal. But if we succeed, we'll redefine payments." Don't whitewash the risks. Instead tell them how your startup will change the world if you succeed and how their role will be instrumental in affecting that change. Video source: Y Combinator (2014)
3:25

The founders of Stripe and Pinterest on how to convince people to join your startup Stripe CEO Patrick Collison argues that part of the reason startups resonate so much is because the outcome is not guaranteed: "If it were guaranteed, it would be boring... Whether or not you're the best person in the world at what you do, you're probably not going to alter Google's trajectory. But if you really want to benchmark yourself and see how much of a contribution and impact you can make--which is a really compelling prospect for a lot of the best people--a startup is a much better place to test that." Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann emphasized this as well: "No smart person that you're hiring is under the illusion that you have a crystal ball into the future and that joining is a guaranteed thing. In fact, if you're telling them that and they select in, you shouldn't hire them because they didn't pass a basic intelligence test. I think it's important to tell them what's exciting and where you think the company can go. But also tell them where it will be hard and chart your best plan. And then tell them why their role can be instrumental--because it will be... What I would discourage doing is whitewashing all of that. If people are joining your company because they want all of the certainty and safety of working at Google but also the perks of working at a small startup with lots of responsibility and transparency, that's a really negative sign." Apparently in the early days of PayPal, Peter Thiel and Max Levchin would tell people after they interviewed all the reasons that the company would fail: "Visa and MasterCard want to kill us. We also might be doing something that's illegal. But if we succeed, we'll redefine payments." Don't whitewash the risks. Instead tell them how your startup will change the world if you succeed and how their role will be instrumental in affecting that change. Video source: Y Combinator (2014)

Startup Archive

11,811 次观看 • 9 个月前

Alexandr Wang on why Paul Graham’s “Schlep Blindness” essay was seminal for Scale AI “One of the secrets to Scale AI — and I think this applies to almost every industry — was that the problem we were solving of building really high quality data sets was something that most machine learning teams knew was very important but it wasn’t necessarily the sexiest problem that every AI scientist wanted to spend their days and nights working on.” Alexandr continues: “There was one article that was pretty seminal for me early on. It was an essay by Paul Graham called ‘Schlep Blindness.’ I’d encourage everyone to read it if you get a chance. But basically the idea was that most people avoid thinking about the really difficult, hairy, ugly, and annoying problems that exist in the world but they’re really important. He actually uses Stripe as one of the examples in his essay, but these problems are everywhere. The ugly, hairy problems that everyone knows are important but aren’t sexy to work on — if you can identify what those problems are, they generally make really exciting startup ideas.” This was a lot of the original pitch for Scale: “You know this is important but you probably aren’t the most excited to work on it.” And then the early Scale team was super scrappy, which helped them earn the trust of their customers: “They saw our product velocity and how fast we were moving. They thought to themselves, ‘Even if they don’t have the perfect product today, they’re going to get to a product that we’re going to be able to rely on really quickly.’” Source: Startup Grind (Apr 2022)
2:03

Alexandr Wang on why Paul Graham’s “Schlep Blindness” essay was seminal for Scale AI “One of the secrets to Scale AI — and I think this applies to almost every industry — was that the problem we were solving of building really high quality data sets was something that most machine learning teams knew was very important but it wasn’t necessarily the sexiest problem that every AI scientist wanted to spend their days and nights working on.” Alexandr continues: “There was one article that was pretty seminal for me early on. It was an essay by Paul Graham called ‘Schlep Blindness.’ I’d encourage everyone to read it if you get a chance. But basically the idea was that most people avoid thinking about the really difficult, hairy, ugly, and annoying problems that exist in the world but they’re really important. He actually uses Stripe as one of the examples in his essay, but these problems are everywhere. The ugly, hairy problems that everyone knows are important but aren’t sexy to work on — if you can identify what those problems are, they generally make really exciting startup ideas.” This was a lot of the original pitch for Scale: “You know this is important but you probably aren’t the most excited to work on it.” And then the early Scale team was super scrappy, which helped them earn the trust of their customers: “They saw our product velocity and how fast we were moving. They thought to themselves, ‘Even if they don’t have the perfect product today, they’re going to get to a product that we’re going to be able to rely on really quickly.’” Source: Startup Grind (Apr 2022)

Startup Archive

56,503 次观看 • 2 个月前

Jack Zhang on why he said no to Stripe’s $1.2 billion offer to buy Airwallex “In October 2018, Stripe reached out to buy us,” Airwallex co-founder Jack Zhang (Jack Zhang) begins. Patrick Collison flew out to Shanghai to meet Jack and his co-founder, and they spent the day together. After the meeting, Patrick sent over a Google Doc that was 10-20 pages long and asked Jack to make comments. “I was like, ‘Wow, the vision of the companies over the next decade is very much the same.’ We both wanted to build the AWS of financial services, and obviously Stripe was much further ahead of us. But this was before COVID. Stripe was like a $9 billion company — very similar to the scale of Airwallex today. I also really liked Patrick. It was like this guy is so smart.” Asked what makes Patrick Collison so smart, Jack replies: “He’s intellectually honest about everything, and he’s able to go deep in multiple dimensions.” Eventually Stripe offered $1.2 billion for Airwallex, and according to Jack, he and his co-founders would’ve walked away with $350 million. “I met with the whole team, and I was really impressed,” Jack recalls. “I basically said I think we’re going to do it.” But when he flew back to Melbourne, Jack decided against it. And it was actually Patrick Collison who inspired him to reject the offer. Jack explains: “So one of the things that really inspired me from talking and spending time with Patrick was I asked, ‘What’s the long-term thing for Stripe and yourself? Are you going to be here forever?’ And Patrick said to me that he’s going to build Stripe for the next 20-40 years. And I just never heard a founder tell me they will dedicate their entire life to building a business. And so that was inspiring to me, and I’m like that’s what I want to do.” Today, Airwallex (Airwallex) is an $8B company, with more than $1B in ARR. Video source: The Twenty Minute VC Harry Stebbings (2025)
2:25

Jack Zhang on why he said no to Stripe’s $1.2 billion offer to buy Airwallex “In October 2018, Stripe reached out to buy us,” Airwallex co-founder Jack Zhang (Jack Zhang) begins. Patrick Collison flew out to Shanghai to meet Jack and his co-founder, and they spent the day together. After the meeting, Patrick sent over a Google Doc that was 10-20 pages long and asked Jack to make comments. “I was like, ‘Wow, the vision of the companies over the next decade is very much the same.’ We both wanted to build the AWS of financial services, and obviously Stripe was much further ahead of us. But this was before COVID. Stripe was like a $9 billion company — very similar to the scale of Airwallex today. I also really liked Patrick. It was like this guy is so smart.” Asked what makes Patrick Collison so smart, Jack replies: “He’s intellectually honest about everything, and he’s able to go deep in multiple dimensions.” Eventually Stripe offered $1.2 billion for Airwallex, and according to Jack, he and his co-founders would’ve walked away with $350 million. “I met with the whole team, and I was really impressed,” Jack recalls. “I basically said I think we’re going to do it.” But when he flew back to Melbourne, Jack decided against it. And it was actually Patrick Collison who inspired him to reject the offer. Jack explains: “So one of the things that really inspired me from talking and spending time with Patrick was I asked, ‘What’s the long-term thing for Stripe and yourself? Are you going to be here forever?’ And Patrick said to me that he’s going to build Stripe for the next 20-40 years. And I just never heard a founder tell me they will dedicate their entire life to building a business. And so that was inspiring to me, and I’m like that’s what I want to do.” Today, Airwallex (Airwallex) is an $8B company, with more than $1B in ARR. Video source: The Twenty Minute VC Harry Stebbings (2025)

Startup Archive

696,891 次观看 • 6 个月前

"My job in life is to make the power law." david friedberg cooked on this one. 🧑‍🍳🍳 "The biggest piece of advice that I still struggle to take every day, every time I have, though, it's had profound impact on my life, is to focus." "Every time I focused and avoided distractions, it's made a huge impact." "I think that everyone assumes that there's this power law in the world that you are a passive participant in. You're either going to catch one of the power law winners or you're going to lose it. Therefore, you've got to portfolio your way to a power law to catch a power law." "I don't give a s*** about that because I think my job in life is to make the power law and to make that outcome. And I feel like that has made a huge impact on how I think about life." "Every time I've tried to act on it, it's actually paid back significantly." "So focus is the biggest piece of advice I've gotten that I think matters." "Seven Samurai. Akira Kurosawa did such an amazing job representing this ethos, I think. You strike, and you strike perfectly, and you strike with full force, and with all your energy, and everything you have, your whole character, everything. And you can accomplish incredible things."
0:55

"My job in life is to make the power law." david friedberg cooked on this one. 🧑‍🍳🍳 "The biggest piece of advice that I still struggle to take every day, every time I have, though, it's had profound impact on my life, is to focus." "Every time I focused and avoided distractions, it's made a huge impact." "I think that everyone assumes that there's this power law in the world that you are a passive participant in. You're either going to catch one of the power law winners or you're going to lose it. Therefore, you've got to portfolio your way to a power law to catch a power law." "I don't give a s*** about that because I think my job in life is to make the power law and to make that outcome. And I feel like that has made a huge impact on how I think about life." "Every time I've tried to act on it, it's actually paid back significantly." "So focus is the biggest piece of advice I've gotten that I think matters." "Seven Samurai. Akira Kurosawa did such an amazing job representing this ethos, I think. You strike, and you strike perfectly, and you strike with full force, and with all your energy, and everything you have, your whole character, everything. And you can accomplish incredible things."

The All-In Podcast

154,051 次观看 • 2 年前