Stripe is the breakthrough startup of 2014

Patrick and John Collison were walking home from dinner one night in October 2009, talking yet again about their latest idea for an online payments company, when John stopped and turned to his brother

"Why don't we just go build it?" John said, as Patrick later recalled. "It probably won't be all that hard."

Never mind that the payments industry was notoriously complex and already home to major, established tech companies like PayPal. Never mind that Patrick was just 21 and John was still a teenager. It probably won't be all that hard.

The most shocking thing about John's statement, though, was that in some sense it proved to be true. Barely five years after that conversation, their startup, Stripe, has emerged as a leader in the payments space, with a multi-billion dollar valuation and a fast-growing list of influential partners. Read more...

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