Stripe

1988-09

Patrick Collison born in Dromineer, County Tipperary, Ireland to microbiologist Lily and electronic engineer Denis Collison

1990-08

John Collison born in Dromineer, County Tipperary, Ireland

1996

Patrick takes first computer course at University of Limerick at age 8, begins learning programming at age 10

2005

Patrick wins 41st Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in Ireland at age 16

2007

Patrick and John set up software company 'Shuppa' in Limerick. Enterprise Ireland declines funding, prompting move to California

2007

Accepted into Y Combinator. Shuppa merges with Oxford graduates' project to become Auctomatic - an eBay inventory/traffic management SaaS

2008-03

Auctomatic acquired by Live Current Media. Patrick (19) and John (17) become millionaires

2009-10

Patrick and John move to Buenos Aires, spending $10/day working from cafes to build first /dev/payments prototype in one month

2010-01

Stripe founded (originally /dev/payments). Y Combinator provides seed funding of $20-30K

2010-02

First customer Ross Boucher (founder of 280 North) signs up two weeks after prototype, later joins as early employee

2010-03

First 20 customers acquired through YC network using the 'Collison installation' - physically setting up Stripe on users' laptops

2010-06

Garry Tan posts about Stripe on Hacker News, generating 300-550 waitlist signups

2010-09

Company renamed from /dev/payments to Stripe (almost named PayDemon). Private beta continues with manual account processing

2011-03

Raised $2M seed from Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and SV Angel at $20M valuation

2011-06

Monthly Capture The Flag hackathon events begin at Stripe offices, attracting developer talent

2011-09

Public launch in the United States. ~1,000 signups accumulated through beta. Pricing set at 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction with no setup or monthly fees

2011-12

StackOverflow ads become first paid marketing channel - only paid channel for over a year

2012-02

Series A: $18M led by General Catalyst and Sequoia at $100M valuation

2012-06

Patrick spends nearly 2 years carefully recruiting first 10 employees; 8 of 10 are fellow founders

2013-03

First acquisition: Kickoff. Company begins expanding beyond core payments API

2013-09

Surpasses 100,000 active accounts, just 2 years after public launch

2014-01

Series B: $80M. Stripe achieves unicorn status with $1.75B valuation

2014-09

Launches Stripe Connect for marketplace and platform payments (enabling Lyft, Shopify)

2014-12

Series C-I: $70M at $3.5B valuation led by Thrive Capital

2015-07

Series C-II: $100M at $5B valuation. Investors include American Express, Kleiner Perkins, Visa

2016-02

Stripe Atlas launches to help entrepreneurs worldwide incorporate as US businesses in 20 minutes

2016-10

Launches Stripe Radar (machine learning fraud detection) and Stripe Sigma (SQL reporting)

2016-11

Series D: $150M at $9B valuation led by CapitalG (Alphabet) and General Catalyst

2018

Stripe launches Stripe Issuing (virtual/physical card creation) and Stripe Terminal (in-person payments)

2019-09

Series G: $250M at $35B valuation. Stripe becomes most valuable US startup

2020

Launches Stripe Treasury (banking-as-a-service) and Stripe Capital (business loans)

2021-03

Series H: $600M at $95B valuation - peak private valuation during pandemic growth

2022-11

Lays off 14% of workforce (~1,100 employees). Internal valuation reduced to $50B. Patrick acknowledges over-hiring

2023

Processes $1T in total payment volume for the year. Returns to profitability pursuit after cuts

2024

Revenue grows 34% to $5.1B. Returns to full-year profitability with $101.9M pre-tax profit. Payment volume reaches $1.4T

2025-02

Secondary tender offer values Stripe at $91.5B, nearly matching 2021 peak. Over 1M customers worldwide