Stripe Is Now a $20B Company

They are a great example of how an API is all that really matters. Anyone could have done their biz, but they made a good API.

I agree that their API is great, but there's so much more to building a business - most of all perseverance. Many people can make a good or great API but very few can execute on the rest.

Well in this case their API is backed by a connection to credit card systems... the hard part. The card companies could have done it, but they needed Stripe to show how obvious it is.

The reason Stripe exists is because the card companies couldn't do it. They were incompetent, unimaginative, lazy, slow, arrogant, etc.

Exactly what you typically see out of entrenched goliaths.

It's the same reason several of them that have tried can't catch up with Stripe, despite trying for years, despite vast resources, and despite Stripe showing them how to do it.

It's only in a non-reality-touching theory that the card companies could have done it (ie if you entirely disregard everything about them and only focus on resources and then give them attributes they don't possess). In actuality, they couldn't do it.

Microsoft and Nokia couldn't have produced the iPhone. IBM couldn't have produced AWS. AOL couldn't have produced Google. Disney couldn't have produced Netflix. Facebook couldn't have produced Instagram. Xerox couldn't have produced the Apple II. Sony and Microsoft couldn't have produced Steam. GM and Ford couldn't have produced the Model S. Boeing and Lockheed couldn't have produced the Falcon 9. Wyndham and Hilton couldn't have produced Airbnb. The taxi cartels couldn't have produced Uber or Lyft.

Culture acting as an innovation blockade is the unifying impediment between them all, not lack of resources or that something was technically too challenging.

> The card companies could have done it

That's not how card companies work. There's 100s of payment processor out there and the card companies let you shop around and pick one that's right for you. They do however require said processors to have large amounts of money just to access their systems.

Stripe has lots of funding to do that AND get good developers to build a decent payment processor.

This is soo true. One of the best comments I have seen on HN.

Thanks.

I agree. What I meant by "could" is it was right in their backyard, as are all your examples. Their failure is representative of bigco culture.

what makes the Stripe API so good? Are you referring to the API design itself? Or just the fact that they programmatically exposed this functionality.