Financial infrastructure platform providing payment processing and business tools for online commerce.stripe.com ↗
5 takes · first discussed Jul 19, 2024 · last May 9, 2025
Private company — no public price to score. We track what they said; valuation-mark tracking is on the roadmap.
Chamath argues Stripe belongs in the optimal basket of companies to own for the future and that ignoring it simply because it is private would be a mistake.
Keith Rabois believes Stripe should go public as early as possible to gain the public currency needed for strategic M&A and to benefit from accountability and transparency, and thinks delaying the IPO is substituting energy into workarounds rather than higher value creation.
The hosts are broadly positive on Stripe, with Chamath serving as the primary voice across multiple touchpoints. He views Stripe's fundamentals — over $1 trillion in annual payment volume, profitability, and a hub-and-spoke ecosystem generating meaningful ARR from adjacent products like billing — as compelling and likely underappreciated relative to peers like Adyen, and explicitly includes it among the world's top companies worth owning regardless of its private status. Guest Keith Rabois shares a constructive view on the business but diverges on strategy, arguing Stripe should pursue an IPO as early as possible to gain public currency for M&A and avoid wasting energy on workarounds, a view he notes Stripe has not acted on. Chamath's own admission that he never invested across 17 years — calling it a great missed opportunity — underscores personal regret rather than any fundamental criticism of the company.
Chamath argues Stripe belongs in the optimal basket of companies to own for the future and that ignoring it simply because it is private would be a mistake.
Stripe would be in the basket. To be long some rando public company because it's public and ignore SpaceX and Stripe would just be stupid.”1:29:55
Keith Rabois believes Stripe should go public as early as possible to gain the public currency needed for strategic M&A and to benefit from accountability and transparency, and thinks delaying the IPO is substituting energy into workarounds rather than higher value creation.
Stripe should go public, but they don't listen to me... I personally believe and subscribe to the view that companies should go public as early as possible.”1:06:31