category:
  id: origins-and-early-company
  label: Origins and early company
  description: Founder backgrounds, pre-Stripe projects, the first prototype, and the people who formed Stripe's earliest team.
  order: 1
events:
  - id: origins-early-cohort-expands-after-launch
    date: "2012"
    date_precision: year
    title: Early employees broaden Stripe's engineering and operating bench
    summary: Stripe continued to recruit unusually hands-on generalists after launch. Alex MacCaw joined after meeting John Collison through San Francisco's startup community, while Amber Feng joined as one of the company's first ten employees and went on to write much of the original Stripe Connect implementation.
    confidence: confirmed
    people:
      - Alex MacCaw
      - Amber Feng
      - John Collison
    organizations:
      - Stripe
    details:
      - label: Alex MacCaw
        value: Former Twitter engineer and technical author; he later described meeting John at a housewarming party before joining Stripe.
      - label: Amber Feng
        value: Joined as one of Stripe's first ten employees and became an early builder of Stripe Connect and financial infrastructure.
    metrics:
      - label: Team size six months after launch
        value: 23 people
        context: Patrick Collison's 2012 Startup Grind interview compared this with roughly eight people at launch.
    tags:
      - early-employees
      - engineering
      - team
    source_ids:
      - source-78f711a329821d29d9b8
      - source-cb7d5be89b692350409e
      - source-602d1868713f23b88f2c
      - source-bda69e86e22cf8e2c66f
  - id: origins-first-design-cohort
    date: 2011-11
    date_precision: month
    title: Stripe's first design cohort takes shape
    summary: Ludwig Pettersson became Stripe's first designer as the company prepared and refined its public product. In November 2011 he contacted Belgian designer Benjamin De Cock, beginning a long-running collaboration that helped establish Stripe's visual and product-design language.
    confidence: confirmed
    people:
      - Ludwig Pettersson
      - Benjamin De Cock
      - Patrick Collison
      - John Collison
    organizations:
      - Stripe
    details:
      - label: Ludwig Pettersson
        value: Stripe's first designer and an early teammate of Patrick and John Collison.
      - label: Benjamin De Cock
        value: Began contributing remotely after Ludwig contacted him in November 2011; the relationship eventually lasted eight years.
    tags:
      - design
      - early-employees
      - team
    source_ids:
      - source-d1d03c9bef74f9e9f1a4
      - source-22c2cfbb3748446e2ba6
  - id: origins-stripe-public-launch
    date: 2011-09-30
    date_precision: day
    title: Stripe launches publicly
    summary: After roughly a year spent rebuilding the infrastructure behind its prototype, Stripe opened its developer-focused payments product to the public. The launch team was about eight people, and Patrick Collison later said four or five had first encountered Stripe as users.
    confidence: confirmed
    people:
      - Patrick Collison
      - John Collison
    organizations:
      - Stripe
      - Sequoia Capital
    related_events:
      - country-2011-united-states-public-launch
      - product-2011-payments-api-public-launch
    metrics:
      - label: Approximate launch team
        value: 8 people
      - label: User-to-employee hires
        value: 4-5 people
        context: Patrick Collison's recollection in a 2012 interview.
    tags:
      - launch
      - payments
      - early-company
    source_ids:
      - source-2b1a43a0b359958b4059
      - source-bda69e86e22cf8e2c66f
  - id: origins-devpayments-becomes-stripe
    date: 2011-01
    date_precision: month
    title: DevPayments becomes Stripe
    summary: The company initially incorporated as SlashDevSlashFinance and called its product SlashDevSlashPayments at devpayments.com. With only about five customers, the founders adopted the short name Stripe and bought stripe.com for an amount Patrick Collison later recalled as between $10,000 and $20,000.
    confidence: confirmed
    amount:
      currency: USD
      display: $10,000-$20,000 for stripe.com
    people:
      - Patrick Collison
      - John Collison
    organizations:
      - SlashDevSlashFinance, Inc.
      - Stripe
    metrics:
      - label: Customers at rename
        value: About 5
    tags:
      - branding
      - domain
      - early-company
    source_ids:
      - source-7365200928b2c76a48b7
  - id: origins-users-become-early-engineers
    date: "2011"
    date_precision: year
    title: Product users become early engineers
    summary: Several early contributors arrived through the product itself or the founders' technical network. Ross Boucher, Stripe's first production user, and Saikat Chakrabarti pushed the API toward a RESTful design; Anurag Goel joined as the fifth engineer and later led risk.
    confidence: confirmed
    people:
      - Ross Boucher
      - Saikat Chakrabarti
      - Anurag Goel
      - Greg Brockman
    organizations:
      - Stripe
      - 280 North
    details:
      - label: Ross Boucher
        value: An engineer at 280 North whose application became Stripe's first production integration; he later joined the team.
      - label: Saikat Chakrabarti
        value: A startup builder hired as Stripe's second engineer after meeting people involved with the young company.
      - label: Anurag Goel
        value: Joined as Stripe's fifth engineer, helped launch the product, and later became Head of Risk.
    tags:
      - early-employees
      - engineering
      - api
    source_ids:
      - source-2629159f9f734d48436a
      - source-543cf8a3b64e5b5522b4
      - source-cf93160c4967b70fc148
      - source-bda69e86e22cf8e2c66f
  - id: origins-founders-go-full-time-and-first-hires-arrive
    date: 2010-09
    date_precision: month
    title: The founders go full time and the first hires arrive
    status: Approximate date, fall 2010
    summary: John Collison took leave from Harvard in fall 2010 to work on Stripe full time, joining Patrick Collison after his return to the project that summer. Darragh Buckley, a family friend from Limerick, became Stripe's first employee, while Harvard student Greg Brockman joined as an engineer and built foundational backend systems.
    confidence: reported
    people:
      - Patrick Collison
      - John Collison
      - Darragh Buckley
      - Greg Brockman
    organizations:
      - Stripe
      - Harvard University
      - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    details:
      - label: Darragh Buckley
        value: Stripe's first employee; he grew up in Limerick, his parents were friends with the Collisons, and he reconnected with them while studying in Boston.
      - label: Greg Brockman
        value: A Harvard student planning to transfer to MIT; he joined in 2010 and worked on Stripe's servers, card vault, recruiting, and engineering culture.
    tags:
      - founders
      - early-employees
      - college
    source_ids:
      - source-72bfa2c375357439c9a6
      - source-20fbb1f159a9c5331084
      - source-4403a949bb07bcfb06e7
      - source-59856a48d46794d4ecff
      - source-bda69e86e22cf8e2c66f
  - id: origins-buenos-aires-prototype
    date: 2010-01
    date_precision: month
    title: A month in Buenos Aires produces Stripe's first working prototype
    summary: Patrick and John Collison spent the winter break in Buenos Aires building the prototype in cafés. Within roughly a week they had a production user, Ross Boucher at 280 North, even though the founders were still completing parts of the payment flow manually behind the scenes.
    confidence: confirmed
    people:
      - Patrick Collison
      - John Collison
      - Ross Boucher
    organizations:
      - Stripe
      - 280 North
    locations:
      - Buenos Aires, Argentina
    metrics:
      - label: Time to first production user
        value: About 1 week
    tags:
      - prototype
      - founders
      - first-customer
    source_ids:
      - source-bda69e86e22cf8e2c66f
      - source-cf3b5899ad304dbe9128
  - id: origins-startup-school-decision
    date: 2009-10
    date_precision: month
    title: YC Startup School prompts the decision to build payments infrastructure
    summary: After attending Y Combinator's Startup School in Berkeley, Patrick and John Collison discussed the difficulty of accepting payments online. On the walk back from dinner, John argued that they should build a prototype themselves, turning Patrick's 'SliceHost for payments' idea into a concrete project.
    confidence: confirmed
    people:
      - Patrick Collison
      - John Collison
    organizations:
      - Y Combinator
      - Stripe
    locations:
      - Berkeley, California
    tags:
      - founders
      - origin
      - payments
    source_ids:
      - source-ca9f69ba263dbc27bda3
      - source-bda69e86e22cf8e2c66f
  - id: origins-brothers-enter-us-colleges
    date: 2009-09
    date_precision: month
    title: John begins at Harvard as Patrick returns to MIT
    summary: John Collison entered Harvard after completing Ireland's Leaving Certificate with top marks, while Patrick Collison returned to MIT after his post-acquisition period with Auctomatic in Vancouver. Their overlapping time in Cambridge set the stage for the payments project they began that academic year.
    confidence: reported
    people:
      - John Collison
      - Patrick Collison
    organizations:
      - Harvard University
      - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
      - Auctomatic
    locations:
      - Cambridge, Massachusetts
      - Vancouver, Canada
    tags:
      - founders
      - college
      - pre-stripe
    source_ids:
      - source-389cb567ecd0c7e4fb0a
      - source-d506d7eb5c4011f06d96
      - source-bda69e86e22cf8e2c66f
  - id: origins-auctomatic-acquired
    date: 2008-03-26
    date_precision: day
    title: Live Current Media acquires Auctomatic
    summary: Live Current Media, then named Communicate.com, acquired Auctomatic about ten months after the company was formed. The reported consideration was $5 million in cash and stock, giving Patrick and John Collison an early exit before either had completed college.
    confidence: reported
    amount:
      currency: USD
      display: $5 million in cash and stock
      value: 5000000
    people:
      - Patrick Collison
      - John Collison
      - Harjeet Taggar
      - Kulveer Taggar
    organizations:
      - Auctomatic
      - Communicate.com
      - Live Current Media
      - Y Combinator
    tags:
      - acquisition
      - pre-stripe
      - founders
    source_ids:
      - source-cc05ac81f510b0f6ce86
      - source-f3f1b0eef7f81e0dafb0
  - id: origins-offline-wikipedia-project
    date: 2007-12
    date_precision: month
    title: Patrick and a future Stripe colleague build offline Wikipedia for the iPhone
    status: Approximate month; collaborator's surname is not established in the source
    summary: During the Auctomatic period, Patrick Collison and a collaborator identified only as Brian built an early toolchain for jailbroken iPhones and an offline Wikipedia application. Patrick later said the app reached hundreds of thousands of installations and that Brian subsequently worked at Stripe.
    confidence: reported
    people:
      - Patrick Collison
      - Brian (surname not established)
    organizations:
      - Auctomatic
      - Stripe
    metrics:
      - label: Reported installations
        value: Hundreds of thousands
    tags:
      - pre-stripe
      - engineering
      - early-employees
    source_ids:
      - source-bda69e86e22cf8e2c66f
  - id: origins-shuppa-merges-into-auctomatic
    date: 2007-05
    date_precision: month
    title: Shuppa merges with another YC team to form Auctomatic
    summary: Patrick and John Collison entered Y Combinator with Shuppa, an idea for easier online selling. At Paul Graham's suggestion they combined forces with Harjeet and Kulveer Taggar, forming Auctomatic to build tools for high-volume eBay sellers.
    confidence: confirmed
    people:
      - Patrick Collison
      - John Collison
      - Paul Graham
      - Harjeet Taggar
      - Kulveer Taggar
    organizations:
      - Shuppa
      - Auctomatic
      - Y Combinator
      - eBay
    tags:
      - pre-stripe
      - founders
      - y-combinator
    source_ids:
      - source-bda69e86e22cf8e2c66f
      - source-f3f1b0eef7f81e0dafb0
  - id: origins-brothers-create-time-for-first-startup
    date: "2006"
    date_precision: year
    title: Patrick starts at MIT as John uses transition year to build with him
    summary: Patrick Collison began studying at MIT at 17. John Collison, then 16, used Ireland's transition year to align his schedule with Patrick's and work on internet-business ideas, creating the opening that led to their first startup together.
    confidence: confirmed
    people:
      - Patrick Collison
      - John Collison
    organizations:
      - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    locations:
      - Cambridge, Massachusetts
      - County Tipperary, Ireland
    tags:
      - founders
      - college
      - pre-stripe
    source_ids:
      - source-bda69e86e22cf8e2c66f
  - id: origins-patrick-attends-lisp-conference
    date: 2005-06
    date_precision: month
    title: Patrick makes his first US trip for a Lisp conference
    status: Approximate month based on the conference season
    summary: As a teenager, Patrick Collison traveled to Stanford for the International Lisp Conference after emailing the organizers to explain that he could not afford the trip. The visit connected his self-taught programming interests in rural Ireland with the wider software community.
    confidence: reported
    people:
      - Patrick Collison
    organizations:
      - International Lisp Conference
      - Stanford University
    locations:
      - Stanford, California
      - County Tipperary, Ireland
    tags:
      - founders
      - programming
      - pre-stripe
    source_ids:
      - source-bda69e86e22cf8e2c66f
  - id: origins-patrick-wins-young-scientist
    date: 2005-01-14
    date_precision: day
    title: Patrick wins Ireland's Young Scientist competition
    summary: At 16, Patrick Collison won the Esat BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition with CROMA, a Lisp-like programming language he designed. The award is the clearest public milestone in his technical work before college and his first startups.
    confidence: confirmed
    people:
      - Patrick Collison
    organizations:
      - Esat BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition
      - Castletroy College
    locations:
      - Dublin, Ireland
      - Limerick, Ireland
    tags:
      - founders
      - programming
      - pre-stripe
    source_ids:
      - source-06b6e9f657f78edfcf84
schema: stripe-history/history/v2