I'm sorry but no. Patrick, we met with you once, Gaybrick and Claire multiple times and opened up a data room to you all. I then emailed you (and the others) three followups over a couple weeks only to see them opened but never replied. Your team then sent targeted cold emails to multiple people on our team. I've validated this experience with multiple founders.
You also had Moritz and Sequoia renege on Finix's term sheet after they already had it signed and wired (I guess props to Sequoia for branding it as "giving it away")[1]. You've also had your team get diligence materials from Sequoia and nuke deals.
You've clearly crushed it in the business and developer brand space, hats off to you. You want feedback - I (and the broader founder community) just wish you stop the dance of pretending and just admit you all are sharks, and it works for you! Just own it.
But I will admit, the HN comment was a bit trolly and written in frustration. But you have to admit - you are documented as proofreading every one of PGs posts, are a huge LP in YC and are friends with a lot of people there. You can't believe that the conspiracy theories are purely in "bad faith"....
And yes - this is out of place in HN comments, I'm sorry. But sadly there aren't very many other options.
I'm not trying to be slanderous or have a hit piece. They've clearly been immensely succesful (much more than me!). However, there is a veneer around Patrick and Stripe that needs to be broken. So many founders and employees look up to a false image that has been purposely crafted and is completely false. I'm not going to say that Patrick and John are bad people - but they're definitely not good, honest or kind. And they are definitely not who their online profiles, hn and the media would portray. Is an anonymous post the best way to show this - absolutely not, so down for other ideas.
Totally agree, it kind of sucks to have to do this. But this is sadly the world we live in. People like the Collison's and Stripe have immense power to ruin people and companies, and there are a lot of ruined bodies in their wake. So there is zero chance myself or anyone will do anything publicly.
Hard to give proof on this, so I understand how everything needs to get taken with a grain of salt. The only thing I can say is to talk (or just email) any fintech company founder in the states and I'm 100% sure they will privately agree with what I've posted.
For those who have worked around and at Stripe for the past decade, this is not a surprise. Stripe, and especially the founders, have a quite a poor reputation for screwing over people in and around their orbit.
Almost every fintech startup has the story of Patrick reaching out about an acquisition, mining them for information playing along and then ghosting - same thing for candidates. They leadership team, specifically Patrick and Will Gaybrick are extremely smart but have screwed over a ton of people - be very careful about trusting.
You don't hear anything about this online, they're incredibly effective at squashing hit pieces and have a huge amount of reporters and power brokers under their control. On HN and silicon valley Stripe and Patrick are a PR machine. Patrick has almost direct control over YC and HN, you'll notice that every single Stripe post automatically has pc as the first comment, regardless of anything else. Everything negative gets buried.
With Patrick now living in Woodside, Will on permanent vacation in Malibu and John permanently in Ireland the company is definitely a bit in chaos mode internally. Their entire people team has turned over and they're having major retention issues - so I'm not super surprised that stuff like this is starting to leak out.
I run a $XB fintech, and am afraid to use my name given the backlash.
You also had Moritz and Sequoia renege on Finix's term sheet after they already had it signed and wired (I guess props to Sequoia for branding it as "giving it away")[1]. You've also had your team get diligence materials from Sequoia and nuke deals.
You've clearly crushed it in the business and developer brand space, hats off to you. You want feedback - I (and the broader founder community) just wish you stop the dance of pretending and just admit you all are sharks, and it works for you! Just own it.
But I will admit, the HN comment was a bit trolly and written in frustration. But you have to admit - you are documented as proofreading every one of PGs posts, are a huge LP in YC and are friends with a lot of people there. You can't believe that the conspiracy theories are purely in "bad faith"....
And yes - this is out of place in HN comments, I'm sorry. But sadly there aren't very many other options.
[1] - https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/09/sequoia-is-giving-away-21-...