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.
Patrick Collison: Evo 2 achieves state-of-the-art human mutation prediction from one human genome
“It's trained on nine trillion base pair gene tokens. So, you know ChatGBT, LLMs are normally trained on, on, you know, the, on, on human language. This is a language model, but it's trained on, on DNA, the language of life. And there's only one human genome in…”
Collison: Persistent organizational friction comes from latent disagreement over goals
“I think the more troubling ones and the ones that tend to cause more kind of persistent friction in an organization are where sort of there is latent disagreement in what you're actually optimizing for but that's kind of never explicitly surfaced and uncovered…”
Collison: In-person user onboarding creates 'why now' urgency in early sales
“Us going and sort of accosting them in person sort of helped, you know you know, people talk about in sales, it's always like a, you know, a why you, and a why this, and a why now, and these kinds of questions and going in person kind of created a why now mome…”
Collison: Product-market fit is when you bottleneck on serving demand
“And when we launched we were basically immediately bottlenecked on sort of being able to serve user demand rather than generating user demand. And I think sort of directionally that's kind of the sort of the inversion that happens where sort of, you know, in t…”
Collison: Lack of iteration speed is the primary pre-PMF startup failure
“The main thing that I think companies screw up at the pre-product market fit stage is sort of speed of iteration.”
Collison: Progress in physics slowed down substantially by 2010
“Progress in physics really felt like it had sort of slowed down pretty substantially compared to the, you know, The sort of, the period in which so much of what, you know, we were learning about you know, that, that, that's a broader period of discovery I felt…”
Collison: Post-2004 EU Immigration to Ireland Brought No Material Social Strife
“Well, it's interesting too, from a cultural standpoint, where Ireland has had very high rates of immigration, particularly post the expansion of the EU in 2004 a very large number of Eastern European immigrants moved to Ireland when those countries acceded to …”
Collison: Many organizations prioritize cohesion over intellectual correctness
“I think so many organizations prize sort of Smoothness and smoothness of sort of interactions and trying to reduce, minimize the number of sort of ruffled feathers. And they kind of at least sort of inadvertently, if not deliberately prefer cohesion over corre…”
Collison: Startup uncertainty is frustrating because time prevents gathering available info
“I think it's a more frustrating kind of uncertainty where it's actually not necessary, but the thing that's sort of limited is your, is essentially the cost of obtaining further information, reducing that uncertainty. And so you're left in this sort of dissati…”
Collison: Latent disagreement on optimization targets causes persistent organizational friction
“I think disagreement over sort of instrumental efficacy, you know, well, that's rarely that problematic a disagreement because, well, if you're right, then we'll soon learn that. If you're wrong, reality will probably sort of make that pretty clear in short or…”
Collison: Berkshire Hathaway and Koch Industries prioritize applied epistemology and structured doubt
“It's very striking to me how Warren and Charlie at Berkshire and how the folks at Koch Industries are so into a kind of epistemology and structuring of doubt and accounting for biases and mechanisms for clarity of thinking like to a very striking degree.”
Collison: 60% of Atlas Companies Say They Wouldn't Exist Otherwise
“When we survey companies started with Atlas, 60% of them tell us they would not exist if not for Atlas.”
Collison: Tokyo kept housing costs stable through minimal supply restrictions
“Tokyo has over the last couple of decades, been an improbable, well, not especially improbable, but has been such an enormous economic success story. And, you know, you had the boom and the bust and the supposed stagnation of Japan in the kind of early ninetie…”
Collison: Cheaper land in top US regions would vastly outweigh landowner losses
“I think it is very clear that on a marginal basis, the social returns of cheaper land in the most production, productive region of the country would vastly outweigh the reduction wealth cut, you know, to existing landowners.”
Collison: B2B bill payment has resisted modernization for 40 years
“It seems like bill payment,
Has proven over the past 40 years uniquely resistant to automation and modernization.”
Patrick Collison says companies lose 1% to 3% revenue to AP/AR
“If you look at most companies, they're losing one, two, three percent of revenue to AP and AR.”
Patrick Collison says Stripe Billing reached $500 million ARR
“Stripe Billing, which we actually just announced last week has passed, you know, half a billion in, in ARR.”
Patrick Collison: US labor productivity has risen 20% in 10 years
“Libra productivity in the US is up, like, 20% in the last 10 years, and so just like, again, you just look at the data, just the median person in the economy, or the average person, is is producing 20% on an inflation-adjusted basis, more than they were 10 yea…”
Patrick Collison: Proposed DoD cuts match magnitude of 2010–2025 spending changes
“As far as I can tell, the cuts proposed Over the next couple of years for the Defense Department are of approximately the same magnitude as the reduction in the defense budget that occurred between 2010 and today”
Patrick Collison: US federal spending dropped five percentage points of GDP under Clinton
“I think federal spending fell by five points of GDP over the course of the Clinton presidency, which is really not a small amount, you know?”
Patrick Collison: Powerful biological AI models will require phenotypic data
“There's a certain amount you can probably derive sort of, you know, from first principles just by looking at genomes, but I think the really powerful models are going to need to do exactly what you say, and to feed in a lot of ancillary, phenotypic, and just k…”
Collison: Escalated CEO decisions usually signal an underlying organizational breakdown
“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 …”
Patrick Collison: Tech startups avoid hard problems spanning multiple domains
“Technology companies, startups tended, and still tend, I mean, for understandable reasons, to kind of shy away from things, from problems that sort of, ah, where you have to solve a lot of hard problems in multiple domains.”
Patrick Collison: PayPal was designed for consumers, not internet businesses
“So the basic issue with PayPal was that it's designed for consumers, not for businesses. And so if you're building an app, if you're building, you know, a website, if you're building a new marketplace, something like this, PayPal works okay for sending, you kn…”
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 → |