Two kids decided to start a financial services company on a walk home from sushi, in a sector so new the word “fintech” didn’t exist yet, and it took them two years to launch. That company is Stripe, and at Startup School 2026 Patrick Collison broke down the exact build sequence, why the lean startup playbook he’d tell his younger self to skip is now obsolete, and what Stripe’s live data says about the best time to start. We watched all 31 minutes of his conversation with YC’s Harj Taggar and pulled the stealable plays so you don’t have to.
The headline number: new businesses starting on Stripe are up around 2x year over year, the largest relative jump the company has ever recorded, larger even than the COVID surge. Collison’s read of his own formation data is blunt: by every objective metric he can see, it has never been a better time to start a company.
In this guide you’ll find:
Why Collison still learns hard things instead of outsourcing his brain to AI
The dropout math: why the cost is de minimis and nobody ever cared
Why Stripe worked: a concrete customer problem in a sector that didn’t exist yet
How Stripe justified a two-year wait to launch with just-in-time building
Why the lean startup is now the wrong playbook and what to do instead
What Stripe’s data says: new businesses up 2x and enterprises buying on day zero
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