Patrick Collison
Co-founder & CEO, Stripe. On 7 shows, 10 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestor@patrickc ↗patrickcollison.com ↗Wikipedia ↗Instagram ↗
Patrick Collison co-founded Stripe with his brother John Collison in 2010, developing it into one of the world’s leading digital payments and financial infrastructure platforms. He also co-founded the Arc Institute and previously sold his first startup, Auctomatic, in 2008.
7shows
10appearances
108statements
22resolved
13supported
2contradicted
59%fully supported
147said about them ↓ Everything Patrick Collison said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Collison: Tech workers moving to low-cost regions will be less productive
“Because of the sort of the collision of ideas and people in cities makes them more productive than if they were elsewhere. If you believe that to be the case, and there's like pretty good empirical data that it is, then it, you can't just move elsewhere. You c…”
Collison: Everything will pass through a transformer model before consumption
“Everything will pass through a transformer model before it's consumed.”
Patrick Collison: Stablecoins will probably become the common payment rail
“I think stablecoins are going to be a big part of a big part of the solution. I actually don't think that's going to supplant all the consumer-facing networks. I think we're going to see consumer-facing networks It's built upon and that, you know, substantiall…”
Patrick Collison: 79% of surveyed top scientists would alter research without NIH grants
“We ran a survey of scientists back a couple of years ago of top scientists, and four out of five, like, 79% of them told us That if they could just spend money however they wanted, if they weren't kind of limited by, you know, what they're prescribed by these …”
Collison: Making twice as many decisions at half precision is often better
“If you can make, like, if you can make twice as many decisions at half the, kind of half the precision, that's actually often better. And then given the fact that sort of the rate of improvement of decision making with additional time almost necessarily tends …”
Collison: Discrete organizational decision-making is overrated compared to continuous systems
“I'm inclined to say, I don't know if I actually believe this, but I'm inclined to say in response to that question that decision making in organizations is slightly overrated in that organizations are not like investment entities or funds or managers in that o…”
Patrick Collison: Tech hubris fails; financial infrastructure requires traditional banking partnerships
“Technology companies, I think, often have a sort of go it alone mentality. We'll build it all in-house. We'll do it all ourselves. We can do things better than ever in the outside world. Whereas we thought that Stripe would only be possible, and it would only …”
Patrick Collison: Money cannot be mechanically turned into great software products
“And this is one of the great facts about our industry is that you cannot turn Money into great products as a kind of mechanical operation. If it were possible, there would be many more great iPhone competitors. Facebook would have been long since eclipsed by M…”
Collison: Talent allocation, not capital scarcity, limits technological innovation
“I mean, I think it's less that we don't have enough capital. It's more that we don't have the right people or the right people in the right places and so on.”
Collison: Quantitative metrics are actively unhelpful before achieving product-market fit
“Generally speaking, I think that sort of pre product market fit metrics are actually relatively unhelpful. I think you sort of, you really want to bias very strongly towards kind of as much sort of inspection and kind of high throughput qualitative feedback as…”
Collison: Startup culture's 'never quit' dogma is wrong; sometimes you should
“In, in startup time we really extol and sort of uphold the virtues of, sort of, you know, determination at all costs, you know, never quit and so on. And, you know, that's clearly not the right answer in that, like, sometimes you should quit.”
Collison: Startup growth curves are under founder control, not cosmic trajectories
“And the, kind of, the growth curve or adoption curve is just, kind of, a function of that go to market apparatus. But basically, it's not some, kind of, cosmic trajectory. It's something, kind of, very much of your creation and under your control.”
Collison: Optimal pre-product-market fit team size is between 2 and 10
“As an empirical matter, it seems that somewhere between kind of, you know, two and 10 depending on exactly what you're building is kind of the optimally responsive size.”
Collison: Startups hitting 10 employees must adopt non-consensus, hierarchical decision-making
“When you hit a certain size, again, maybe, I'm just gonna say 10 people for the sake of simplicity, Maybe it's a bit before, maybe it's a bit after. I think you need to kind of adjust more, more deliberately to this kind of explicit communication model of sort…”
Collison: Making twice as many decisions at half precision is often better
“If you can make, like, if you can make twice as many decisions at half the, kind of half the precision, that's actually often better. And then given the fact that sort of the rate of improvement of decision making with additional time almost necessarily tends …”
Collison: A CEO being forced to decide indicates broken organizational architecture
“There are some decisions where if I'm making it or if I have to make it, that probably suggests that something else organizationally or institutionally has broken. And I think the need for a decision from anyone, not just from me is often like only a sort of a…”
Collison: Sequoia is the only VC firm in top three for four decades
“And Sequoia has been, you know, the top firm or in the top three firms, obviously it's a subjective ranking, but call it, you know, a top, unquestionably a top three firm for essentially its entire existence. And there was no other VC firm that has been a top …”
Collison: Silicon Valley is the greatest geographic wealth concentration in history
“Silicon Valley is the sort of, Greatest concentration of wealth creation that I think has ever existed in the US on a per square mile basis, potentially that has existed ever in the world, right?”
Collison: John and I own an SF house and hope its value declines
“I'm a landowner in San Francisco. John and I own a house together, and I hope its value declines”
Collison: B2B payments need a DNS-style central clearinghouse for bank accounts
“If you looked at the bill pay system from the outside, you would say, we should have DNS for companies.
So rather than a company
Like, sending you their bank account details.
You should, like, look them up in some central clearinghouse, and that way you confir…”
Collison: Big tech incumbents leave fewer AI opportunities on the table
“Clearly, all the large companies these days, they're very aware, they're very connected with the ecosystem. If you look at Asatia or Mark Zuckerberg, they are very aware of everything that's going on AI, and they're paying a lot of attention to it. And so, yea…”
Patrick Collison: Credit card programs are not major bank profit pools
“Card programs are not actually big profit pools for most of the major banks.”
Patrick Collison: Stripe fraud metrics dropped 80% over past two years
“Various fraud metrics across the industry and the ecosystem are way up over the last couple of years. And Stripe's actually down by 80%”
The other half of the tape: Patrick Collison's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 129 times in 50 episodes across the shows. 18 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Guy Raz 28Shane Parrish 8Katie Dill 8John Collison 8Alex Rampell 8Michael Ovitz 7Sam Altman 6Chamath Palihapitiya 6
Statements about Patrick Collison, by other people (18)
Friedberg predicts Stripe will become the most valuable private company
“That's gonna be the most valuable, valuable company. That's private right now.”
John Collison: Patrick and I will still be running Stripe in 10 to 20 years
“This is our life's work. You know, we're not going anywhere. We'll be very happily running Stripe in 10 years' time, in 20 years' time.”
Caldwell says founders prioritize financial engineering and treat product as an afterthought
“Too many founders treat product as an afterthought. They're basically trying to do financial engineering, and the product is like delegated.”
Ovitz: Stripe's Collison brothers are among the smartest executives in tech
“And I think the Collinson brothers are two of the smartest guys in the business.”
John Collison admits Stripe was much more Patrick's idea than his own
“Stripe was much more his idea than mine.”
Stripe's founders would prioritize design even if it lacked business sense
“You know, design certainly does make, you know, business sense, but even if it didn't, they would still do it, and I think that, that, that's that x factor. That's the thing that's gonna make, you know, hard decisions along the way possible. And certainly wort…”
Early startup hires replicate themselves and should meet the co-founder bar
“When you hire your first employees, you should think about every person that you bring with a bar that's as high as, could this person be my co-founder?... When you hire someone, you should wonder whether you want 10 persons like this in your company. Because …”
Dill: Stripe design team only presents endorsed options to Patrick Collison
“Usually, well, for something like this, Patrick was definitely a part of the decision-making process, and so usually, you know, with the team, we will look at quite a large range, then we will down select to, you know, a subset of those, and say, like, okay, t…”
Chas Englander: Patrick Collison resolved Fancy's Stripe ban within an hour
“On the payments one, we emailed Patrick directly and he responded. Like, within an hour, he sorted us out.”
Reeves: Gusto's early angels included Systrom, Stoppelman, Shah, and Collison
“Kevin is a friend from college, and Instagram, I mean, he's an investor in Augusto, so, you know, it was fun to talk to him about some of the scaling stuff, but actually, I think, ah, you know this more than anyone, like, tech is pretty broad, so even back the…”
Andreessen: Patrick Collison funded an independent biotech research institute
“Patrick Collison has a biggest, you know, and his wife have a big new biotech research institute at Stanford along those lines, or associated with Stanford, but it's a separate thing that they're funding.”
Doshi: Stripe co-founders regularly conducted user research with frontline staff
“Patrick and John, until a very, very long time, as the company was scaling, and to a point where you wouldn't expect the founder to do so they were talking to customers. They were talking to users, and not only that, in many cases, they would kind of, you know…”
Buchheit: Patrick Collison personally integrated Stripe code for early customers
“So, like, that was how, like, the very early Stripe installs, Patrick Collison would show up and integrate Stripe into your code.
Right?
He would just show up and do the work.”
Collison: Selling Auctomatic early spared him the standard career treadmill
“Had we been, or had I been kind of on just the treadmill of, you know, you go to college, and you get your degree, and then it's your first job, and so on, such that, you know, I can certainly imagine sort of a different version of, you know, my life or my car…”
Livingston: YC Met Patrick Collison at 16 Over Dinner Before Stripe
“Well, I have to admit, we met Patrick years earlier, when he was 16 or 17, still living in Ireland, because he looked up Paul, and we had him over for dinner. So, it wasn't like we first met them At a YC interview.”
Collison brothers convinced banking executives to partner when they were teenagers
“The head of a bank is going to take a nineteen-year-old startup founder seriously? It seems pretty implausible, right? But they were good enough that they were able to convince these banks to work with them.”
Raz: Patrick and John Collison were 23 and 21 when Stripe launched
“When Stripe launched seven years ago, Patrick and John Collison were just 23 and 21 years old.”
John Collison: Patrick Collison hacked his first website to teach security
“After I'd built it, Patrick taught me a lesson in in security. You know, I was probably 14 at the time, and I cobbled together this website, and there were vulnerabilities and issues and stuff that Patrick then hacked the site just to teach me a lesson on that…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
the Y Combinator Startup Podcast 34
How I Built This 30
the a16z Podcast 20
the Knowledge Project 17
Cheeky Pint 15
All-In 13
2026 29 mentions in 14 episodes 2 per episode
- How Stripe Built Their New Website · Y Combinator
- Michael Ovitz: The Psychology of Power
- Ai Goes Parabolic | OpenAI Co-Founder Greg Brockman
- Bret Taylor of Sierra on AI agents, outcome-based pricing, and the OpenAI board
- Why Top Founders Are Racing Into AI Infrastructure
- How AI Changes the Economics of Innovation
- Garry Tan: New Rules for Founders
- Alexandr Wang: “This is a Once-in-a-Civilization Opportunity” · Y Combinator
- 6 more episodes that year, every mention in 2026 →
2025 26 mentions in 14 episodes 2 per episode
- Casey Handmer of Terraform Industries on solar maximalism, hard tech, and reclaiming the Salton Sea
- Elad Gil: How to Spot a Billion-Dollar Startup Before the Rest of the World
- The Finance Startup Bringing Agentic AI to Wall Street · Y Combinator
- A Cheeky Pint with serial entrepreneur Pieter Levels (@levelsio)
- Stablecoin special: Zach Abrams (Bridge) and Henri Stern (Privy)
- Software Finally Eats Services - Aaron Levie
- Tobi Lütke is still captivated by internet commerce, 20 years later
- The FDE Playbook for AI Startups with Bob McGrew · Y Combinator
- 6 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
2024 6 mentions in 5 episodes 1 per episode
- DOGE kills its first bill, Zuck vs OpenAI, Google's AI comeback
- Why Design Matters: Lessons from Stripe, Lyft and Airbnb · Y Combinator
- Bryan Johnson: Five Habits for Longer Living
- Fixing Higher Education & New Startup Opportunities
- Crisis in Higher Ed & Why Universities Still Matter
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2023 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2022 6 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- The Network State with Balaji Srinivasan
- E75: Fast shuts down, board culpability, Elon buys 9% of Twitter, deplatforming's evolution & more
- Why Investors Can’t Fix Your Company – Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel · Y Combinator
- E65: VC markup dynamics, Russia/US tensions over Ukraine, Altos Labs raises $3B, Stripe mafia & more
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 4 mentions in 1 episode
2019 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
2018 36 mentions in 5 episodes 7 per episode
- Stripe: Patrick and John Collison
- After PMF: People, Customers, Sales by Mathilde Collin · Y Combinator
- Mathilde Collin on Feature Prioritization and Employee Retention at Front · Y Combinator
- The Path to $100B by Paul Buchheit · Y Combinator
- Fermat's Library Cofounders João Batalha and Luís Batalha · Y Combinator
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
2017 7 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
2016 7 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Patrick's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KNOWLEDGE PROJECTLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Stripe | 2 | 42 | 78% 7/9 | full record on the Knowledge Project → |
| Y COMBINATORLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Stripe | 1 | 27 | — | full record on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast → |
| ALL-INLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Stripe | 1 | 14 | 33% 3/9 | full record on All-In → |
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Stripe | 1 | 12 | 100% 1/1 | full record on How I Built This → |
| a16zLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Stripe | 1 | 6 | 0% 0/1 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |
| CHEEKY PINTLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Stripe | 3 | 6 | 100% 2/2 | full record on Cheeky Pint → |
 MASTERS OF SCALELEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Stripe | 1 | 1 | — | full record on Masters of Scale → |