News Courtesy of businessinsider.com:
Patrick Collison, 29, and his brother John, 27, famously turned seven lines of code into a startup called Stripe, which has been valued in fundraising at $9.2 billion.
According to Collison, who was recently named to Business Insider’s list of rising stars in tech, running a successful startup doesn’t get any easier.
On an episode of NPR’s excellent podcast “How I Built This” with Guy Raz, the Collison brothers shared the story of how they founded and sold their first company before they turned 20 and went on to build Stripe, a software company that uses just a few lines of code to power the payment systems of companies like Target, Lyft, and Kickstarter.
Ryan’s Take 
I can’t help but admire these young entrepreneurs in the tech sector that have built their business from virtually nothing. Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, is probably the most notable from this group over the last twenty years. Sure, some of it is luck and having the right connections. However, it certainly can’t be easy to build such a business and sustain it in its infancy. I’m sure a lot of dedication and sacrifices must be made in order to be successful in such a manner.
Ever since I discovered Stripe as a viable alternative to PayPal a little over a year ago, I’ve been impressed with their integration with WordPress plugins. If you’re a business owner, it is extremely easy to set up and configure to start accepting payments on your website. The fees are comparable to PayPal with similar features that you would find on reputable merchant account and payment gateway providers. It seems like the Collison brothers aren’t content to rest on their laurels either. I get semi-frequent notices about new features and updates on the Stripe platform.
I had no idea that Stripe powered the payment systems of Target, Lyft AND Kickstarter. Now they are zeroing in on Zillow? The future looks even brighter. Although I do use PayPal for personal use, I would never consider it for frequent business usage. Having a few bad experiences with frozen funds kinda left a sour taste in my mouth. Trying to get disputes resolved with PayPal felt like dealing with some medieval court. They didn’t care about my side of the story and instead would make decisions without considering all the facts. I’m not saying Stripe is perfect, but their support team seems to care about their customers. Seeing how they handled a goof-up with Kinsta shows me that they value their customers, at least as much as their bottom-line.
