Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

I love the quote from John Collison:

"This is digital migration in a very compressed period of time, for both businesses and customers," Collison adds. "My mom recently asked me if I'd heard of 'this Instacart thing.' Yeah mom, I have."

Sadly, it’s also likely one of the largest and fastest transfers of wealth from small businesses to large corporations. As Amazon hires 100,000+ workers how many small businesses are shuttering for good?

Stripe is one of the “good” tech companies in this respect by helping to level the playing field for smaller businesses, but it’s not going to be enough.

I don't understand this idolization of small over large (or vice versa for others). The thing that matters most is that businesses best satisfy their customers, whether they are small or large.

There's no benefit to having a small business that provides inferior products or inferior service relative to a large company.

I buy from small companies all the time and many of those that I do will likely survive because they provide better goods and services than any large company.

Large companies have more power than smaller ones. This could be the power to offer poor products at inflated prices, or power to alter political processes to their favor.

Also small companies often employ and are owned by my neighbors.. Amazon doesn't and is owned by a bunch of hedge funds and a dude who buys $200M houses.

Large companies also employ my neighbors, and clearly for a better value as otherwise they would be with smaller ones. As for ownership, Amazon is part of the S&P 500 which is quite literally owned by millions of folks in their savings, 401k's etc. Hence the reality is not that simple.