Okay, Patrick. Thanks so much for being

here. Welcome to Startup School.

>> Great to be here.

Harj and I first met 20 years ago and um

uh he

um we started a company together. I was

going to give away the introduction.

>> Yeah, I I thought this was my interview,

but keep going. You're doing a good job.

>> Well, we started a company together many

many years ago and

uh I learned a huge amount from Harj. So

it's a it's really fun to do this.

>> All right, let's

um

Well, actually I mean speaking of that.

So when I think when I first met you 20

something years ago

at the time your most impressive

achievement I would argue was Chroma,

your dialect of Lisp.

>> Any Lisp programmers here?

Oh, wow. Okay, that was um I think I

heard one whoop, which is more than I

expected. Um but uh yeah, I I really

liked Lisp when I was in high school.

>> Yeah, so what I was going to ask is um a

prolific 16-year-old today could

presumably just like prompt Claude to

write their their Lisp dialect.

Would you would you advise them to not

do that and still still do it? Is there

Is there any value in such things?

>> I don't know. I wonder a lot. Um

Yeah, like I was saying on the one hand

uh

it used to be really fun to write all

this assembly and machine code and to

optimize your instructions and make

layout in memory and everything and now

we don't have to do that anymore.

Compilers do it for us. We don't mourn

it too much. And so maybe in the same

way we shouldn't mourn source code. We

should just transcend the plane of uh

instructions to Claude at all, but um

but

emotionally I miss it.

>> Um

How about I you think just like as I've

been hanging out here um

with these students like they're so like

maybe the question behind it is many of

them are just wondering what should they

be learning at college? Like what is

sort of in this sort of AI world like

how much

how much should they be trying to learn

and derive from first principles and how

much should they just outsource to the

to the AI?

>> Right. Um,

I mean, my model of this is, um,

is cache.

Um, you know, the c h not an s h, where

Jeff Dean has this, uh, famous set of

numbers that every programmer should

know, uh, bandwidths and latencies and

just kind of relevant constants you

should have a reason about as you as you

build systems. And obviously, you know,

thinking of building any system or

distributed system or whatever, like,

all lookups and all, you know, relevant

bandwidths between different, um,

components are are are very different,

right? Uh, and you know, retrieving

something from L1 cache is very

different from retrieving from RAM is

very different from retrieving across

the network or whatever. And I think

it's like that with knowledge. Well,

fine, yes, you can ask the agent or

something to

compute something for you or to look

something up for you or whatever. That's

a hell of a lot slower than knowing it

in cognitive L1 cache. And you can have

way more round trips in your brain than

you can, you know, muttering through,

you know, super whisper or typing it out

or whatever. And so, I think, even

granting the full capabilities of the of

the models, I feel I still think there's

a a pretty, like, I think for for a long

time to come, uh, neuronal lookups will

be will be much faster.

Um,

and

and then, you look if you look in

revealed preference, uh, at what uh,

companies themselves are doing, whether

they're companies like Stripe or the

labs or what have you, um, there still

seems to be an enormous premium on

cognitive ability. And so, I wouldn't

I I I I think, um, renouncing that

before there's evidence that we've

saturated, uh, those benefits would be

premature.

>> Um, I mean, are there are there specific

things that maybe you personally, either

personally or as uh, CEO of Stripe, um,

you still you purposely choose to sort

of do yourself and like retrieve from

your own cache, um, even though like the

agents would probably do a

reasonably good job. Um

I still I still write myself. Like I I

um

I

I don't

I I both philosophically but also uh

specifically, substantively, uh dislike

the writing of the models. I mean, it's

very interesting, right? Because these

can prove the Jacobian conjecture, you

know, whatever. Uh and so clearly

they're capable of these monumental

feats. Um but somehow

I still haven't read the LLM essay that

I found super compelling. Now, maybe

it's just very hard to like RL limit

that domain because the you know, the

utility function or something is kind of

hard to define.

Um

but

yeah. Um

I I think writing is a pretty I

interpersonal communication and writing

I think are so very fundamental and so

being able to reason sensibly in the

multi-dimensional space of reality. And

in some

kind of indescribable way, I feel like

the model is still kind of deficient at

that. And so I've never I've yet to

send, you know,

every tool is now trying to prompt me

with, you know, pre-written uh

suggestions, whether it's, you know,

Gmail or

uh apparently WhatsApp just rolled this

out. Um and I think I've still sent zero

of those in my life. No.

>> Um

How about so if you talk talk about the

Stripe story, uh the early days in

particular a little bit, uh

you were at MIT, then you left to start

Stripe.

How did you think about that decision?

And obviously we're in a

stadium full of college students. How

should they think about it? How do you

How do they know if it's the right

decision for them to

uh leave college early and go start a

company versus stay?

>> Yeah, well, I I think I have the

slightly unusual distinction of having

dropped out of college twice to start a

company. So, um so maybe one thing to

know is that it's not totally trapdoor.

Uh you can you can drop out and and in

fact return.

So

I dropped out after my freshman semester

to

start this company

with with Harj. That was super fun. And

then after a couple years of that, went

back, did another year

at MIT and then dropped out again to to

start Stripe. Um and

you know, I am when I went to college,

probably like a lot of people here,

I

um

I had this vision of my life and

involving becoming an academic and I

really like physics and I thought, you

know, I'll do all this physics stuff.

It's so cool. I'd read all the Feynman

books,

all of this.

And

I guess I am

Well, growing up in Ireland, I hadn't

realized I hadn't thought much about the

possibility of startups. Hello to the

[laughter] other Irish folks here.

And

um

And I mean, way back then in the sort of

you know, pre-Cambrian era, startups

were definitely much less you know,

well-known even on campus and so forth.

You know, when I was dropping dropping

out, people thought it was super weird.

Um

I think um

You know, overall

um

if you enjoy college, I

I would actually you know, I I I think

there's no harm in in finishing. I I I

felt this real sense of urgency, which I

think in hindsight was a bit

unnecessary.

Um if you but if you don't enjoy

college, just you know, whatever, it's

not your your thing. It's not what

captivates you. You don't really want to

learn all the physics things or

whatever.

Uh there

You know, I think a lot of parents think

that dropping out is very risky and

impune your reputation for the rest of

your life and so forth. And as far as I

can tell, nobody has ever cared. So I I

both think you don't need to but also

the cost of doing so are de minimis.

What what was the urgency you were

feeling?

>> The urgency?

>> Yeah, to to go out and do do something.

>> I don't know. Life is short, right? Um

and I I I all I mean, it was a general

kind of haste. Uh I think, you know, a

lot

a lot of us um I'm sure I'm sure many of

the people here you you you you kind of

get into this mode of speed running high

school and then, you know, once you get

to college it's like, obviously I want

to speed run that as well and do all the

things. So, a bit of that. A bit of

um

Marc Andreessen also talks about a

version of this.

I thought that a bunch of the

opportunities uh in startups in Silicon

Valley and so forth were ephemeral and

fleeting. And if we didn't build it

then, but, you know, it wouldn't be

possible to do it in three or four

years. And maybe all the opportunities

will be gone. You know, in hindsight, I

think that um

that was a a poor intuition. Uh it's

been pretty robustly and reliably the

case over many decades in Silicon Valley

has a surfeit of opportunities.

Um yeah, I think it was mainly those two

things.

>> think it's um I mean, this is a very

common thing that we hear when we talk

to students now is that they

part of the reason they want to drop out

en masse, it seems, at this point is

they're worried that actually now is the

moment that they're sort of I think the

meme going around is that if you don't

sort of

uh drop out and start a company and make

lots of money, you're going to be

trapped in the permanent underclass. So,

is that um should everyone here be

worried about being stuck in the

permanent underclass? I guess is the

question.

>> Um

I think um

humanity has always had um a an affinity

for these millenarian sort of models of

how uh everything is um

you know, everything will soon come to

an end uh and be this this sort of

permanent transformation of society and

so forth. Actually, there's a great

book, The Winged Gospel. People thought

that after the the invention of

aviation, that it was just

like civilization was just entering

humanity as a species were entering a

new era and nothing is going to be the

same. I mean, obviously aviation was was

a pretty big deal, but uh I I I don't

think it was sort of quite the um the

sociological rewriting that some of the

you know excitable proponents at the

time imagined. So I am

you know it's it's hard to predict

anything especially the future but I

would I would take the under on this

being the last couple of years to get a

company going.

>> Fair enough.

So going back to the Stripe story Stripe

ostensibly seems like a good idea. Like

even on day one it's the internet's a

big deal money's a big deal like combine

those two things.

Presumably is that how it went when you

went to tell people you wanted to start

Stripe and everyone just say hey this is

a great this is an obviously a good

idea.

>> It was kind of funny it was um

it was so so something we learned from

YC

uh

was that the importance of focusing on

very concrete easy to explain customer

problems. Like it's it's very easy to

to hallucinate or to you know imagine

some customer problem that's not

actually something viscerally felt by a

person who would pay money.

And so over the course of in part

working on automatic together we have

encountered this issue of it being

really annoying to deal with

movement of money or payments whatever

on the internet. Um and on the one hand

it seemed like a

an obviously good idea in the sense that

nobody liked the existing ways of doing

so

and they were broadly extremely

unpopular and kind of antiquated and

legacy and you had to like fill out all

this paperwork and go to the bank in

person and the paperwork was in Latin

and just like it was all bad. Um

but then the flip side is

it just seems kind of ridiculous that

two kids would start a financial

services business

and fintech didn't exist as a sector at

the time like the word literally didn't

exist

and so it's just kind of you know we

felt like the proverbial squirrels you

know in a trench coat trying to

masquerade as a

real business or as you know serious

adults but obviously knowing nothing

coming in about the

about the space and and certainly a lot

of people we met and pitched or banks or

partners or whatever that we talked to,

I mean

you

didn't literally laugh us out of the

room, but I you kind of see them looking

for the button to like call security

under the desk to have them haul us out

cuz it just seemed so improbable. So,

anyway, I'd say it like it both seemed

like an obviously good idea in that

people really wanted this, but also a

bad idea in that nobody took it

seriously. Um but I I think that I think

the fact that it was

ultimately the fact that it was grounded

in such a concrete actual real user

problem saved us.

>> Um

you actually speaking of that, how did

you you had to in order to actually

build the product, you had to get

banking partner and do things that a

typical software company did not have to

do. As two young founders, like how did

you manage to convince a bank to trust

you in the end?

>> Yeah, um well, actually this is not an

answer

to your question. But um

just a thing that strikes me as I sit

here is the reason we decided to start

Stripe

is because so John and I were in college

together. He was in his freshman year

and we went to Startup School

in 2009,

which was held in Berkeley.

And we

we thought it was pretty cool.

Um

and so we went to we got sushi

afterwards in Potrero and we were

walking back from sushi and we're like,

you know, we'd kind of been kicking

around this idea for um

a payment thing or like we've been

thinking about the space.

And it was walking back that evening

after Startup School that we decided to

start Stripe.

I remember literally where we were in

the road and I remember what we said to

each other, which was, "Yeah, you know,

we might as well because it probably

won't be that hard."

>> Okay. So, moral of the story is go get

sushi in Potrero tonight and you might

start the next Stripe.

>> [laughter]

>> Um and yes, be beware of sort of these

these ultimate yak shaves. We thought we

could do it on the side while in

college, you know, take a couple months,

and that was almost 17 years ago.

>> Um

at the time I remember you were also

unusual in that you took sort of longer

to do a big public launch. And

especially within the YC world, the

motto is very much sort of launch early,

launch quickly, be out there and

iterate. Um could you maybe just talk us

through a little bit about that? So, why

did you do it that way?

>> Yeah, so um we started working on Stripe

um kind of seriously in the uh the well,

we

started working the week after that's

our school, but um we're going to

college wasn't full-time. We started

working full-time the summer of 2010. We

launched publicly September 2011. So,

almost uh 2 years after like the first

lines of code after the repo was

started. And yeah, waiting 2 years to

launch seems I mean I you know, I've

heard

if we're going to YC meetings, you know,

every every week, I think we'd have

been, you know, bludgeoned on the head.

Um I think um I'm looking in many

domains that probably is the wrong thing

to do. Um in our domain, to answer your

last question, because we had to

do so much stuff around security and

partners and money movement and

infrastructure and reliability and you

know, all the things. We just we didn't

feel like we could scale a really good

self-serve experience without getting a

lot of the kind of the preconditions um

and the infrastructure in place.

Um the I think the the thing that saved

us

um and meant that it wasn't a total walk

in the wilderness

is we had production users almost from

the very beginning. So, first lines of

code um

in uh fall of '09, we got our first live

production user uh in um

in January of 2010. So, like 2 months

into working on whatever. And it did

very little. Like it was very larval and

incomplete. Uh and uh our first

production customer was uh Ross Boucher

at a company called uh Twilio North. Um

and all it could do was charge a card.

Uh and so, you know, Ross would charge

the card. Uh and you know, then he would

ask some very reasonable question like,

you know, how do I How can I look at all

my charges? And like,

reasonable request. And so, you know,

let's code up a little dashboard here.

And then he'd be like, well, I want to

refund a payment. And you know, we're

like, all right, we'll build refund

support. And then, you know, after a

couple of weeks, he was like, so you

know, at some point, do I get my money?

And we're like, also a reasonable

request. So, let's let's build that

functionality. So, it was very kind of

just-in-time development. Anyway, so we

we had a production customer from very

early, and then we did increase So, in

private beta, we increased the number of

customers every single month, you know,

all the way to that public launch. And

so, every, you know, every week, we had

actual customer feedback, requests, new

users coming in. We're learning things

from reality as opposed to our own kind

of hypothesized or extrapolated

conception of it. And I I think if you

have,

you know, a significant stream like that

of of um

of grounding, I think it's probably okay

to not be like, launch launch.

When do you I mean, you're you're an

expert YC partner. Do you agree?

[laughter]

>> That's a good question. Um

Yeah, I mean, it is This is the the

issue with advice in general is it's

sort of so generalized. And like, they

especially in startups, the exception

proves the rule, right? So, I think

those are Yeah, certainly certainly if

um

you know, your the cost of failure is

high, um then it almost certainly you

have to sort of take longer to like

build. Um

You may be a very slight tangent, but

something I'm curious about related to

this, though, is

you know, we we were talking like with

with these coding agents, the ability to

just like build and produce software

cheaply and quickly, um I I wonder,

should people be taking more of this

path? Like, should people be more

ambitious in general with what the

version one of the thing that they

launch is? Um

Or you know, or is it still

fundamentally good product design to

start like narrow and focused and then

expand out once you know what people

want.

>> Yeah. Um Um

It's a good question. Um

I think probably in the

era of AI, I mean I I don't know.

And you know, to some extent YC will

will be I think the expert here, but um

you know, there's the whole kind of

traditional lean startup doctrine of

exactly what you say, like start out by

buying the Google Ads or something and

and uh

identify this crevice or whatever and

and and aggressively expand out from

that.

I think you can certainly imagine that

that becomes much more competitive and

much more um

you know,

aggressively tilled and it's kind of

hard to find those those little niches.

The internet's a much bigger place than

it was 20 years ago when some of those

ideas emerged, whereas taking these

really divergent starting points where

nobody else uh is uh is uh trying to

um occupy that territory is is maybe a

more like basically maybe you have to

more aggressively decorrelate uh in the

era of AI, and I think it is interesting

to think about, you know, many of the

companies that were most successful over

the last 10 years, so many of them are

are very anti-lean startup, right? Uh

whether it's, you know, the labs

themselves or Anduril or um yeah, you

you you you can go down the list. A lot

of them have this characteristic. So, I

um

yeah, I think maybe maybe a better way

of saying it is 20 20 years ago that

whole lean startup thing was

uh was almost the only thing to do

because of capital available and you

didn't have AI that made, I don't know,

spinning up an organization with many

different potentialities and

capabilities so much easier, whereas now

I think you can start these much more

aggressive and ambitious things up

front.

>> Um

within sort of YC and probably startup

world at this point, you're famous for

the at least the program term schlepp

blindness, this Stripe um uh at least on

the surface was not like, you know,

involved a lot of schleps, like things I

presume you weren't like the um,

intellectually most interesting things

uh, to work on. Um, and I always found

that especially interesting for you

because you just mentioned you you had

academic interests in physics and um,

you're just like clearly like, you know,

a deep intellectual and have very many

things that you're interested in. As

Stripe has sort of grown into this in

this big company

in what ways sort of, you know, in what

ways um, are there sort of like

intellectual

um, rewards that you've you've given up

and which ones have you gained?

>> Yeah, I am I mean, look, in any company

there's a bunch of stuff that's um,

not that rewarding or in and of itself

all that interesting. Like so setting up

payroll, no one sort of starts a company

so that uh, you can you can set up

payroll. Uh, and certainly building

business financial services there's all

sorts of, you know, more arcane and

extensive uh, versions of that. Um,

I think that um,

I actually feel extremely lucky with

Stripe um, and in this respect. And

uh, I think this is something I don't

know if you need to think about it that

much up front, but I think once you

think about it maybe before you raise a

significant amount of money, um,

you know, you always worry naturally

about possibility of failure and

you know,

what will happen if you fail and how to

mitigate and avoid failure and all those

things. I think you need to ask the uh,

the sort of converse of that, uh, what

if you succeed? And you know,

you raise money and you've customers and

you've employees and a whole thing.

Like are you going to be are you going

to enjoy that? Are you going to want to

work on that for 10 years, for 17 years,

for 30 years? Uh, I mean, Larry Ellison

at Oracle is going for I mean, I I I

guess it'll be a half century soon,

right? Um, so so, you know, what if you

succeed? And in the case of Stripe, I

really love it because you know, we're

working with the world's most

interesting and innovative companies. Uh

like we're uh, uh 25% of all Delaware

corporations are started with Stripe uh

via Atlas. And then we get to partner

with them and work with them and hear

from them and get their feedback and get

their requests and everything, you know,

through the entirety of the journey up

to being the Shopifys and the OpenAIs

and the, you know, all all the um

uh the uh the standout successes. Um oh

and actually speaking of Atlas,

uh we're giving free Atlas incorporation

to everybody at Startup School. So, um

if you are at struck by the uh the urge

to found something uh you know, over

dinner this evening as we were, uh just

email startupschool@stripe.com

and we will get you your link uh for

free Atlas.

Um

but uh but yeah, I I you know, I think

PG latched onto something where yeah,

there are all these kind of menial

tasks, but but in the kind of totality

of Stripe, I find it so

interesting. Like every business is a

kind of applied theory on how some

aspect of the world works or how some

market works or how some you know,

how if the new company with a new um

the new model, it's kind of a contrarian

thesis on some counterfactual. But yeah,

just like it's it's I've never met a

Stripe customer and thought that's

boring.

Um so so it's actually the business as a

whole has been the opposite of uh of the

Schlep Blindness um instinct.

>> And you have a particularly unique in um

perspective on this cuz you work with

the big model um providers, the big lab

companies, and you work with all of the

fast-growing AI startups on the ground.

Uh something that came up a lot here

yesterday, uh honestly comes up within

the batches, too, is people are just

worried about um

is my idea going to get sort of trampled

by the the big uh lab providers? And I'm

giving your perspective, I'm just

curious like how how should people think

about that?

>> Yeah. Um

Yeah, again, predictions are hard and

certainly the labs are very competent,

capable organizations.

Um

And maybe you should separate a little

bit.

Will

rapidly improving AI capabilities do

this or will the labs specifically

themselves do this? Um

I think in general the track record of

like

no organization

if we go back 20 years, you know,

there's some of the sense with Google.

Like, you know, when we were doing

automatic, the question was always for

our company and every other company, you

know, what if Google does this? And

Google seemed kind of omnipotent and had

this immense number of incredibly

talented people and essentially infinite

access to capital and server and just

all the things. And

just human organizations are complicated

and it's very hard to have um to

manage to aggressively prosecute

100 different priorities and to deal

with all the issues and interference

that arises among them and so forth. And

so, you know, Google has done incredibly

well in a bunch of specific places, but

it's not like Google has done all the

things even if in some kind of basic

material sense, uh Google maybe, you

know, had that ability. So, I'd say that

the kind of the track record of that

is um is

uh is checkered. And in general, I think

that fear has been overstated. Now, I

think there is a more specific thing of

just like models themselves. Forget the

labs. Even even if the labs aren't

specific particularly ambitious about

expanding their scope, just like

literally at length, uh will will

obviate a bunch of or

agentic capabilities will obviate a

bunch of uh of you know, specific

verticals or tasks or something. You

know, hard to say, obviously contingent

on one's forecast of the model

capabilities themselves, uh but, you

know, in certain cases, I'm sure that

will happen. And you know, in certain

domains, it has already happened.

Looking at the Stripe data, one thing I

will say that I think is germane to

people here, um

there are many more businesses getting

started now than there were a year ago,

like as little as a year ago.

Um, way, way more than we're getting

started, you know, 5 years ago.

Uh, and actually the relative change

between last year and this year is

pretty much the largest relative change

we've seen in any given year. So, for

example, from 19 from 2019 to 2020, we

saw a big jump, you know, understandable

during COVID. So, you know, um, February

to April of 2020 or whatever.

Uh, you know, I I I think the growth

rate inflected to maybe 50% or

thereabouts, uh, year-over-year in terms

of new businesses getting started. Um,

as I speak, the number of new businesses

starting on Stripe is up

around a bit under, but around 2x

year-over-year, um, which again is the

largest relative jump, uh, we've seen.

Um,

and you might think, okay, fine, you

know, there's way more vibe-coded, kind

of lightweight slop, you know, whatever.

Like, maybe fine, there's more things,

but like, are they actually succeeding?

Um, but actually the median business,

uh, is doing better this year than a

year ago.

Um, and so

and then if we kind of, um, stratify and

look at the probability that any given

business will reach some revenue

threshold, a million dollars, five

million dollars, 10 million dollars,

whatever,

um, those all seem to be getting better.

Uh, business are

uh, the time to revenue

for new companies incorporated with

Atlas is declining. And so, by all the

kind of objective metrics we can look

at, uh, it seems to be a better time

than ever to start a business. Then

again, things can change. I don't know

what the world's going to look like in 5

years, but, you know, speaking today on

July 26th or whatever it is, uh, of of

'26, um, I think it is

the Stripe data would suggest it's

there's never been a better time. Um, I

mean, we see the exact same thing in the

YC batches. Companies are just able to

grow faster than ever. Um,

>> Certainly within the batch.

>> It used when you know, back in again the

old days when Arge and I were first

starting out, like getting to a million

dollars of revenue like running revenue

was a big deal. Like people would know

about that company. They'd be like, you

know, I heard that X company got to a

million dollars of revenue. And now, I

mean

I don't That's

>> Yeah, that's actually you should be

Well, your first month it feels like.

>> You should um that's an exaggeration for

everyone here. Um

but I mean I certainly within sort of

like sort of like the YC uh

part of the life cycle like day zero to

90, it's really being driven by I would

say enterprises willing to buy from

startups, which is the new thing. So,

you can sign these new contracts um

within like the batch. Um you have the

data as the companies keep growing. I'm

curious, are there other factors that

are driving these sort of um

uh inflected growth curves from like one

to 10 and 10 to 100?

>> I I think it's really the dynamic you

just mentioned, uh which is businesses

uh

businesses everywhere

are more um spring-loaded

uh

to

adapt and to try new things. And they

have a real terror of being left behind

with archaic and antiquated ways of

operating. And so, in normal times,

you're a new startup, you have you have

some mechanism for doing whatever, and

you pitch the CIO or the CTO or the

whoever at some company, and they kind

of don't want to talk to you because,

you know, your thing is not validated.

Maybe you won't be around in 2 years.

You know, all all the kind of obvious

objections. But now, people know that,

well, the risk of the status quo is

actually extremely high. And so, even if

there's risk in doing all the new

things, well,

this path also looks pretty dangerous.

And so, I really think there's never

been a better time for startups to to

sell

um and to have their products get

adopted at, you know, pretty meaningful

scale right out of the gate. Uh a lot of

YC companies in recent times have

demonstrated this, but uh I think it's a

it's a really pervasive dynamic. And

there's a bit of it I think also, I mean

Stripe is not a consumer company,

obviously, but you know, I think there's

some version of this on the consumer

side where I think consumers, I mean,

are also pretty, I mean,

consumers have complicated views on AI

and maybe they don't want the data

centers, but people are very intrigued

by the products and I think there is a

kind of they're kind of beguiled by them

and there's a a predisposition and an

openness to

experimenting with the new.

>> Um maybe just more broadly something I'm

curious about is again with with this

the data you have at Stripe, um has

anything you've seen in that data stream

um changed a belief you have about AI

broadly say over the like the last 12

months?

>> I mean, there's a fear

uh that AI is going to be this

um

hegemonic, centralizing, totalizing

force where a small number of companies

gobble up a very large share of the

economy. And

many companies at the forefront of AI

um

have done incredibly well and I think

we'll continue to do incredibly well,

for sure.

But based on what we can see at Stripe,

the

hunger and the intensity with which

other companies are either getting

started, taking advantage of these new

capabilities, or existing companies are

retooling,

I don't worry about the centralization

in the same way. Uh I think there I

think there are going to be many

thousands of winners. Um and again, we

try not to offer any definitive

prognostications cuz the future is not

predetermined, but based on the the

trend lines we can see, I think we are

heading towards a um a more

decentralized world and one with more

broad-based prosperity.

>> Yeah, cool. All right, well, I think

that is all we have time for today. So

thanks so much Patrick for me.

>> Thank you for having me and um

It would be remiss of me not to say that

Stripe would not exist without YC.

>> All right, cool. All right, see you so

much.