<story><title>Stripe Press</title><url>https://press.stripe.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pc</author><text>Stripe cofounder here. It&amp;#x27;s a very fair question.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;I must admit to being somewhat uncomfortable that Stripe seems to be spreading themselves out into areas outside their core business&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The vast majority of Stripe employees (and there are now more than 1,000) work on our core functionality today. But we see our core &lt;i&gt;business&lt;/i&gt; as building tools and infrastructure that help grow the online economy. (&amp;quot;Increase the GDP of the internet.&amp;quot;) When we think about that problem, we see that one of the main limits on Stripe&amp;#x27;s growth is the number of successful startups in the world. If we can cheaply help increase that number, it makes a lot of business sense for us to do so. (And, hopefully, doing so will create a ton of spillover value for others as well.)&lt;p&gt;As we grow, we have to get good at walking and chewing gum -- just as Google or Amazon have. However, while we go and tackle other problems, our aim is not only to continue to improve our core payments infrastructure, but do deliver improvements at an accelerating rate.</text></item><item><author>cyberferret</author><text>As someone whose SaaS uses Stripe for payment processing, I must admit to being somewhat uncomfortable that Stripe seems to be spreading themselves out into areas outside their core business.&lt;p&gt;I read the &amp;quot;22 Immutable Laws of Marketing&amp;quot; many many years ago, and it repeatedly spells out the folly of large companies who became huge on the back of just ONE product then thinking that they needed to have alternatives or provide more choice and broadened their range to the overall long term detriment of the main product or business that made them huge in the first place.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Just to clarify - it is not just Stripe Press.  I am including initiatives like acquiring the Indie Hackers site (which I enjoy BTW) a while back etc.  I can totally see that these are all related to Stripe&amp;#x27;s audience of tech startups, but it still has the ring of, say, a candy company who starts diversifying into a clothing line etc.&lt;p&gt;End of the day - every employee who is distracted by looking after the assets &amp;amp; numbers for these side projects is an employee who is not focused on their core payments system.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eganist</author><text>&amp;gt; we see that one of the main limits on Stripe&amp;#x27;s growth is the number of successful startups in the world. [...] If we can cheaply help increase that number, it makes a lot of business sense for us to do so.&lt;p&gt;This approach lends itself to spending on many cheap things which, e.g. in this case, might not even have quantifiable benefits.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll extend OP&amp;#x27;s curiosity and wonder how the team behind Stripe press plans on measuring the success of their initiative, and what milestone hits&amp;#x2F;misses are needed to determine the success or failure state of the project.&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;Separately, my background includes vendor risk assessments. This is the kind of thing that makes me question long term investment in a platform. It&amp;#x27;s admittedly a lower risk than many technical findings, but it&amp;#x27;s not something to discount when evaluating the use of a startup for critical infrastructure (payment). Knowing Stripe&amp;#x27;s size, the various risks that PCI participants have to account for (and that&amp;#x27;s just PCI DSS specifically), and the trouble many larger organizations &lt;i&gt;and startups&lt;/i&gt; have in meeting those obligations also makes me that much more likely to &lt;i&gt;strictly&lt;/i&gt; score Stripe on the next vendor risk assessment when I see spend of this sort on ancillary&amp;#x2F;non-critical measures.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sharing how I think because I&amp;#x27;d be surprised if others in my field didn&amp;#x27;t think the same way.</text></comment>
<story><title>Stripe Press</title><url>https://press.stripe.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pc</author><text>Stripe cofounder here. It&amp;#x27;s a very fair question.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;I must admit to being somewhat uncomfortable that Stripe seems to be spreading themselves out into areas outside their core business&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The vast majority of Stripe employees (and there are now more than 1,000) work on our core functionality today. But we see our core &lt;i&gt;business&lt;/i&gt; as building tools and infrastructure that help grow the online economy. (&amp;quot;Increase the GDP of the internet.&amp;quot;) When we think about that problem, we see that one of the main limits on Stripe&amp;#x27;s growth is the number of successful startups in the world. If we can cheaply help increase that number, it makes a lot of business sense for us to do so. (And, hopefully, doing so will create a ton of spillover value for others as well.)&lt;p&gt;As we grow, we have to get good at walking and chewing gum -- just as Google or Amazon have. However, while we go and tackle other problems, our aim is not only to continue to improve our core payments infrastructure, but do deliver improvements at an accelerating rate.</text></item><item><author>cyberferret</author><text>As someone whose SaaS uses Stripe for payment processing, I must admit to being somewhat uncomfortable that Stripe seems to be spreading themselves out into areas outside their core business.&lt;p&gt;I read the &amp;quot;22 Immutable Laws of Marketing&amp;quot; many many years ago, and it repeatedly spells out the folly of large companies who became huge on the back of just ONE product then thinking that they needed to have alternatives or provide more choice and broadened their range to the overall long term detriment of the main product or business that made them huge in the first place.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Just to clarify - it is not just Stripe Press.  I am including initiatives like acquiring the Indie Hackers site (which I enjoy BTW) a while back etc.  I can totally see that these are all related to Stripe&amp;#x27;s audience of tech startups, but it still has the ring of, say, a candy company who starts diversifying into a clothing line etc.&lt;p&gt;End of the day - every employee who is distracted by looking after the assets &amp;amp; numbers for these side projects is an employee who is not focused on their core payments system.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nojvek</author><text>This is what I like about HN. Feels like a small community where cofounders stepping in to guage feedback.</text></comment>