Patrick Collison
26 statements across 9 episodes · 12 bullish · 4 bearish · 8 people on the record · first statement Aug 30, 2016 by Jessica Livingston · said 34 times in 16 episodes since 2016 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Patrick Collison's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Katie Dill (8), Sam Altman (6), Mathilde Collin (4), Courtland Allen (3), Chas Englander (3), Harj Taggar (2), Paul Buchheit (1), Josh Reeves (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 9 mentions in 3 episodes 3 per episode
2025 6 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 1 mention in 1 episode
2018 6 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- 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 3 mentions in 1 episode
2016 7 mentions in 1 episode
Everything said about Patrick Collison, oldest first
Aug 30, 2016 neutral
Aug 30, 2016 positive
Oct 3, 2018
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 …”
Oct 3, 2018
Oct 3, 2018
Patrick Collison: Stripe Had Around 100 Users Before Publicly Launching
“We got our first user, like first production user, just kind of three months in, ah, and then kind of every month we tried to add at least kind of a handful of users, ah, and so by the time we publicly launched, ah, we did have, You know, about a hundred users…”
Oct 3, 2018 neutral
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.”
Oct 3, 2018 negative
Collison: Stripe was too consensus-oriented between 5 and 50 employees
“Between say, five and 50 people. I think we are much too consensus-oriented. We, of course, weren't completely consensus-oriented. I mean, we couldn't have gotten anything done if we were, but I think we kind of biased too much in that direction. And again, I …”
Oct 3, 2018 negative
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.”
Oct 3, 2018
Collison: Certainty on complex questions signals a lack of intellectual honesty
“It's oddly hard to fake being intellectually honest and sort of the characteristic of kind of being able to see multiple sides of a debate or an argument. Like, there are so many kind of complicated questions where sort of the only thing that I'm really skepti…”
Oct 3, 2018 positive
Oct 3, 2018
Collison: Requiring ideas be 'probably bad' overcomes organizational self-censorship
“And so, people, like, really self-censor a lot in most organizations because they don't want to look stupid, and they don't want to be sort of associated with just having all these, like, wacky, bad ideas and so on, and so we try to be fairly firm that if you …”
Oct 3, 2018 positive
Patrick Collison: Stripe Atlas and Stellar originated from Stripe's Crazy Ideas process
“And actually a lot of cool things that we've subsequently gone on and done first came from that process Stripe Atlas you know, being one of them and also we sort of helped Stellar get off the ground this sort of cryptocurrency back a few years ago, and sort of…”
Oct 3, 2018 positive
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…”
Oct 3, 2018
Collison: Fulfillment is a better optimization metric for founders than happiness
“And so I think, and you know, language is squishy and it's not, you know, completely specifically defined, but I think kind of generally speaking, kind of a better utility function and kind of gradient to try to climb is that of fulfillment.”
Oct 3, 2018 positive
Collison: Most Successful Co-Founding Teams Disagree With Dispassion
“I think that you know, something that we're kind of lucky about that I think is very, well, exactly to your point, I think he's definitely present in sort of the most successful co-founding relationships that I've seen is some degree of sort of dispassion in d…”
Oct 3, 2018 neutral
Collison: Stripe could have accelerated by a year or two with better discipline
“Yeah, so I don't think I did it especially well, and I think it kind of, you know, fortunately, sort of, you know, it worked out, but I think if I was doing it all over again, I think we could have sort of accelerated ourselves by a year or two if we'd sort of…”
Oct 3, 2018 positive
Collison in 2018: Over 80% of US adults bought from Stripe merchants
“So in the last 12 months more than 80% of American adults have bought something from a Stripe business. At least one thing from a Stripe business. Which is cool, and you know, it's not just the case in the US, like in Singapore, where it was last week, you kno…”
Oct 3, 2018 positive
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…”
Oct 3, 2018 positive
Collison: Repeat founders build organizations ahead of current demand post-PMF
“You see that kind of when repeat founders go and start companies, they almost invariably are willing to kind of build the organization You know, post product market fit, though it's invariably willing to kind of build the organization ahead of where things are…”
Oct 3, 2018 negative
Patrick Collison: Waiting Two Years to Launch Is Not a Good Idea
“It was, I think one year and 11 months from sort of first line of code to public launch. Which to be clear, I don't recommend, ah, that is not a good idea, ah, it's just we had to, because we had to kind of get all these other things in place”
Oct 24, 2018 positive
Feb 23, 2022 negative
Oct 16, 2024 positive
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…”
Mar 18, 2025 positive
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…”
Jul 31, 2025 positive
Apr 22, 2026 neutral
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…”