why aren't all 17 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public
record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable
ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't;
assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card:
▮▮▮▮▮ certainty ·
▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Gil: Marquee companies like Stripe and SpaceX may stay forever private
“There may be a subset of companies that are forever private, because they can afford to be. That may be Stripe, that may be SpaceX, that may be some other companies.”
Opinion
Armstrong: Stripe is Coinbase's top competitor in developer stablecoin integration
“And then with Coinbase developer platform, which is what it's allowing all these businesses to integrate stable coins, you know, Stripe is probably the best competitor we have there.”
Insight
Siemiatkowski: Login-gated APIs prevent AI models from assisting integrations
“Their APIs are not public. They're hidden by a login. And the problem is because their API is hidden by a login. What does that mean? AI has not been trained on it. AI doesn't have access to it. So if we want to go to AI and ask, how do we change our integrati…”
Disclosure
Siemiatkowski: Stripe and Adyen "were beating the crap out of us"
“We were at that point in time competing with Stripe and Addion. And they were beating the crap out of us. So we're like, we're not going to do that. They're too good. Let's do something else.”
Opinion
Stripe's Bridge acquisition is a major bet on stablecoin payments
“The next one that Is obviously really interesting is the Stripe bridge deal. So, you know, that was announced a few months ago and bridge was started by a Brex alum, Zach Abrams. We love him. And that's super interesting, obviously, because it shows Stripe tak…”
Assertion Supported
Garrett: Databricks and Stripe converted RSUs to single-trigger to delay IPOs
“If you saw recently with Databricks and Stripe, those big massive rounds and tenders were actually to cover the tax bill for the employees after they hit their seven year cliff on the double trigger RSU. So they converted from double trigger to single trigger …”
Assertion Partly supported
Avalara and TaxJar abandoned SMB market after acquisitions, says Badangay
“One of them was Avalara, which was, had been acquired by Vista Equity, this private equity group for about 8.4 billion dollars. And then you had Taxjar, which got acquired by Stripe for you know, close to a billion dollars as well. And with these acquisitions,…”
Disclosure
Gil: Jack Dorsey cleared him to invest in Stripe despite executive pushback
“I remember I was an investor in Square and the Stripe founders pinged me and asked if I wanted to invest. And so I pinged one of the key executives at Square and said, Hey, do you think this is a conflict? And he said, absolutely. This is a conflict. You shoul…”
Disclosure
Gil has never sold a Stripe share and plans long-term hold
“Like, I've never sold a share of Stripe, and I hope to never, you know, do so. Or I should say never, like, for a very long time, you know, I'm a big believer in the company.”
Assertion Partly supported
Sequoia's Shaun Maguire helped structure Stripe's acquisition of Bridge
“I mean, like one of the most interesting parts about the Stripe bridge deal was that it seemed that the, one of the investors from Sequoia on both boards was like pretty instrumental in helping to get that deal done, which you don't see very often. And it's a …”
Insight
Biannual tender offers allow elite companies like SpaceX to stay private longer
“As we've seen with SpaceX you know, they do biannual tenders where if you're an early stage investor or an employee there's opportunities for liquidity, and they've done that very successfully, and you're gonna continue to see that. Now you're seeing that more…”
Assertion Contradicted
Power: Stripe and Google capped annual team headcount growth at exactly 30%
“Patrick Carlson from Stripe and also Eric Schmidt at Google basically had a hard and fast rule that you could only scale teams 30% a year without damaging the culture of the org.”
Assertion Supported
Immerman: Stripe runs annual employee tenders to stay competitive while private
“They have run a really efficient process with their tenders. They've done it annually to deliver liquidity to their employees and stay competitive in the market.”
Assertion Partly supported
Stripe and Shopify were each valued at $1B when they partnered
“Stripe did a partnership with Shopify and they were both actually valued at a billion dollars when that partnership started in around 2013, 20, 14 ish.”
Disclosure
Brex is actively developing its own stablecoin strategy
“And obviously Brex as a card issuer and spend management platform, we need to take note of that. And we need to be thinking about our own stable coin strategy as we monitor what folks are doing.”
Disclosure
Vercel's Guillermo Rauch and Stripe's Patrick Collison backed Browserbase
“Guillermo from Vercel has also been a very inspirational person for us, and we're lucky to have them both as a customer and an investor. Patrick Callison from Stripe, another angel investor that we're really happy to have on board.”
Assertion Supported
Index Ventures sourced and co-led the seed round for Bridge
“That led us to kind of like source and co-lead the seed for bridge, which eventually got acquired by Stripe after I had since left.”