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>> [music] >> Founder down. >> You're watching TVN.
3:58
We are here live at Stripe Sessions.
4:02
We're joined by John and Patrick Collison. Thank you for having us. How is it going so far? >> It's incredible.
4:07
We have 10,000 people here. >> 10,000 people here.
4:10
>> and it is just the center the economy is re-platforming around AI and I think that's the theme of the conference. >> Which economy?
4:14
Is that the global economy of which you control 1. 6%?
4:18
>> That is the we talk about the internet economy, but you know yourself everything is in the internet economy these days.
4:22
There's very few companies that are not interesting at being at the center of the internet economy.
4:26
So it's increasingly the whole thing. >> Okay.
4:28
>> And when we spoke back a couple of weeks ago which in singularity time is you know a couple of months ago or exactly, yeah.
4:34
Um we said that we're seeing a significant surge in new business creation.
4:37
That is roughly doubled again since then.
4:41
And so as of um >> And wait, are you tracking that through Stripe Atlas specifically or through just new companies that are onboarding to Stripe as a payment processor? >> Both. Both.
4:49
So March was an all-time record for new incorporations with Stripe Atlas.
4:53
And then in Q1 overall for just new businesses joining Stripe that was up 71% year-over-year.
4:57
We showed the chart at the beginning of our keynote yesterday. It is it is parabolic. It is exponential.
5:04
I'm you know running out of mathematical terms, but it's it's really very striking.
5:08
>> And do you like the I guess my collar's a little ruffled. There we go.
5:11
>> Someone's ruffled, yeah. >> All right.
5:12
And and and do you like the idea that this is driven by AI?
5:16
This is driven by democratization of more tools, smaller companies, that there's more sort of like lifestyle businesses popping up?
5:24
>> I So initially I thought when I saw these charts that it's um that it's about new vibe-coded businesses that are more abundant in number, but on a on a in any given instance maybe not as significant or not growing as quickly or you know whatever.
5:39
What we're actually finding is not only are there so many more businesses, but the average revenue per business is also increasing.
5:46
And so it's not just more new tiny ones. >> Yeah.
5:50
Somehow the the median business is also doing better.
5:53
>> Yeah, I think even the term lifestyle business, you know, there's like a bit pejorative. It betrays a worldview.
5:58
Whereas what we're seeing is there's tons of business now making more than a million dollars a year.
6:03
Like that number is really inflecting.
6:04
And in general, like we think about it in ah, you got the little color service.
6:08
I mean, I just want to be doing my color myself.
6:09
And so, you also have to look at this almost in Cosian terms where what we're seeing is more small businesses.
6:17
>> revoked for drinking this.
6:19
>> I just want to clarify that these are full-size pints, everyone.
6:21
These are full-size pints.
6:22
We're just very large humans.
6:24
I just want to clarify that it's Guinness 00, which is very good.
6:26
But given that it's 11:00 a. m. , it's a little early. Yeah. >> Um >> Yeah.
6:32
>> But what are you seeing at Coast?
6:34
>> Oh, just yeah, we're seeing thanks to AI, you now have more small businesses able to do million dollars plus of revenue and be really impactful.
6:40
And so, we think you'll probably see smaller firms have a big impact.
6:45
>> and and what's driving this is you think AI is making every little step of entrepreneurship slightly easier.
6:48
Like slightly easier to incorporate, slightly easier to create a contract, or to hire somebody, slightly easier to create an ad.
6:56
And then you add all that together and it's >> It's the merging of all the functions.
6:59
It's the fact that you can do your design and your PM and your engineering all yourself as one really effective person.
7:04
Sam Altman was here yesterday on stage and he was talking about the the return of the idea guy. The fact that exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
7:10
[laughter] The fact that if you the long maligned idea guy, but now if you have really good ideas, you can actually go execute them and you have so much more capability to do so.
7:18
And again, we are seeing that born out in the Stripe data where I think this phenomenon shows up as 71% year-over-year growth in in businesses launching.
7:26
>> So, I mean, it feels like you could do nothing and win.
7:27
Stripe's in the right place at the right time, but you're probably not taking advantage >> not doing nothing, I'll tell you that.
7:34
So, tell me what you're actually doing.
7:35
How are you accelerating these businesses?
7:36
Like what are you changing about Stripe?
7:38
What products are you adding?
7:39
What functionalities are you building?
7:41
So, all the is going agentic.
7:43
We think that people will like people will still be doing stuff, but they will do it through their agent. So, what does that mean?
7:48
On the consumer side of things, like we've all had the experience of, you know, you're in chat GPT and you're recent like I was trying to buy a case for my bike and I was going back and forth and I was, you know, asking questions about for what I you know, hard versus soft, things like that.
7:59
But anyway, at the end of that, you just want to be able to hit buy rather than like no one wants to fill out web forms.
8:04
It's not a value added activity.
8:05
And so, we just announced that Google is joining our agentic commerce suite.
8:08
So, now we have Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta all working with us on this agentic coming commerce modality where you can just buy there.
8:16
That is the consumer side of things.
8:18
Do you want to talk about the developer side of things?
8:20
>> me give you three other things.
8:20
So, first, we're seeing a change across the economy and business models where with inference costs with tokens and so forth and so many businesses, you know, in some way taking advantage of AI in their products, we're seeing a shift from SaaS from seat-based business models to usage-based business models.
8:33
And I think this is this is pretty profound.
8:35
So, we acquired a company called Metronome back a couple months ago and we're now integrating that cohesively throughout the Stripe platform.
8:40
We demoed yesterday a thing that I think is very cool and is the intersection between crypto / stablecoins and usage-based billing where basically you can have streaming payments where you're paying for each token as it's delivered. >> In real time. >> Yeah, exactly.
8:54
Today, there's a kind of credit extension that implicitly happens with any you know, token token billing which you're when you're billed at the end of the month and so forth, which is actually pretty tricky because if you have token thieves, if you have, you know, some failed billing after somebody's racked up a million dollar credit card tab or something that that that that's a real problem for the providers.
9:11
So, anyway, we're doing a lot around usage-based billing in this economy-wide structural transformation.
9:16
Then secondly, to this fraud point, we're seeing I mean, concomitant with the number of increase in new business creation, we're also seeing a lot of fraud.
9:23
And there's >> A lot of fraud attempt.
9:26
>> Yeah, so uh you know, when you um you can't resell access to software.
9:30
And so, if you got illicit access to some SaaS tool 2 years ago, there wasn't much you could do with that SaaS tool monetize so to so to speak.
9:37
There wasn't much incentive to steal SAS.
9:39
Um but you can resell tokens.
9:41
It's very lucrative to do so.
9:43
Uh and so all these new AI companies and all these new AI products, growth is not really a problem for them.
9:50
They have a surfeit of growth, but there are also a lot of people um token pilferers uh looking to at ne'er-do-wells.
9:57
Exactly, looking to run away with these uh these you know this precious value.
10:02
>> And and and walk us through how that would work how that works in practice.
10:05
Is that somebody spinning up a bunch of free accounts and then like hitting them with just kind of the bare minute or >> Is it token distillation or actual reselling? >> Both. Really, both.
10:15
So so so there's definitely just straight resell, but then there's also more sophisticated attacks and distillation.
10:20
So So anyway, we've seen that one in six new accounts across this ecosystem are fraudulent.
10:25
Um uh and for many providers, it's actually difficult now to offer free trials because, you know, the uh um the illicit accounts that sign up for these free trials, they drive so much expense that it's hard to make the overall economics work out.
10:39
So anyway, we're extending Stripe Radar to use the intelligence of the Stripe network to help any of these companies not only score payments, but score customer sign-ups, to score trials, and we're, you know, turning Stripe Radar into this um into this uh sort of um x-ray vision uh for the AI economy to try to prevent these new and more sophisticated attacks.
11:00
I think this is really important in that we're not going to have an internash with self-serve access >> Yeah, so so so uh just to repeat it back to you, the the if if somebody signs up and they can basically pay for tokens streaming with stable coins, that would enable like, let's say, a big AI company to be able to offer a self-serve product and not worry about someone coming in, running up a big to- token bill, and then saying like, "See you.
11:25
I'm not even in the country."
11:27
>> That's exactly right, but we're also going to try to protect the regular sign-up flows as well and the kind of more straightforward consumer access.
11:33
>> If you run any physical store, you have to worry about shrinkage and you know, no one wants the direction of travel where, you know, you go to a CVS and everything is locked up behind the painting.
11:41
You know, goods, you know, upstanding people suffer from, you know, the small percentage of crime that happens.
11:47
It's the exact same in the AI land where similarly they are selling a, you know, product that has, you know, real value and real resale value.
11:54
Exactly, real cost associated.
11:54
And so therefore, they need to prevent fraud not just for financial loss for themselves, but also this so they can continue to offer a great experience to all the good users.
12:03
>> Well, I I want to go way deeper, but I know you have a hard stop.
12:04
Do you have something else to say?
12:07
>> Well, I was going to say one thing before I have to scurry away, which is you know, so we're with this usage based billing stuff.
12:12
We have the agent of commerce stuff that John just described.
12:15
We have these this new fraud functionality.
12:16
And then the other thing is Stripe started out of course as a payments company, but we've, you know, for the last couple of years Stripe has uh been becoming a a broader programmable financial services platform.
12:29
And that's a bit of a mouthful.
12:31
What it means in practice is that not only should you be able to get paid with Stripe, but you should be able to hold money in Stripe, be able to pay people around the world, be able to orchestrate your entire financial services business.
12:43
It's sort of be an operating system for for global money movement.
12:47
And so we announced Stripe Treasury where businesses can hold balances in Stripe.
12:51
They can dispatch money to more than 150 countries.
12:54
The instant free Stripe-to-Stripe account transfers and so forth.
12:59
And so rather than Stripe being this sort of conduit for money ephemerally passes through, Stripe is becoming a home.
13:05
And this is very valuable, we think, because Stripe's expertise in building programmable tools and APIs and CLI functionality and all the rest, this is obviously much more important in the agent era.
13:17
>> Was, sorry to cut you off, was this in the seed pitch deck?
13:20
>> None of this was in the seed pitch deck.
13:22
>> [laughter] >> No, but but I imagine like you're in the fund you're you're We're people we're in the funds flow at some point or another, we won't just pass this back to their bank account.
13:29
We'll actually be able to unlock the value of the >> That wasn't in the seed pitch deck.
13:32
And in general, you know, the secret being a Silicon Valley founder is you have to like get lucky for many, many years in a row, and then you go back and you pretend that that was, you know, your plan all along. You know, reset. Exactly.
13:42
Yeah, you do a lot of red cunning.
13:44
That's That's That's very important.
13:45
However, what I will say is interesting is we did focus from the very beginning on developers.
13:50
Uh and we thought developers were very important under serve.
13:54
I mean, Stripe's original name was slashdev/payments.
13:57
And you know, payments for developers was you can go back in the wayback machine.
14:00
That was the tagline on the on the website.
14:03
I think what's interesting now, obviously, is that the, you know, all the Agentech coding tools need something with well-documented APIs, with everything being available on an API basis.
14:13
And so, I think we have always thought that companies should take developers more seriously.
14:16
I think we're now seeing just industry-wide companies that took developers seriously are now really benefiting from this AI moment because they built their stuff for the agents.
14:26
>> Well, also, everyone's a developer now. >> Exactly.
14:28
Going back >> And and agents feel like they are developer-shaped at least. >> Exactly.
14:32
Agents want good DX developer experience even more than humans do.
14:34
And so, if you don't have a I mean, it's it's a real problem.
14:39
>> going to make it simple.
14:40
>> I think they're going to kill me if we keep you any longer. >> Okay.
14:42
>> We'll let you get out of here.
14:42
We did want you to sign this plaque.
14:43
Can you explain to us what this is and what it what it stands for? You familiar?
14:47
This is the original uh uh >> print that went into >> Wait, what? How did you get that? That's ours.
14:54
>> It was sent >> sent to us, and we want you to sign it.
14:57
>> You thieves from the Stripe archive. >> From the archive.
15:00
>> We have a museum of business where we try and accumulate signed objects of historical significance.
15:06
>> Poor Charlie's Almanack paper cover.
15:08
>> Hey, this is the paperback >> Yeah. >> It's heavy.
15:12
It's This is how we made the original hard cover, if you have it, of Poor Charlie's Almanack. So, sorry, I'm sorry.
15:18
>> right there, and we'll have Patrick right over there. >> Yeah.
15:20
>> And this will live on >> The literal gold master. Yes. >> Yes.
15:23
>> and we will let you get out of here.
15:23
Uh and we will go way deeper. Stay with us.
15:27
We are going to continue our interview with John Collison from Stripe at Stripe Sessions here in San Francisco.
15:31
Uh thank you so much, Patrick, for taking the time to come chat with us.
15:35
We really appreciate having you on the show. It's always a pleasure. >> Cheers. >> And congratulations.
15:42
We do want to have you Can we have you hit the gong?
15:46
Uh what is the headline number?
15:46
What is Let's have you hit the gong.
15:49
Is that the headline Can you hit the gong? >> number.
15:50
Stay tuned for the 2026 number. >> And smack that gong. >> Powerful. Powerful hit. >> Powerful hit.
16:00
>> I see why you can tell he's been lifting. >> Yes. Yes. Yes. Uh well, thank you.
16:03
Have a great rest of Stripe Sessions.
16:05
We really appreciate you coming on the show.
16:06
Uh I wanted to shift over to another Stripe Press book.
16:10
This is uh Maintenance of Everything by Stewart Brand.
16:12
And in here, the general thesis is uh uh what what Maintenance of Everything?
16:18
I I mean, I'd love to know what you took away from this, but uh maintenance is what keeps everything going, it's what keeps life going.
16:22
And he gives a ton of really interesting anecdotes about cars and repairs and weaponry and sailing.
16:30
And there's so many interesting anecdotes.
16:32
And I'm wondering about your thoughts on maintenance in the age of AI and what you feel and see in this the like we're in this maybe there's like this job replacement thing AI does everything, but then there's so much that goes on in the maintenance >> of technical debt.
16:48
>> And so I was wondering if you just reflect on like Brand's work in the age of AI.
16:52
>> So, Stewart Brand is obviously amazing.
16:54
And um uh you know, it's maybe famous for the uh the Whole Earth Catalog originally, which uh you know, Steve Jobs talked about in that uh that famous commencement speech.
17:02
But uh Stewart Brand has been around for the entirety of Silicon Valley history.
17:06
Like if you go back and read the uh the Tom Wolfe book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, I don't know if you guys are uh big Tom Wolfe fans, but it's talking about like the early LSD culture of the 1960s in the Bay Area, they these parties.
17:18
Stewart Brand is in the book, you know.
17:20
He's like there at those early parties and everything like that.
17:22
Yeah, when like the you know, the Grateful Dead and everything like that.
17:26
And so, he's just been like there for everything all along.
17:29
He was the He was the manning the computer at the mother of all demos, you know, the Engelbart's famous demo.
17:34
That was where the the original mouse was demoed.
17:39
Where the mouse was shown. Exactly.
17:41
Among a ton of other things. Exactly.
17:42
So, Stewart Brand is still, you know, he just published this book.
17:44
And so, Stewart Brand is so intertwined with the the history of technology and Silicon Valley through technology.
17:51
And obviously, what this book is getting at and also the Whole Earth Catalog is this passion for tools and taking care of your tools and kind of thinking about tools.
17:59
And it's interesting you bring that up in the context of AI because one thing that I get excited about in the current moment is this idea of individual empowerment.
18:11
And you know, you could have different visions of AI and I definitely have an adverse reaction to this, you know, very passive you know, I think the term slop is you know, the term we use for this just you know, being a passive recipient of AI generated stuff and no one wants the you know, Brave New World soma kind of vision.
18:30
And instead, if you look at something like um like open claw, I get very excited about that because you are giving computing power and the ability to do stuff with programming and tinkering with technology.
18:45
It's the Homebrew Computer Club all over again.
18:47
It's this tinkering energy that's back.
18:48
And so, I just get really excited about how I think tools and passion for tools is ascendant.
18:56
>> there's been towards the entire like Mac Mini Open Claw movement when it's like for how how how long how long has Silicon Valley been like, "I miss the days of like the hacker era."
19:06
And then the hacker era comes back and then and then people people create the market. >> I agree.
19:13
And I Okay, I was reflecting on this.
19:15
I think there's something interesting where people maybe have an adverse reaction to early adopter enthusiast culture.
19:23
Uh the early open claw um enthusiast group really reminds me of the early Bitcoin enthusiast group who also got people's backs up in a way.
19:35
Like, you remember that famous New York Times article with like the guys with the sweaters?
19:38
Like, those guys are pretty into open claw right now.
19:41
[laughter] So, there's something about the maybe because people tend to overhype stuff, you know, they say my open claw does this.
19:47
Like, maybe it doesn't quite know or something like that.
19:48
But, the tinkering is back, and I think that's really cool.
19:53
And so, I agree with you.
19:54
It's crazy that um you know, people have this skepticism because it's easily like the most fun you can have with computers.
20:01
>> People on people on X, you know, see an open claw meetup in some place like Tokyo, and they're just like mocking it, right?
20:07
And it's like isn't this isn't this isn't this like core to the culture? >> Exactly.
20:12
Yeah, I'm totally with you.
20:15
>> that is the optimistic uh take on open claw tinkering. I love that. That's what I believe.
20:19
But, there is the other side, which is the not just the tools, but the tool-shaped objects.
20:23
You've heard of this criticism that uh you wind up I I've I've had this exact experience where I've gone to Codex and built a whole thing and been like, that could have just been a prompt.
20:31
And like, I didn't actually need to have an instantiated Python script.
20:34
Like, I could have And and and I think there is a risk in some enterprises of having 25 people vibe coding dashboards when you could have just had one.
20:42
There is some managerial de-duping and overhead and management.
20:46
And I'm wondering how you've grappled with that side of AI. >> Yeah.
20:49
I mean, a few thoughts here.
20:53
One is uh I think it's just awesome that software is becoming so accessible.
20:58
I think we should really celebrate that.
21:00
Like, I'm writing much more software even just from a kind of a fun perspective because it is so fun and know, kind of addictive feeling.
21:08
I think we're also very clearly in a transitional state.
21:10
Where it just doesn't feel to me that the way we do things in 2026, where you know, you need to prompt us to, you know, make no mistakes.
21:21
So, you know, you saw the caveman token efficiency thing where it's like if you talk like a caveman and I ask you to talk like a caveman, it just uses fewer tokens.
21:26
And so, but gets the same results, you know, it's as effective.
21:29
And so, if you want to kind of economize in the token budget, >> And its prompt was no six fingers.
21:34
And I haven't seen an AI image with six fingers in a year.
21:37
And we just we just crossed that chasm. >> Exactly.
21:41
You know, if you're doing anything with financial data, you know, you need to prompt it to do not make up any numbers.
21:45
And then it's much better at, you know, not making up numbers.
21:50
Where we are in 2026 is clearly not where we're going to be.
21:51
The models are getting much better, but I think right now we're in this interesting transitional period.
21:56
There is this software fatigue as you say, where, you know, from software maintenance things like that.
22:00
I think we'll we'll get there.
22:02
And like all these things, you know, there's push and takes.
22:04
>> People are talking a lot about the offensive side of security, which is true with, you know, the very powerful new models.
22:09
>> But of course you also have the defensive side of things, where if you ask your, you know, 5.
22:11
5 to audit, go take a look at this application, take a look at this, just like go push around this server, and give me a security audit and suggestions to how to lock it down, it'll do a great job of that.
22:21
And so, again, I think we just haven't figured out what the end state is.
22:27
>> Yeah, yeah, it it it does feel like as we move up the layers of abstraction, we go from, you know, pair programming alongside an AI to being more of a product manager to almost winding up more in a build versus buy mentality.
22:41
buy mentality. And yes, you could vibe code that, but if it already exists or it's open source already or there's something you can pull off the shelf, and it's going to be cheaper than the token cost, cheaper than the maintenance, like maybe
22:50
>> But again, we'll end up in a new equilibrium where, you know, the I think exporting your data will become more important because you'll get back to the Unix philosophy of, you know, you have individual tools that are much easier to interoperate between each other. You can kind of pipe
23:01
You can kind of pipe your data conceptually between applications.
23:04
If I can also bring this back to payments for a moment, a very important angle on all this stuff.
23:07
You guys have probably had the experience of when you are doing something in Codex, when you're vibe coding away, you are the adult that needs to reach for things on the high shelves for us.
23:18
And so, it is much better writing code than you.
23:22
It's able to architect an application.
23:24
So, what do you need to do?
23:24
You need to go sign up for an API key for >> of a website that I can't access it. >> Exactly.
23:31
Log in and please get me API keys is like something you end up doing a lot.
23:34
And so, one of our biggest announcements this year was something called Stripe Project where you are able to agentically do stuff in the wider world.
23:42
And so, you can hook up your Codex to Stripe Project.
23:44
And if you want to we demo this, if you want to deploy a website, it can go sign up for Vercel for you. And it can pay for it.
23:51
And so, now what was previously a multi-step process where it could kind of do some version it could like orchestrate Vercel, but it couldn't sign up for it.
24:01
Now it can pay for Vercel.
24:01
It can pay for Cloudflare.
24:03
It can pay for browser-based if you want to you know do headless web browsing and things like that.
24:09
It can do all this stuff.
24:09
And so, we think the agents are going to get so much more powerful because we're we're giving them the ability to actually go buy what they need in the wider world.
24:18
And then it can do way more end-to-end.
24:19
And so, that's Stripe Project which is kind of the second side of agentic commerce is your your agent needs to be able to go do stuff on your behalf.
24:26
And you're exactly right.
24:27
Agentic coding agents are not They're for doing stuff.
24:31
You know, we demoed today write a research report for me, buy some data in the process of doing that research report.
24:37
But again, that's not I happen to use a coding agent for it. It is not a coding task.
24:41
It's a it's a research task.
24:43
>> Yeah, yeah, this happened I on the show I used Codex I vibe coded a a beautiful webpage for some joke we were joking about.
24:49
And I was like I it's on my local host I need to send it to Jordy.
24:53
And actually deploying it was the harder part which is supposed to be so easy.
24:56
And that's that's why >> Stripe projects is the only way you can genetically buy a domain.
24:58
Like you you don't need to have anything.
25:00
You don't need to have an account with any of these providers.
25:02
You can just go buy a domain. It's super cool.
25:05
>> And I feel like that's a really important Let's >> How was recruiting How has recruiting changed over the last few years because I feel like so much of of what made has made Stripe such an incredible company is convincing the smartest, most ambitious people in the world to work in payments, a place that they historically maybe wouldn't have been excited to work.
25:22
And then now I imagine the job of any any person that that could get a job at Stripe can probably also get an offer at at OpenAI and Anthropic, you know, some of these other labs.
25:32
And so I imagine you you find yourself having conversations with folks.
25:35
Uh and helping them make a decision. >> Yes.
25:39
So >> I mean >> So some of the base you go there.
25:41
One as you say uh I think we have always encouraged people to think bigger than just payments.
25:47
And I think if you know, Stripe was just about payments, fewer people would have been interested in joining.
25:51
But I think they understand that going back to tools and the importance of them.
25:54
I think people understand that the infrastructure that we give people for entrepreneurship actually changes the outcomes.
25:59
You know, we're moving the supply demand curve.
26:02
And so we can encourage there to be more entrepreneurship.
26:03
Again, Patrick talks about 71% year-over-year growth in the number of businesses being created on Stripe.
26:08
That's not all Stripe, but we definitely contribute to it by making the whole entrepreneurship journey easier.
26:13
And then when those companies scale, you know, OpenAI sells ChatGPT I think in more countries than it otherwise would have because all that infrastructure is just super available and on rails.
26:21
And so it exists at kind of the small getting started end of the spectrum and for you know, the biggest companies in the world, the Amazons and Hertz's and Metas and everyone like that that we work with on on projects like this.
26:31
You probably saw the like the stablecoin thing. We answered them. Okay.
26:33
So that's one part of it is like you have to genuinely have a mission that's interesting and I think we believed and believe that this stuff actually really matters and you can change the the end equal That's one.
26:47
Second thing is that it has always been uh the most competitive time I can remember >> [laughter] >> to compete for talent.
26:57
It's just like I can never remember a time when it wasn't the case.
27:00
And also >> it was easy when you were competing with Mark Zuckerberg.
27:02
And then it was easy when you were competing against Elon Musk.
27:05
>> forget when we're like no man steps in the same river twice cuz, you know, he's not the same man and it's not the same river.
27:09
Like, I remember you know, when we were recruiting Greg Brockman, who's our second employee, who you know, we're going to have speak um uh yesterday but we had Sam instead uh cuz he had a lack of non-compete this week.
27:20
>> [laughter] >> But, I remember recruiting Greg to join Stripe as our second employee, flying across the country to Boston to go meet with him because like, you know, why would you join this like no-name company that you've ever heard of?
27:28
And that's kind of stuff you do then and like you start And so, it's always the most competitive time that it's ever been with recruiting and this is certainly no exception.
27:38
And you know, people have a lot of um uh great options.
27:42
That kind of gets to I think, you know, people are talking about the death of software engineering.
27:48
And honestly, the closer people are to AI, the more they're like, "Oh, you know, software engineering is cooked.
27:54
You know, it's got 2 years left."
27:54
I think those people are all high, honestly.
27:57
Like, >> [laughter] >> Just you have you have so much you have you are able to work with AI so much better if you understand the underlying concepts.
28:09
Uh and you're so much better prepared for that.
28:12
And I'd almost analogize it to Remember in the '90s, people had this view that like, "Okay, you know, the cloud or like a proto cloud back then is coming along.
28:21
The network is the computer." All this vision.
28:22
And people tried to have these leaky abstraction or like abstract you know, they thought they had a beautiful abstraction where you would have uh you know, a folder that just happened to be on the network in the cloud.
28:32
And uh you know, you still have that on the Mac today, you know, your iCloud folder and things like that.
28:37
Uh and same on Microsoft Windows.
28:38
Those never worked that well cuz it turns out the network exists and you know, it can sometimes be down in a way that your hard drive wasn't and things like like And so, it was always important to understand disk I/O and RAM swap and all these kind of things even if you had useful helper abstractions over them.
28:52
I think with AI, similarly, to be really effective working with AI, you need to understand what it's doing and what's going on underneath the hood.
29:00
You need to understand that there's the model and then the memory and then you've your harnesses and you've your you've got your skills and everything like that and how they all interact.
29:06
And so, I I think all these people calling the death of software engineering, yeah, are are smoking something.
29:14
>> Yeah, I mean, there's also just the software engineers are dynamic and intelligent, creative, and can operate at various levels of abstraction.
29:20
at various levels of abstraction. And there have been transitions >> you want to make the argument that that AI will will transform every aspect of the economy, but that engineering like core understanding of engineering and
29:31
software engineering will no longer be valuable, that's that's And and and and obviously some some of the people that are are more bearish on on the practice of software engineering have um you know, uptime issues and like Stripe is a category where you guys can't really afford to have Yes. you know,
29:47
you know, uh reliability issues.
29:49
>> There's two categories of people I would be super bullish on right now.
29:50
I think we'll do incredibly well over the coming 10 to 20 years.
29:53
Firstly, high agency people. We know this at Stripe.
29:55
The people who are like, I've been talking to customers, I know exactly what we should do. We got to go fix this.
29:59
But the people who have that pep in their step and they want to go make Stripe better, um they are now so much more empowered thanks to AI.
30:06
The second is double majors.
30:08
I think if you understand software and understand finance or if you understand software and understand marketing, you now can go massively improve the entire marketing funnel for your company and one person can do what would have taken 20 people dredging through all these systems previously.
30:23
>> famous Paul Graham quote about that, too. >> Yeah, exactly.
30:25
>> Typically, an entrepreneurship team, a founding team has a collection of like five or six skills between two founders, three founders.
30:32
>> Charlie Munger talked about the importance of being multi-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary thinking.
30:35
And implied was that like he thinks getting a functional understanding of many disciplines is not that hard.
30:41
You can just go read the books.
30:43
Now, you know, you can talk to your AI about it.
30:44
And so I think multi-disciplinary thinkers are going to do incredibly well. >> Yeah.
30:51
Uh do we have a minute to talk about stablecoins?
30:53
>> We have 1 minute, yeah. >> Okay, 1 minute.
30:53
Uh the uh in The Economist in Buttonwood, there is uh there there's a lot of doom and gloom about the stablecoin winter.
31:00
I put a ton of money in stablecoins, didn't make a dime. >> That's >> I know.
31:07
>> [laughter] >> I'm good.
31:08
They're saying it's too stable.
31:08
But they're saying that the market uh grew 30% in the 6 months up until late October, but still total stablecoin assets have barely budged since.
31:16
Are we in a stablecoin winter?
31:19
Broadly, are you seeing >> Yeah, this is this is The Economist not processing that there there can be a correction.
31:25
There can [laughter] be there can be a correction in crypto asset prices and yet more adoption than ever in actual the utility of stablecoins and and the two things are not not not the same.
31:36
>> We're always trying to point out to people like the difference between price curves and the underlying activity.
31:39
And like those are very different things.
31:42
Uh and you know, we're talking about that in the SAS pod clips in the context of you know, SAS growth has been really good despite >> are still growing top lines. >> Exactly.
31:49
Top line growth is really good and everything like that.
31:51
And so uh kind of similar story with stablecoins where we see volumes continue to grow.
31:54
And again, we have this in a lot of our demos.
31:59
With agentic pay-per-use payments or streaming payments or things like that, you actually have to use something like Tempo.
32:05
You have to use stablecoins because economically speaking, just like what else are you going to do?
32:09
And so we are as bullish on stablecoins as we've ever been. >> Fantastic.
32:14
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show.
32:17
>> Great hanging out with you guys.
32:18
>> Thanks for having us at The Cheeky Pine. >> Yes, there you go.
32:20
You guys have the perfect setup.
32:22
>> Uh have a great rest of Stripe Sessions.
32:24
We'll take these headphones off and we will bring on our next guest. >> All righty. Tap out. Cheers. >> go. Goodbye.
32:32
Uh and we will bring on Henry next.
32:34
Welcome back to the show.
32:34
Last time we were in person, uh we'll let you put those headphones on.
32:39
I think last time you were in person, didn't you help us translate something in French? Something random? Do you remember that? >> do.
32:46
This is my second audition.
32:46
It was about uh >> You can sit here.
32:50
>> It's about meta acquisitions. >> Oh, yeah.
32:53
>> of the >> That's right.
32:54
Yeah, yeah, because we were interviewed for French TV and we didn't know what they were saying and you helped us understand it. That was fun. Uh what a wild time.
33:00
I mean, I guess it's only getting wilder.
33:02
Have you been struggling with any of the the talent wars or have you been recruiting for your team?
33:07
Are you growing your organization now? >> All of the above.
33:11
I mean, so when we were acquired, this is coming up on a 9 months.
33:15
We were about 30 people at Privy.
33:17
We're about 60 now and then Stripe generally is doing so much more.
33:23
>> [laughter] >> The soundboard made it. >> Incredible.
33:25
Uh and then Stripe is doing a lot more in this space.
33:27
Um so generally, I think the talent wars are real.
33:31
Uh but also the reality is is is twofold.
33:33
First, you have to be a little bit damaged to go into crypto and stablecoins to begin with.
33:36
And so we're seeing these people who are still, you know, coming in.
33:40
And then actually, we're seeing a lot more uh merging of the two.
33:43
Which is to say uh yeah, yesterday was a good demo on like streaming micro payments.
33:47
Like there's a lot more that I think stablecoins and like, you know, internet-native money is going to enable for agentic use cases.
33:54
It's still very much in its infancy, but it's like >> Yeah, we just spoke with the Carlson's around, you know, the all this issue around AI, fraud, people signing up for a bunch of free accounts to get access to tokens, or people signing up for an account, running up a bill, and then basically stiffing the the provider.
34:06
And uh and how stablecoins could effectively be a solve for that, which is like, "Hey, if you're if you're if you're going to just sign up and use this tool, that's fine.
34:16
We don't necessarily know who you are.
34:18
We don't need to KYC to use like a you know, a language model, but you might need to use stablecoins >> to pay as you go to Stripe >> to pay as you go, so there's no so there's no risk. For sure.
34:28
I think a lot about it in terms of like, you know, tier one, tier two, tier three ISPs where you'll call between caller Verizon and AT&T and then at the end of the month you'll settle the bill across the tier ones.
34:38
Like, I think there's just such an interesting design space for managing token spend payments and so on using programmable money in in in in the era we're coming into.
34:48
>> Uh or have you been tracking the showdown between the the stablecoin community and the banks?
34:52
This was in the This was in this This Economist article as well.
34:56
And I And I want to know if you think that this is a true collision course, if there will really be a showdown.
35:01
The The concept here as as put in Buttonwood in the in The Economist is the prospect of stablecoin growth spooked America's banks.
35:13
This is because a loophole in the law lets stablecoins offer deposit-like yield without bank-like regulatory burden.
35:20
The American Bankers Association warned that a $2 trillion market for stablecoins, if it was all dollar-pegged, could lead to a 10% decline in bank deposits.
35:29
That would raise average funding cost for lenders by about a quarter of a percentage point, they said, crimping their profits and driving up interest rates on all manner of loans for everyone else. Is this a real issue?
35:41
Is there a logical solution?
35:43
Is there going to be some sort of unification where the stablecoin community and the bank and the traditional banking community become a collateral >> get a solution with the genius act? >> I think it's Yeah. Please. >> I'll follow you.
35:56
>> Oh, well, I I mean, in here it says "Bankers and stablecoin issuers have since been locked in over the final shape of a follow-up bill, the Clarity Act."
36:03
And so, that's where we are right now, but I want to know where you think it goes from here.
36:07
>> So, Polymarket, last I checked, has it at around 45% that the the Clarity bill will make it out of the House committee and actually pass.
36:16
And I think the reality is genius was basically as buttoned down as it could be on this specific issue.
36:21
And this is why Clarity needs to exist to set uh and and procedures for actually doing this.
36:27
I think it's a really >> If you were such a genius, should have provided more clarity.
36:31
>> [laughter] >> More clarity? Uh It's very good.
36:33
Uh But this is This is why the um >> This is why the show exists. >> Exactly.
36:39
[laughter] I see this >> Crowd Crowd doesn't like it. Crowd says it flops. >> It flopped.
36:43
But for those of you viewing, I see this as the acoustic set versus the Ultra Dome.
36:47
This is your guys coming in on plug. >> Totally.
36:50
>> Um >> [laughter] >> But But I No, I think it's an essential issue and I think right now you're seeing also twin thing around um tokenized deposits versus stablecoins and like two different formats for how digital assets, I guess, can impact finance and fintech generally.
37:01
Um the the reality is I think more competition >> about tokenized deposits.
37:07
>> Well, I think >> I I can imagine what that is, which is like I go to a bank, I give them an actual dollar.
37:13
>> And you get an exchange >> but then they're keeping the dollar there.
37:15
They're lending against it.
37:17
>> So it is a it is the >> Maybe they Maybe they give me some yield even.
37:21
>> And they'll run all of the same infra in the back that exists today, but you have a digital representation of your deposit that you can use.
37:26
And so in a sense, it is a it is akin to being handed a a coat check ticket.
37:33
Uh and you get to walk around with your ticket and at some point you can redeem it at the coat check or another coat check potentially versus the stablecoin where you're actually holding the asset itself.
37:40
Um and I think those are the two pathways that are getting a lot of exploration in the space.
37:44
Um ultimately, I think, you know, a lot of these rails will merge and I think more importantly, uh the question is one of like competition for the consumer.
37:51
The consumer should have more ways of actually earning on their uh on their assets.
37:55
And so the idea that we need, you know, greater clarity as it were with [clears throat] uh issuers and institutions that are putting out stablecoins is so absolutely clear.
38:06
But I think we should view it first and foremost from the question of like what benefits the companies that are using stablecoins or you know, the internet generally, what benefits the users, not how different is this from the current infrastructure that we have cuz that is, you know, not a way to build new systems in the world. >> Yeah.
38:20
And then I guess there is also the sort of the uh like additive outcome where yes, you get to $2 trillion in stablecoin assets, but it's for new use cases that are not competing with like the traditional credit card lending, mortgage lending, asset-backed loan industry.
38:38
And so it's it's not putting that downward pressure necessarily on the traditional banking system.
38:42
And so I'm sure the banking industry is sort of like cautiously optimistic.
38:46
This is all like net new dollars that are being created and used around the globe and for different purposes.
38:51
But if it's but if it does directly come after, well, this company used to just use credit cards for everything and now they're not paying us, then that's maybe has some negative effects.
39:00
>> And I think the two things you'll see as run-ons is basically how does stablecoin deployment evolve worldwide?
39:05
To what extent is it a Western thing versus the rest of the world thing?
39:10
That probably has impact on, you know, USDT versus USDC market share.
39:13
Like there's a lot of interesting run-ons to this exact question.
39:15
The second thing is at least this is why I'm excited to be at Stripe and and you know, Stripe isn't doing any crypto things for crypto's sake. >> Sure.
39:23
>> They are doing, you know, how do we build better rails for our users no matter what the rail is under the hood. >> Yeah.
39:27
>> And >> and more pragmatic, first principles.
39:30
>> This is a very good tool. Exactly.
39:30
And we should we should put it to use in ways that that betters the experiences.
39:36
Um this is where I'm interested in some of I mean, DeFi has had a very complicated few months with basically a lot of exploits and and and things like that.
39:43
And this is still an industry in its infancy.
39:45
And yet we're seeing a very interesting merging of the rails with, for example, Vault Curators on Morpho, like you know, folks like Apollo and others taking part in it.
39:54
And so we're seeing again, just a merging of of traditional finance and online finance in a way that I think is going to continue to Recent exploits, is that more social engineering for the most part? This is not not AI-led.
40:11
>> In those specific cases, my understanding is it is not AI-led.
40:13
I think it's very much social engineering you know bad setups in various places that have led to unfortunate outcomes and I think it's just the space maturing.
40:27
I think we are seeing as a side note this is very interesting.
40:29
So we use at privy a number of basically AI tools to do like constant pen testing to review every PR that goes out to do a lot of this and we're also seeing quite a bit of just better sound bounties coming in much more sophisticated the base line basically on the bug bounties gone much better and you're now able to string together like more complex attack vectors that you can do before.
40:55
So that evolution is like mega clear and one of our engineers Andrew McPherson used chat GPT to find an exploit in react.
41:01
It was a zero day in react and the fact that you know react is a 15 year old library put out by meta it's open source it's been beaten to death because it basically backs every web every product on the web the fact that we're finding these now is insane.
41:18
>> Do you have more clarity on like a zero day does that allow someone to potentially get into someone's computer their browser or is it more just like like cause the browser to crash in a certain or it be strung together cuz
41:31
there's like a wide range of like what you can do once you exploit something you can just like you know take the service offline which is bad or you can like get into yeah that get into the database steal like like there's a wide range of like negative outcomes. >> Yeah I'm not actually sure what the what
41:45
>> Yeah I'm not actually sure what the what the ramification of his work was but you know there's price there's a very good economic market for buying zero days and the price will depend on what it allows you to do. >> That makes sense.
41:55
Has there been have you have you been tracking any movements in the stable coin community to do interesting non-dollar back stable coins.
42:03
I'm thinking of like Peter Thiel back in like 99 sort of proposed like a Vanguard total index like a VTI backed stable coin where you have $1 but the dollar is backed by basically a massive basket of assets that includes gold, oil, real estate, a slice of stocks and bonds and so it's sort of more diversified than even the US dollar could be and maybe it's less stable relative to the dollar but it's you're bought in on the global economy.
42:34
>> So I think first we're going to see a rise of non-dollar stable coins as you know more people embrace it especially >> I mean that would just be foreign currencies?
42:41
>> Yeah foreign currencies. Yeah.
42:41
Second, I've heard of a a few projects that are trying to basically have a inflation uh stable coin which is the stable actually grows with inflation so that you're on a purchasing power parity like standpoint.
42:54
>> Yeah there are the the famous assets you can buy from the treasury treasury inflation protection something securities. I I forget.
43:01
>> That one but that that's the idea of one of them.
43:03
I think they're really hard to instrument and get quite right which is why I don't think they've taken off just yet.
43:07
And then I think the the the third piece is this is not a stable coin but I it was a project I heard about recently I thought it was very interesting.
43:15
There's a company called Pearl that is finding a way to do like fast matrix multiplication and back a blockchain on this so you can issue tokens based on how much compute you've got ready to be useful inference. >> Mhm.
43:27
>> Uh and so there was a question for me of like what other useful work could you back the currency on? >> Yep.
43:33
>> Yeah that I mean we've talked to Prime Intellect a few times.
43:34
Intellect a few times. They've been doing early on some crypto token backed compute and interestingly the the 3D rendering community I don't know if you're familiar with the render token but basically you know most 3D artists if they're rendering CGI for movie TV show
43:51
something like that animation they will typically have a like on premise rack of GPUs that they use to render the graphics or the the the the final output and the render network was an effort that I think was pretty successful to basically well, I'm not rendering my project. I'll render yours and I get
44:09
I'll render yours and I get tokens that I can put back on the network cuz decent cuz each frame is deterministic and separate.
44:15
So, you can render, you know, if there's 24 frames a second, you can render thousands of frames across a whole bunch of different machines.
44:22
They all will look the same when they come together.
44:25
And so, that that was the first example of like, oh, a crypto project that's being done for useful work marshaling computer out.
44:31
And now you can imagine like a thousand times more uh like ways to >> These are hollowed times while crypto prices are down and there's so much interesting thing happening in tech.
44:39
You can actually build very useful things in a way that's >> Uh prediction time, when we look back on 2026 >> Yeah, what what what what will be the price for USDC? Price target for 2030?
44:53
>> This is John's This is John's favorite joke.
44:54
[laughter] >> Um Uh but uh >> Uh a whole bunch of answers that isn't $1 [laughter] is a disastrous outcome.
45:02
Uh what do you think the story will be around the intersection of of AI and crypto, specifically agents and and um stables, you know?
45:14
>> It's a great question.
45:14
I >> Because everyone everyone keeps saying it, right?
45:16
But I feel like we need to have like massive It It's very clear that when when an AI tool has product market fit, adoption is like extremely rapid, right?
45:24
You just immediately hockey stick.
45:25
And so, I'm like sort of like waiting for a hockey stick moment like that at the intersection of stables and um and agents.
45:34
>> So, so here's my prediction.
45:35
>> First, we're seeing so much activity.
45:36
Like 35% of new Privy sign-ups today are for people building agentic wallets.
45:40
So, they're using the wallet.
45:42
They're like giving agents, for example, like some allowance.
45:45
And then they're like, you you know, they have an ability to claw back assets.
45:48
If the agent doesn't spend it, they can control spend in a very like particular way.
45:51
So, we're seeing so much tinkering happening here that I think is going to lead to emergent behaviors that are really interesting.
45:58
My prediction is first great use cases are going to happen in the background.
46:02
>> There'll be a lot more about like business model innovation.
46:03
Things like what you were talking about earlier, which is how do we gate, you know, payments in a streaming sense so that I can get paid on a, you know, per token basis much more easily. >> Yeah, exactly. >> risk. >> Yeah.
46:15
Um so I think that's where we'll see the first few and then over time we'll see a much greater pick up of basically agents actually running their own wallets and that'll be across both fiat and stablecoin rails. >> Mhm. Very cool.
46:27
>> Red button or blue button, would you push?
46:28
Are you familiar with this thought experiment?
46:30
>> No idea what you're talking about.
46:30
>> We'll do that in a little bit. >> Locked in. Didn't get it.
46:33
>> I don't have time for this stuff. I don't have time.
46:35
>> [laughter] >> That's incredibly bullish.
46:38
Uh it's a thought experiment.
46:38
You can go check it out online.
46:39
Anyway, thank you so much for coming on the show. >> you.
46:42
Great to see >> Fantastic. >> Thank you.
46:43
>> Uh we'll talk to you soon.
46:43
Pop those headphones off, put them down right there and we're good to go.
46:46
Jeff, welcome to the show.
46:49
We are here live at Stripe Sessions in San Francisco. Great to see you. >> Great to see you.
46:56
>> Throw a headset on, sit down, introduce yourself again.
46:59
Yeah, you can sit here, here with that [music] headset. >> Hello, hello.
47:03
>> Uh introduce yourself for the the fans, the viewers, the chat. Who are you? >> Howdy.
47:09
I'm Jeff Stripe on the product team.
47:12
>> [laughter] >> Jeff Weinstein, good to see y'all.
47:14
>> This is the first time I've ever met you in person.
47:16
We've been talking on Zoom for 10 years.
47:18
>> How have we met in person?
47:19
>> Wait, is that actually Is that actually true?
47:20
>> I don't think I've ever met you actually in person.
47:22
It's like one of these things where you've met so many times through the computer, it's like true. >> That's crazy. That's crazy.
47:26
No, I yeah, I I I I I I assume we had met >> multiple times.
47:30
>> Great to see you in person.
47:32
>> Yeah, this is amazing what y'all have done.
47:34
>> Uh how have you Do you ever visit Delaware?
47:38
>> [laughter] >> Do When you show up in Delaware, do people just start Do people just start cheering when you walk out of the airport town?
47:43
You're basically like an athlete that, you know, wins a World Cup, they're coming home and they they do like a parade, I'm assuming.
47:50
>> I got to meet this >> yeah, so so before we get into this, Jeff uh Jeff runs the Atlas. He created Atlas.
47:55
You're responsible for like a quarter of all new new C Corps.
47:59
>> Atlas is now incorporating about 26% of the new >> moment.
48:06
>> I think it's a gong moment.
48:06
I think it's a gong moment.
48:09
>> Oh, man, this is a lie. This is a lie, Patrick. >> But there we go. >> Boom.
48:13
>> Yeah, it's got a really good ring to it.
48:15
>> 26% of all new C Corps, right? That's the focus? >> Correct.
48:18
Yeah, and today we're celebrating our 100,000th new Atlas business was incorporated recently and we brought the founder and she runs this incredible business for AI software to help power plant owners run batteries in a better way. It's like fantastic.
48:32
So it's been a great thing.
48:34
I've been recently focused on all this crazy Agentech stuff we're doing.
48:37
>> Yeah, what what is actually changing about Atlas because I've used it uh with several times.
48:40
I think I probably used it 5 years ago or something.
48:42
I don't I don't even remember how old it is. >> We used it for TVP.
48:46
>> We used it for TVP a couple years ago and it was like fine and I didn't really have any product requests.
48:48
So >> It's not It's not fine.
48:52
>> No, no, I just need like It was like job finished.
48:55
>> The point is that you don't think about it.
48:56
You're like that is how it should have worked, right? >> Exactly.
48:58
And I'm always fascinated by products that are like, okay, yeah, thumbs up. It did my job. Like I'm good.
49:03
What what what it replaced.
49:06
>> [laughter] >> I'm going to make you go use LegalZoom.
49:08
>> Hey, that's a that's a >> products that you just want it to work like electricity under the >> Okay, okay, okay.
49:13
So I have I have I have So >> So I want to ask you about is there an Do you think there will be an incorporation apocalypse?
49:20
Because theoretically I could just have I could tell a smart agent that can use my computer that can use the internet.
49:26
Hey, do you like go I need to create a C Corp in Delaware.
49:31
>> It turns out that the agents want to use Atlas.
49:33
Yes, and you know, not not to preview too much, but coming up Atlas CLI >> Okay. >> There we go. Agents.
49:39
And another exciting thing is >> Generate me 10,000 C Corps.
49:43
>> [laughter] >> Generate me 1 million C Corps.
49:46
>> I think that would be a lot of money, but >> Yeah, vibe vibe incorporation coming.
49:51
Another exciting Atlas update is now that you can do full safe fundraising through Atlas.
49:54
And coming soon you'll be able to move the money from investors directly into your treasury account and just have these amazing little fundraising links to be able to quickly raise money along the way.
50:04
So we think it's another way we can help entrepreneurs get going.
50:05
My recent focus has been all this great AI stuff we're doing to help commerce businesses succeed in the next wave of the internet.
50:14
All the links CLI work so you can have your robot help you shop along the way safely across internet, machine payments protocol to have robot send stablecoin to each other in small bits.
50:25
It's been a really whole new world.
50:26
>> the the the cust- customer segmentation, customer target customer ramp?
50:29
Are you re-running the Stripe playbook?
50:32
Like Stripe was adopted by a lot of startups.
50:37
It was very sold through developers, which was very unorthodox at the time.
50:42
You used to sell through the CFO.
50:42
Now you're selling through the CTO or just some developer who chooses Stripe.
50:47
Are you trying to be the the platform for every tech company, every startup, every software, small business?
50:53
And then you're going to go into restaurants, you're going to go into Fortune 500, the next Fortune 500 companies.
51:01
I mean I guess it doesn't quite map to to Stripe because the big companies are don't necessarily need Atlas if they're already up and running.
51:07
But how do you think about like landing and then expanding?
51:11
>> Yeah, I think that we are trying to get all the technology businesses in the world to start on Stripe.
51:17
Start with you know just as a project.
51:19
Use Stripe projects to be able to configure your entire stack.
51:21
I mean do you remember having to go and make 100 little accounts for to test a database here or test a CDN provider.
51:28
Oh should I use this particular thing for email and then you have to go and type in password and be like no you need two dollar signs and one dollar sign and you have to go get the secret keys and like put in the wrong place and then you have to rotate it's like a whole mess.
51:43
And so so we're excited to take make basically continue to make everything making incorporation programmable, make selling online programmable.
51:49
And now we're making provisioning entire new stacks.
51:53
So we think we're going to see, you know, we did 100,000 Atlas startups over about eight issue years.
51:56
I can imagine doing the next 100,000 in, you know, in another year, another two years.
52:01
We're just seeing the curve of new businesses grow so quickly.
52:03
I think it's tools like this, agentic provisioning of an entire stack quickly, which is going to really ignite the next wave of founders to go from just vibe coding to like an entire vibe business.
52:16
>> How much attention are you paying to how Atlas shows up in LLM results?
52:22
Cuz there's a lot of companies, Profound is one, James the founder's been on the show that that help help you, you know, optimize that, understand it.
52:32
Uh I think it's helpful to just create a product that's loved by everyone that uses it and ultimately gets talked a a lot about sort of naturally.
52:38
Uh is that something that you're putting time directly into or is good awareness in LLMs a byproduct of just building a great product?
52:50
>> You have to make your business legible to the agents.
52:53
You need, you know, what what what if you want your checkout page to have bright colors, like that's not what the agent wants.
52:58
If you want your homepage to uh have a crazy JavaScript thing that like loads only in certain browsers with your with the GPU turned way up, that's also not what agents want.
53:07
Agents want perfect information about what your offer is, what the tool is, what the skew is, what the service is, what the shoe is.
53:14
And we're basically helping businesses just make their entire checkouts, their entire skew offering legible.
53:21
And Atlas is actually part of that, too.
53:23
You know, it itself is a business.
53:24
Atlas actually runs on Stripe.
53:26
Uh and so we, you know, make sure that the agents have access to the full LLM formatted markdown text.
53:34
We bake it into all of the places where agents can self-serve and learn about our products.
53:40
And then we make everything at Stripe a programmatic primitive such an agent can use it directly.
53:44
And so we've seen that the CLI, the command line interface for interacting with Stripe, which is you know, not like a side project for Stripe, but kind of an advanced tool for developers who never want to touch the dashboard, like sort of a terminal purist, uh this has become this incredibly fast-growing part of Stripe uh because the agents are like, yes, I love the fact you have perfect information about all the things I can do on Stripe.
54:06
Of course, I'm going to do so versus uh try to >> computer user on the website.
54:12
>> Yeah, it's it it it is a little clunky.
54:14
At some point it feels almost like a Dilbert uh style of using computer where whereas the agents can just use it directly.
54:19
>> Can you uh take me through maybe like day in the life.
54:25
Today is probably pretty different than like two or three years ago.
54:28
I'm sure AI has seeped in a bunch of places, but maybe if you go back to like, you know, a little bit earlier, like how has how has your day-to-day changed over your career? And what is it like now?
54:43
>> You know, we're really just following what customers want.
54:45
And they're coming to us I mean, I've worked at Stripe for eight years.
54:48
They are coming up to us with a veracity of new needs.
54:50
You know, before it was like, hey, let's kind of put a meeting on the calendar next week to talk about how to grow your business in the next country.
54:59
Now they're I need to launch in 50 countries this afternoon. Yeah.
55:04
Sorry, what is sales tax in all all those places?
55:07
How how can I mimic all these fast-growing startups that are going at light speed?
55:11
And so basically we're taking everything that we built at Stripe and turning it into sort of a managed service.
55:17
You have managed payments so that you can sell in all these countries.
55:20
We have uh the machine payments protocol where you can say, hi, I've been using I you know, I spent 20 years selling to consumers.
55:27
Now I need to sell through agents.
55:29
Take all the tools we have and make make things available to agents.
55:33
So, my day-to-day is basically almost a whiplash of like customer meetings where they're coming to us with either a new type of fraud vector they're seeing through AI.
55:43
Uh they want to expand into new countries and we're just trying to take the pieces, the programmatic primitive pieces we built over the last 15 years and turn them into these sort of CL CLI tools.
55:56
Normally we would we would put out a beta or we put out some wait list and we'd wait for a couple people to sign up and then we'd email them, then we'd send them the docs, then they'd be on vacation, you know, or like they'd get busy.
56:08
And then like you'd hear from them the next week.
56:09
Now we put out a beta, they developers send their agents after our beta page.
56:14
They will go around our wait lists to use it.
56:16
They'll give us feedback from their agent logs of how how the developer about how the agent was using our developer tools in like minutes.
56:25
And and so the development cycle at Stripe is just increasing, increasing, increasing, increasing because the customer feedback loop from the the highest taste developers is so now agentic that uh yeah, we don't even have basically have time for meetings.
56:38
It's just like putting these betas out there and getting faster feedback.
56:41
>> there's less meetings now?
56:43
>> I think it's less meetings.
56:43
>> I'm wondering if you were yeah, if it was like I imagine that you're a fan of like talk to your customers, right?
56:48
That's a big piece of what you do.
56:49
That's your that's very much your job.
56:51
Of course you have internal meetings, but you're probably talking to a lot of customers, but the but the shape of the feedback is different.
56:57
>> that with AI you wouldn't have to talk to customers anymore.
56:59
You would just throw out like 10 Slack >> Well, there are some companies that are and then just say like, you know, I I don't have I I don't have time.
57:06
>> We're we're very fortunate {slash} um cursed with that our customers are not shy.
57:12
You [laughter] know, they they are extremely happy to hop in Slack with us and just bombard us uh with their their needs, but now they're pasting the context windows from their agents along with them.
57:22
And so it's sort of this back and forth between our agents and their agents trying to like winnow our way to the best product and you know, so again, I I I think the just like the clock cycle on Stripe has just dramatically increased, which is why you saw so many of these announcements recently.
57:35
And and I'm and we're really proud that a lot of this stuff we're doing is just like GA.
57:38
You can use the Link wallet today to delegate transactions to your agent in a super safe way. It's very slick.
57:45
You get a push message, "Oh, hey, time for my agent to you know, buy me that gift." Like, "Fantastic. Thank you, agent."
57:49
Um and so we're just we're putting this all out there and really encourage people to try it and give us feedback.
57:54
>> Are you forcing yourself to constantly uh use agents to buy stuff?
57:58
>> [laughter] >> Uh yeah.
57:59
>> Cuz like right now I feel like a bunch of people want to and there's certain instances when where they can uh but it's not exactly easy everywhere yet.
58:07
>> Yes, it's a two-sided It's sort of like a three-sided marketplace.
58:09
You know, you've got on the seller side, they need to be able to accept payments from agents.
58:14
That's why we have the machine payment protocol or all our APIs are being upgraded so that you can just use you can you agents can check out with their agent.
58:21
>> through this all the time where I will like see a product that I'm interested in. I'll be on my phone.
58:24
I will click add to cart and then I will get to the cart and I'll see they're not on Shopify and then I'll just churn because I'm like, "I don't I don't have time.
58:31
I did like I don't have time to go through fill this out punch in my credit card."
58:36
And so I'm really really excited for this moment where it's like, "I want to buy this thing. Please buy it for me." >> Totally.
58:42
It Yeah, it's in some ways we have this incredibly modern world in which everything is available at our fingertips, but then it's like unfortunately overly available only on our fingertips where I'm sitting there typing in 16-digit numbers like trying to like peck my way through a check check out page.
58:56
Even the Stripe check out page which is like pretty high performing, I'm still like I can't believe they don't use Link.
59:00
I can't believe I can't just like have my agent go buy this.
59:02
So on the seller side, we're making it incredibly easy for any of the 5 million businesses on Stripe to just accept payments from agents. That's like one side.
59:10
Another side is on the consumers, they need to be able to have a way to super ergonomically on their phone slick mobile app and Link say, "Hey, agent, I approve $50 transactions for the next 30 minutes in the following topic. Go agent go.
59:28
Bam, with, you know, 2FA, Face ID, whatever, I can now approve an agent and it can safely shop for me on the internet like giving like a rambunctious intern like a perfect card that can only be spent where I want.
59:39
And so the third side of the marketplace is the agents themselves.
59:42
First, we're working with, you know, Copilot, and Meta, and ChatGPT, and Gemini, so that baked into their services, they have access to all of the buying and the the customer mandates, so that we can make commerce this super slick, super safe way to buy online.
59:55
I think we're now finally getting all the infrastructure in place.
59:59
We can get this flywheel starting to spin.
1:00:01
And with the model progress, I think you're going to see amazing new applications in Agenda Commerce.
1:00:07
>> Is there a sentiment internally that the company got kind of lucky by focusing so intensely on developers and then accidentally getting the benefit of like being extremely well built for agents?
1:00:18
[laughter] >> I guess it's like >> Because like I you guys are obviously you guys you guys are you guys are well well incredibly smart, incredibly forward-thinking, but but when you guys started focusing on the developer experience intensely, you I don't believe that you were thinking about >> We weren't.
1:00:35
>> AI agents a decade later.
1:00:36
>> This is a surprise for us, too.
1:00:36
It's It's a It's a It's a useful externality to our um non-religious religious obsession with uh programmatic tools.
1:00:48
And >> Secularly religious.
1:00:50
>> Yes, it's it's >> Religiously secular.
1:00:53
>> I can't There's not too much which is like a faux like a faux pas faux pas at Stripe, but I'm saying um yes, let's put this incredible piece of financial infrastructure behind a gate that no one can use.
1:01:02
And you have to call and go through a maze to get so Yeah, it's Yeah, exactly.
1:01:09
We showed how many users are now signing up for Stripe each each day, which is in the many tens of thousands a day.
1:01:13
And uh that's a lot of steak dinners >> [laughter] >> to get to get each of them turned on.
1:01:20
So, it it's of actually surprises us how few companies uh >> this.
1:01:23
>> Yeah, like how how few companies in the world actually provide self-serve services.
1:01:26
Uh >> And and you know, I can say that, but I also know that there's 10,000 people at Stripe who are like doing the work to make those things successful.
1:01:35
But >> Yeah, and yeah, yeah, I've been I would like to get a steak dinner personally.
1:01:38
So >> For the for the 100th Atlas sign-up. >> 100,000. >> 100,000 sign-ups.
1:01:43
>> How ambitious is Treasury?
1:01:43
I imagine you've been getting the customer feedback from companies forever saying, "Hey, I sign I incorporated like why are you pushing me out to these other financial products when you already have all my information?
1:01:56
I know you guys can store money.
1:01:57
I know you guys can move money.
1:01:59
But but how ambitious is that product?"
1:02:02
>> Yeah, um Stripe Treasury is going to be this incredibly straightforward way for a business to be able to store any currency from any country, move it around the world, and just handle all of your banking and money management activities in one place.
1:02:15
And it I think this is something that we've been building the infrastructure for for so long, you know, the ability to currency conversion instantly or be able to pay out cross-border.
1:02:26
But we finally decided that because of stablecoin, now is the time to make this a truly global product from the beginning.
1:02:34
Whereas years ago we would have had to make sort of a country-by-country decision to do a thing like Treasury.
1:02:41
But we're going to go really global out the gate and get to 160 countries by the end of the year.
1:02:43
Um and so that's that's that's really where our ambition comes from is how to make this global infrastructure.
1:02:49
And then of course it's going to have a super slick UI.
1:02:53
It has comes with a metal metal card, 2% cash back, you know, really super easy to use.
1:02:57
And then if you use Stripe to earn money through your customers, everything's in one place.
1:03:04
All the money settles quickly.
1:03:04
It it really feels like one of these kind of better together products where I I in my head I've written documents to say, "Hey, this will be a lot easier."
1:03:12
And then when you actually go to use it, you're like, "Oh my goodness, this is like much easier than I thought it was going to be."
1:03:17
to say we're coming for everyone.
1:03:19
>> [laughter] >> You know, there's there there is there are many services in the world that we're not going to buy accidentally be able to be better better than and but I also will note that everything we're building straight treasury on is available for anyone else to build.
1:03:35
So we're going to see some much more specialization.
1:03:37
I think in a financial related tools and we're excited for straight users be able to do it really quickly. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:03:43
I mean I think I think the agents coming to finance will be a big a big story of basically the next two years cuz as a somebody who started my first real business while in college and then I was realizing like wait, okay.
1:04:00
wait, okay. So we we've signed this like contract and then there's like these invoices, but then like the invoices get sent around and then there's like all multiple stages of approval and it's like why does it need to get approved if it's already in the contract and and and you go you go like understanding like the
1:04:18
complexity of [snorts] money movement and how many humans are in the loop to every process and it can make it can it can be great that there's humans in the loop because it prevents fraud and and and hopefully prevents errors, but it also creates errors and it also slow thing slows things down a lot. And so
1:04:32
And so when you think about in the future where these things can be handled by machines, I think it's going to be >> Yeah, I think that you know, it's like dangerously skip permissions and money like >> [laughter] >> tends not to be exactly the the joining parameters you want.
1:04:48
We want smartly suggest permissions.
1:04:51
You know, I I look forward to the day where I get a notification from my smart robot that says, "Hey, here's all the ways you can improve your business.
1:04:59
Here's the things you should be able to do to close your books.
1:05:00
Here's the things you can do to handle the invoice."
1:05:03
I'm looking forward to those permissions.
1:05:05
You know, I don't want >> even something like so imagine a business owner receives an invoice from someone.
1:05:11
This happens like still like if you've worked with freelancers enough, you will have experience where a freelancer sends you an invoice.
1:05:17
It basically just has a number.
1:05:19
It does not have like any account details. You're like, "Okay."
1:05:22
And then you're replying back, "Okay, how how can I pay this?" Maybe it has an email.
1:05:25
But in a world where you receive the invoice, you just drop it into your own kind of agent and you say, "Pay this.
1:05:31
I'm approving this already. I have approved this."
1:05:33
And the agent goes Yeah, it goes Yeah, it goes Yeah, it can go email the person.
1:05:36
It can can confirm everything.
1:05:38
And it can just process it.
1:05:40
It's like that historically is something that I've done with having like maybe a part-time uh part-time like back office financial operations person where I'm like, "This is approved. Pay it."
1:05:50
And it's like that doesn't need to be like a uh it's it's not like really high-leverage work.
1:05:55
It probably doesn't need to be something a business is paying a thousand, couple thousand dollars a month for.
1:06:01
>> of joke that every chat app will eventually become like a banking app.
1:06:04
But now we have it's like every banking app is actually now becoming a chat app.
1:06:07
Uh and so I think we're going to see the human agent interface related to the full life cycle of your business to become the new modality by which we run our businesses.
1:06:17
And you want that to be in a super programmatic, super safe place uh that works globally.
1:06:21
And that's what Stripe, Stripe Treasury, all these all this new payment stuff are going to be agentic >> you guys are you guys are uh culturally very humble.
1:06:29
But the more I'm processing every conversation I've had today, I'm like, "Wow, they're they're actually coming for everything.
1:06:35
They're incredibly [laughter] well positioned.
1:06:38
Everything's going to be programmable.
1:06:40
Everything's agents are going to be doing everything.
1:06:42
>> when our [clears throat] customers succeed.
1:06:43
And so I feel I [laughter] I think I I I sleep I sleep very well at night knowing that our business model uh maps exactly to our customer success.
1:06:51
>> [laughter] >> Who else you have on that thing, by the way?
1:06:54
>> We got a lot of stuff.
1:06:57
>> Okay, what about the bottom right one just for fun?
1:06:58
What's the bottom right one? >> Bottom right one? This is a gong. >> Perfect. Okay, great. That's a good one. Okay, so okay, cool.
1:07:04
>> We have a whole different setup there. We got so much stuff.
1:07:06
Uh do we have time for one more question you think or is Zach ready to rock? What are you thinking? >> Oh, there he is.
1:07:13
>> Uh we we we we got a couple minutes? Yeah. Okay, cool.
1:07:14
Uh hypothetically, uh like 21-year-old new grad college [clears throat] grad comes to you and is one maybe wants to join Stripe.
1:07:24
Other one maybe wants to build a business on Stripe.
1:07:26
How are you routing them in 2026?
1:07:28
What are you talking them through?
1:07:30
>> Well, I love that those are the two options.
1:07:31
Uh so that that that if that were the case, that would already be a win.
1:07:35
Uh there's many amazing companies there. >> Sure.
1:07:38
>> I I think that people should re- you know, follow their passion.
1:07:40
I mean, look at the two of you what you built, right?
1:07:43
Like I I've got to know you over so many of of your awesome new entrepreneurial attempts and I remember you telling me you're going to do this TV show and I wasn't like thinking you know >> [laughter] >> I wasn't like no, but I was like okay.
1:07:54
>> Suddenly, I will never be on that show.
1:07:56
There's something about that crazy thing.
1:07:57
>> We're not going to make a pub and then have you [laughter] do college game day in front of it. That'll be very strange.
1:08:01
So I I mean like look, you you you followed your you followed your noses on this topic and you're and you have a good sense of it.
1:08:08
And then and if you talk to someone who's who's got that kind of passion the tools to build something today are what all of us I mean dreamed of imagined having what we have today when we each started all of our startups in the past.
1:08:21
Um and so I I honestly I really encourage them to try to try it.
1:08:22
And then I will also say if they're considering joining, I mean look, Stripe's a 10,000 person company.
1:08:29
We're probably in a reasonable high echelon of like low communication costs, but there's 10,000 of us.
1:08:32
You got to have it's like a higher communication cost than you and your co-founder.
1:08:34
Um but uh you look, the Stripe project thing where you can provision all these third parties, that got started 7 weeks ago by six people. >> Wow.
1:08:43
>> You know, we we we put the links the link for agents for wallet. That was 10 weeks ago.
1:08:47
And it's again, it's built on all the stuff we have, but we're we're we're benefiting from all of these new tools well.
1:08:54
So I would I would tell that person I hope she find finds a passion that she has especially in an area where has a per- personal interest uh and just go at it hard with the new tools Um and otherwise you know stripe.
1:09:05
com/jobs please >> What's underrated about working at a big company for a long time?
1:09:12
>> I'm on your eight and what's underrated? Um >> Overnight success.
1:09:18
>> I you know you you >> Cuz presume presumably I mean you've had you've had I'm how many I would I would guess like a hundred really talented people have tried to convince you to to join their effort or or leave or hey let me give you like a fifty million dollars to go after this thing.
1:09:34
>> Okay have that one call me >> [laughter] >> the other ones no but I I >> joking but like you could easily go out and raise like fifty on two fifty for some like payments related >> I can make a rival TVPN >> [clears throat] >> uh >> We need more of those.
1:09:50
>> Interesting that you >> [laughter] >> you're not saying I'm going to go build a rival stripe that's very bullish for stripe.
1:09:55
>> No this one seems to work out very well for you so yeah this [laughter] one I I I you know I could split wise I think that the what's really kept me very energized and and and more so is I tell people like on your worst day of work if you're looking forward to your most unhappy customer then you found your place. >> Sure.
1:10:17
>> And I like I want to hear from an entrepreneur somewhere in the world who's got a serious problem with stripe and I'm I want to get on the phone with them and that is just that's enough of like that's enough of a jolt to keep me going.
1:10:30
>> first if you have a problem with stripe DM me I will give you Jeff's personal phone number.
1:10:36
>> cell phone number yeah 410-913-2877 that is it Give me a text I couldn't I couldn't possibly get more spam so let's just add let's let's [laughter] add to it which is nothing I think we could solve with machine payments but that's a different day story.
1:10:49
>> Good point good point well thank you so much for giving us your time.
1:10:51
>> good to see y'all thanks for coming to >> We'll find you we'll find you after. >> Okay.
1:10:55
All right guys let's take that off and let's bring in Okay, here comes Zach.
1:10:58
>> Zach from Bridge, uh coming back on the show.
1:11:00
Second, third time we talked to him a bunch, right? >> times.
1:11:04
>> Zach, he's bringing the world's smallest cheeky pint. Cheers.
1:11:10
Ooh, yours is nice and frosty. >> Cheers.
1:11:14
>> Welcome back to the show in person, live from the >> a non-alcoholic micro pint.
1:11:19
>> Wait, yours is not alcoholic?
1:11:19
Cuz I I got 0%, but I asked for 0% non-alcoholic beer.
1:11:25
So, my beer is 100% alcoholic beer, 0% non-alcoholic beer.
1:11:29
But I still I still tell everyone I'm drinking 0%. >> But you can't tell.
1:11:34
There's no So, you have no idea what you're drinking. >> no idea. >> Yeah. All right. Let's start here. >> Okay.
1:11:40
>> The Economist says stable coins are over. >> Fire back.
1:11:41
Okay, by the way, in the in the Economist >> Oh, man. In in print.
1:11:45
Speaking of things that are over.
1:11:48
>> In print, I learned this.
1:11:48
It says two stable coins.
1:11:51
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, print media says The new thing is over says the new thing that is coming is over.
1:11:57
>> [laughter] >> Why the stable market is fizzling.
1:12:00
The stablecoin market is fizzling.
1:12:02
They say stablecoins are to proponents the respectable face of crypto.
1:12:06
I think it's pretty respectable face right here. >> I hope so.
1:12:10
>> In contrast to volatile Bitcoin, let alone speculative meme coins, they should be backed by holdings of treasury bills or other dollar-denominated assets.
1:12:19
On paper, this makes them safer store value than many fiat currencies.
1:12:23
But they say after growing by 30% in the 6 months to late October last year total stablecoin assets have barely budged. Is this true? Is it over? >> Oh, man.
1:12:37
Um yeah, it was really nice knowing you guys.
1:12:39
>> [laughter] >> It's actually my last >> This is the last last time you will ever let me on this show again.
1:12:47
>> So, [laughter] there are a bunch of different predictions in here.
1:12:49
Uh stablecoin markets were 300 billion.
1:12:51
Some people are calling for 2 trillion over the next uh 3 years, 4 years, 5 years.
1:12:56
But, all of that is very macro level.
1:12:58
I want to hear about what you're actually seeing in terms of adoption, new use cases, glimpses of, you know, new areas to deploy stable coins, and then just what the big market movers are. >> Totally.
1:13:15
I mean, we I mean, our So, our business, you know, we shared this in the annual letter last year. We grew 4x last year.
1:13:21
Our business continues to grow enormously.
1:13:23
Like, we grew 20% over the last month alone.
1:13:26
So, you know, we certainly don't see >> Correction. Correction.
1:13:33
>> stable coins slowing down.
1:13:33
And And I do think total supply is, you know, flat.
1:13:38
>> But, these things always go through >> Well, yeah.
1:13:40
If you want to look at it when when when you have a correction in in general digital asset prices, then trading activity at times falls, and then it looks like you have a slow down in adoption, but then you actually have to look at how people are actually using stable coins for non-trading related activities. >> Exactly.
1:13:57
Like, stable coin transaction volume is growing enormously.
1:13:59
The number of transactions are growing enormously.
1:14:02
And we certainly see that, you know, the number of folks building with stable coins is growing enormously.
1:14:06
Like, we have folks from, you know, a bunch of banks now are leaning into stable coins.
1:14:12
Pretty much every fintech that you could think of that is meaningful is doing something with stable coins and probably doing it with us.
1:14:18
I mean, we obviously announced yesterday with with Meta paying out folks in stable coins.
1:14:22
So, I I do think that this like the hyperbole around stable coins is dying down a little bit, and that creates the opportunity for some of this this like fud, but >> Yeah.
1:14:33
>> Um you know, it at the same time we're like, you know, there was this thing I think Henry said it yesterday, which which is like funny in the like the crypto world where for a long time people were like pointing at every problem and being like crypto solves this.
1:14:48
Uh and now they're no longer pointing at every problem and saying crypto solves this, but uh but but it actually is >> to solve problems with crypto. >> Yeah.
1:14:55
Yeah, like very very quietly under the hood it is solving a number of problems.
1:14:59
Like banks for cross-border payments, we're seeing it for working capital needs, we're seeing it for just infrastructure for cards and infrastructure for global expansion.
1:15:05
So, it's uh it's certainly not slowing down.
1:15:11
>> like some very big meaningful categories, the cross-border payments ones are very tractable, huge.
1:15:14
Is there a coming intersection of like vibe coding and stablecoins that you're seeing glimpses of?
1:15:23
I'm just thinking about like >> Yeah.
1:15:25
Like there was this moment when >> iPhone games became fairly easy for like a kid to build in their bedroom.
1:15:32
And you got Flappy Bird and I think it was 99 cents.
1:15:36
And I'm wondering if if micropayments, stablecoins, there's some sort of intersection there where you get vibe coding and you get some sort of new flourishing like ecosystem of like of like smaller transactions.
1:15:48
I mean, people don't love micropayments, but there's like there's something that people I feel I could play with if they're spinning something up in a in a in an afternoon. >> Totally.
1:15:57
I mean, I I you know, one of my reflect One of the reasons why we started Bridge is like I was reflecting on the fintech space generally.
1:16:04
This was like in 2020 or so.
1:16:07
And I realized or one of the realizations that I had was that the cards were basically just the entirety of fintech. >> Yeah.
1:16:14
>> Everything was like, you know, and people talk about platform shifts like AI is this big platform shift and mobile was a platform shift, but in financial services platform shifts take a little bit of a different shape and cards were this new form factor.
1:16:25
And cards combined with the internet was like 90% of all or even more.
1:16:31
>> about like credit cards from like the '70s.
1:16:32
But that boom cuz we rode that boom for so long.
1:16:35
There was a time when people would pay by doing like a reverse debit and there were so many hacks >> Totally. Totally. It was a new platform.
1:16:41
It all these new financial services got built and cards were like growing meekly for a while and then the internet came along and they were like uniquely well suited.
1:16:51
Obviously Stripe, this is what we do, but uniquely well suited to solve payment problems on the internet and then they just took off.
1:16:57
It became reflexive, you know, more people were paying on the internet so more people had cards so more people paid in person so there were more people buying stuff on the internet and then and then it just took off but it was this like brand new platform shift in payments to high to an external platform shift.
1:17:11
Our view is that stable coins represented another platform shift in payments and I think AI could be the corresponding one that helps drive adoption of stable coins and I think that all the payment problems that we're solving now are like fiat payment problems and there's big markets and so on but I think the much bigger market will be, you know, the new means of payment they're going to be required in these agentic services.
1:17:34
these agentic services. Like in you know, just simple things like the incrementality of payments is going to be very different, very small, the velocity of payments is going to be very different, very fast, the reversibility of transactions like cards are not well suited in a situation where you
1:17:52
don't want transactions to be to be reversed or disputed and so I think there's a lot of benefits in stable coins but we're like at the very very early stages so you're kind of squinting and like looking like way down the tunnel and like trying to predict what what will happen but it feels like it's there. Can you explain the tension between the
1:18:07
Can you explain the tension between the traditional banking sector and the stable coin world?
1:18:12
Um >> Like if if there was a bank and they say like I make my money by taking deposits and I'm heavily regulated, I have to cover those costs with you know, with interest and you're going to be able to do it without as many regulations, you're going to out compete me.
1:18:31
Should I jump on the stable coin boom?
1:18:33
Is there a world where world where How should the traditional banking system interface with the stablecoin world?
1:18:40
>> I mean, it is um I would say uh complicated. >> Okay.
1:18:47
>> [laughter] >> Do you spend much time in DC?
1:18:50
I I went earlier this year and um it it was actually like mean it was like very heartening.
1:18:55
I don't know if y'all have spent spent time there, but like I hadn't been to DC since I was in high school and like a high school trip.
1:19:03
high school trip. I grew up in North Carolina so we could like take the school bus up there and uh I went into you know like you're working at like a tech company and something like Stripe and it feels like impossible to understand all the ways in
1:19:16
which Stripe is growing and then when you zoom in it's like literally just like one developer coming to Stripe and signing up and like, you know, one person selling and and then I went to DC and DC feels like this this incomprehensible like, you know, complexity of decision-making and stuff. And then we just met with a bunch of
1:19:30
And then we just met with a bunch of folks and you realize it's just like one person talking to another and like them trying to learn and then they're they're going to talk to another person and they were like genuinely curious and these
1:19:41
folks are like voting, you know, debating stuff on like agriculture and like, you know, airline safety and then coming in and talking to me about like the minutia of like stablecoin regulation and they were like pretty well versed. Uh so I think that like one
1:19:53
Uh so I think that like one speaks to how how high on the docket it got for them uh and like how important it is and and it has like, you know, I spent time there beginning of the year.
1:20:04
Uh we've spent more time recently as like Clarity Act has come about and we think that, you know, it has certainly put the banks and the more stablecoin friendly folks at odds, but my experience has been that that is not universally the case.
1:20:18
Like there's a whole group of banks coming together.
1:20:23
There's multiple groups of banks coming together to launch stablecoins.
1:20:26
There are multiple community banks that we're actually working with on different stablecoin initiatives.
1:20:30
The the one sort of outlier is um is some of the other folks that have more directly, you know, JP Morgan has their own stablecoin and like their own thing that they're trying to push forward.
1:20:41
So, there is some competition and and that sort of thing there, but I I hope that we can all like work together, but it certainly has been contentious at times.
1:20:51
>> Give me a price prediction.
1:20:51
2030, if I put a $1,000 in stablecoins, how high can it go?
1:20:57
>> [laughter] >> What do you think's possible? >> Oh, man.
1:20:58
I mean, I think you are going to be exactly as wealthy then as you are today. >> That's fantastic.
1:21:05
>> Well, with inflation, [laughter] with inflation.
1:21:08
>> Uh advice to founders that are feeling that want to start a company today, but maybe feel like they're too late as part of this AI boom cuz I feel like when you started Bridge there had been there was big stablecoin companies that had been created.
1:21:23
Did I'm maybe you felt at times that am I too late?
1:21:27
Like but clearly you were very you were very early and the timing was perfect cuz you got to like sit out a terrible bear market and then you and then you were like, "Wow, I'm a genius."
1:21:37
>> That's [laughter] certainly not what everyone told me.
1:21:38
Many people in the midst of it told me I was wasting wasting my time. >> Yeah.
1:21:42
>> Um yeah, I would I would say um I mean, the lived experience for me and like, you know, you kind of see this now in some of these hotter spaces is that folks kind of build what they think others want them to build.
1:21:56
Um like think about something in AI, you know, you're building this thing for this market that isn't like a thing that you deeply believe in and so you're you're building what you think an investor wants to fund or what you think other people in the industry will think is interesting.
1:22:12
And what happened for me is like I was building something that I deeply had conviction should exist and that is what enabled me to persevere through like some really dark times and build a company that, you know, ended up, you know, hitting the the sort of timing situation at like the perfect at the at the perfect moment, but like literally, you know, if I didn't have that conviction, I would have pivoted, you know, a year before.
1:22:38
You You know, I mean, FTX I mean, literally, you know, Terra Luna blew up, then FTX blew up, then SVB went under.
1:22:44
I mean, it was like one stable coin went under, the whole crypto market was done, and then USDC depegged.
1:22:53
Uh and so, we got >> Yeah, that's why it's not funny when you make >> [laughter] >> Yeah, I mean, we got booted off like four banks before we got started.
1:23:02
>> I assume the stable coins are going to stay stable, but I understand [laughter] there is a risk. It is a new technology.
1:23:08
Can you Can you help me understand the interaction of like AI coding agents, AI code review in stable coin software development?
1:23:19
Historically, I have always had the perception that anything in crypto is not just higher stakes, but more technically complicated.
1:23:26
It's more like, I don't know, writing a compiler than, you know, a front-end website.
1:23:31
And so, it's high stakes.
1:23:35
>> [snorts] >> LLMs do make mistakes.
1:23:35
At the same time, the new models with those 5. 5 like like superhuman.
1:23:41
And so, there's probably a way to integrate that successfully. What What works?
1:23:45
What are you hearing or seeing that makes sense?
1:23:47
Are we still in like the centaur era where you need a great software developer working alongside AI?
1:23:53
Is this something where you can just throw an AI agent at it and it's, you know, "Oh, there's no more risk anymore.
1:23:58
It's not going to hallucinate."
1:24:00
>> I mean, I would say for us, it it kind of feels like we are one or two steps behind where like, you know, it feels like some of the folks are who are in pure software. >> Yeah.
1:24:14
>> Where they're like, "Oh, I'm just going to I'm just going to, you know, have this long-running agent vibe code an entire browser and ship it in a week and be fine.
1:24:25
We're nowhere close to that.
1:24:25
Like we couldn't we you know, there are big parts of our business that are pure software >> Yeah.
1:24:31
>> in a ton of ways like think about like transaction monitoring or stuff like that and but but the risk from a regulatory reason of like having things off and then you know, missing things and then not being able to appropriately justify because someone vibe coded a thing it's just not not possible.
1:24:47
So the ways in which we use it end up being different and another like very quick example is like we're standing up a national trust bank.
1:24:56
As part of standing up a national trust bank, there's a bunch of requirements one of which is that every every commit has to be approved >> Wait, what?
1:25:06
>> So so like you literally cannot have >> It's over for fast [laughter] takeoff. Fast takeoff's cooked.
1:25:13
This is the most bearish thing. >> it, humans.
1:25:15
[laughter] >> Still got it.
1:25:19
>> Yeah, it it is a >> is AI?
1:25:19
This is something somebody was saying.
1:25:21
>> It is like you know, the the Jevons paradox of employment.
1:25:24
We're just going to have to hire like more and more and more code reviewers.
1:25:29
>> [laughter] >> Yes, it is just I was I was talking to someone small business owner who was very very fired up on vibe coding.
1:25:36
He told me specifically he hadn't slept in four nights. >> What was the time?
1:25:43
>> [laughter] >> the product that he was working on.
1:25:43
He was like this is something I've thought about building forever.
1:25:46
I was like well, have you ever thought about like rebuilding this sort of like vertical SAS fintech platform that you run your whole business on and he was like Uh no, it's 1200 a year.
1:25:57
It's like >> [laughter] >> they give me so much.
1:25:59
It's like it would never make sense to and this is like the one piece of like core technology that he runs his business on he even he he's so fired up on vibe coding he's like I'd never rebuild that.
1:26:10
It would never make sense.
1:26:11
And but but so there's two things there's like a value equation and then there's like a potential risk kind of like cost equation and I feel like with stablecoins specifically, the potential cost in in crypto like the potential cost is so astronomical where like saving a little bit here to then introduce like a hundred million dollars of of risk and >> Yeah, but there but there's a bunch of other things that are amazing.
1:26:33
Like for us, we are we have like re-architected a lot of our a lot of our infrastructure to be able like before you know, one of the one of the hard things in crypto is adding a bunch of different blockchains.
1:26:46
Like every a lot of blockchains can kind of be the same but many are very different and so it's super tedious to add a bunch of a bunch of different blockchains.
1:26:54
We or the same thing is true of like adding new payment rails.
1:26:57
So you know, you might add a US bank and then you need a redundant US bank and then you need a European bank you need a bank in Mexico and then and all of these integrations kind of look the same.
1:27:06
integrations kind of look the same. You know, it's like you're you're getting money in, you're checking the money's in, you're sending money out, you know, and what we have built is the ability to sort of add all of these things very very quickly and so we took like you
1:27:22
know, what used to take you know, two weeks to add a new blockchain now takes you know, someone actually did it in a meeting the other day of like adding a new stablecoin on a new on a new blockchain all with much cloud that you know >> Does that mean we need 10,000 new layer ones? >> That is that is it's the Jevons paradox
1:27:38
>> That is that is it's the Jevons paradox of blockchains.
1:27:42
>> Because it's easier to use >> [laughter] >> new chain, we need a hundred thousand more, a million more. >> Yes.
1:27:50
>> Maybe honestly one for one.
1:27:50
Every American should have their own layer one.
1:27:54
>> We're we're just maximalist across every dimension.
1:27:56
>> a moment in stablecoins [laughter] maybe last year where it was like this like this like small like county in New Mexico is going to have their own chain.
1:28:05
>> That was that was a stable that was a stable coin.
1:28:07
>> Wyoming has its own stablecoin.
1:28:07
So we're going to have every state's going to have its own stablecoin.
1:28:10
Every state's going to own blockchain. Maybe even every city. >> Yeah.
1:28:14
>> Yeah, you know, you could have your own blockchain. Yeah, neighborhood. There you go.
1:28:17
>> Yeah, the mission stable coin. >> Yeah.
1:28:20
>> The Mission [laughter] stable coin.
1:28:21
>> Which one would you buy? >> Soma.
1:28:26
>> [laughter] >> I'm going for the Mavericks.
1:28:28
>> I'm going for the Mavericks >> The Mavericks stable coin. Okay.
1:28:30
>> It's just a taste thing.
1:28:32
>> Anything else for >> No, this was great. Thank you for coming on.
1:28:34
>> Great Great to be with you.
1:28:35
>> Great to meet you in person.
1:28:36
>> You can close it out with us. >> Close it out with us.
1:28:38
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1:28:40
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1:28:42
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1:28:46
Thank you for tuning in and have a great day. Goodbye. >> an honor. Cheers. >> Goodbye.