Unfortunately you need to be an accredited investor to access these markets.
This is the real gatekeeping here as rich pop stars, actors, sports stars and musicians who aren't versed in tech has more access to investing in these private companies than the academics, students in europe creating the algorithms that power them.
An 11 year old can inherit $100 million and be more "accredited" than you, even though they (may) have no knowledge of the industry, no investing experience and no years of industry experience.
Even if you have knowledge in the tech scene and you know which companies are going to go big in the future, unless you're ultra rich already to qualify as accredited, you're shut out early on.
Stripe being able to find all the capital they need in private markets is the actual indicator of wealth disparity.
Stripe might not need your money now, but they certainly needed it at the pre-seed, seed stage where if you were an angel/seed investor you would have been able to participate.
There is never a point in the lifecycle of any of these companies where they wanted random retail investors with no network on their cap tables. The kinds of companies that do want those investors tend, for clear reasons, not to be the kind you want to invest in.
You don't want accreditation rules relaxed or eliminated. You simply want Stripe to be a public company instead of a private one. Fair enough, but Stripe doesn't want to be a public company.
With Stripe's non IPO example, many will follow and will stay private.
So more gatekeeping.
I mean this respectfully, but: you do not sound, in this thread, like someone whose registration on Stripe's cap tables would be a service to Stripe. To society? Maybe? Who knows. But that's not how Stripe makes decisions.
I also think you drastically overestimate how much broad wealth creation would follow from letting retail investors into private tech companies. You're debating entirely based on a survivor artifact and ignoring the fact that most tech companies --- even most of the highly-capitalized ones --- return $0 to investors.
If anything they should also restrict options trading, sports gambling, prediction markets etc. to accredited investors.
So you have to prove that either you can afford to lose some money or you have enough investing knowledge to know what you're getting into. Seems fair.
Seems "fair" to be honest.
I have a few friends that that have told me about certain companies they would like to invest in and they are knowledgeable about but they cannot access them but I can and not give them any shares.
But how is it 5x bigger than Adyen, which had 2.3B revenue and 1B earnings in 2025?
Stripe's bigger _and_ growing faster.
Adyen reported 500 million EUR in pure profit: https://investors.adyen.com/financials/h2-2025-4r9rc
I think we hackers in general also need to have a value assigned. Even open source authors generate real value but right now I see an imbalance as to who makes money and who does not. I'd even almost go as far as say that taxes (a state gathers) should go to a certain percentage value back to the open source community. There are a lot of details missing here, of course, but from a core view this only seems fair.
I'l also never forget Bill Gates anti-open source letter. That should instantly yield a 99.999% extra tax on him.
I'm in favor of funding the arts, for example, but I'm not sure open-source is something we should tax/fund for. There is real business value in the projects that are created, but open-source maintainers insist on "giving them away for free". Start charging and then we don't need to fund/tax.
And that's totally fine under the same market mechanics you're recommending. If you want maintainers to stop complaining and filing potential petitions asking for funding via taxes etc, just pay them.
If a maintainer wants to make money directly from their code, they are free to charge for it, or for services around it (examples: Sidekiq, Oban, Tailwind, not to mention large examples like RedHat or Ubuntu).
Everyone involved is making informed choices.
Today I find it does way too much for small projects and the fees are too high. Does anyone knows of good alternatives for that? (Someone recently shared https://astrafi.com/ with me and it seemed promising, with much better fees, but I haven't tested or used anything other than Stripe)
A smaller firm could be way simpler. Because they simply wouldnt have enough money to provide a decent payday for dozens of malicious geniuses going at them 24/7/365.
Honestly, I wouldn't touch Stripe with a ten foot poll at this valuation. Fintech is an industry that just disappoints in the end.
Stripe cites 34% growth for the same period and metric.
[1]: https://s205.q4cdn.com/875401827/files/doc_financials/2025/q...
fourseventy•2h ago
rf15•1h ago
fourseventy•1h ago
Cyph0n•1h ago
KK7NIL•1h ago
Liquidity!= ability to liquidate or not, BTW, it's more of a continuous spectrum.
onion2k•1h ago
KK7NIL•1h ago
Why would it be? I don't believe an IPO has to be dilutive, it can be done with already issued shares. I grant you that's not usually how they're done though.
303space•1h ago
j45•1h ago
skybrian•1h ago
onion2k•1h ago
j45•1h ago
ndr•1h ago
mercwear•1h ago
anovikov•1h ago
dewey•1h ago
malfist•1h ago
dewey•1h ago
pestaa•1h ago
elictronic•34m ago
ggregoire•6m ago
jacquesm•1h ago
zer00eyz•1h ago
https://stripe.com/atlas
They also have a tax product, and a few other things that are in the orbit around payment processing.
Their product offerings are a bit more than just the "dumb pipe" portion of the transaction.
jameson•1h ago
baxtr•1h ago
Public companies allow the rest of us to participate in a success story like this.
Until IPO it’s only a selected group of affluent people who have access to these private companies.
cwbrandsma•1h ago
kibwen•1h ago
gmd63•1h ago
malfist•1h ago
elictronic•42m ago
arcticbull•1h ago
Delaware corporations must act in the interests of shareholders.
elictronic•35m ago
rurp•31m ago
A widget company could sponsor a soccer team or whatever and say the costs are worth it. Or that same company could not do that and say it's not worth it. Two opposite decisions that both would count as acting in the interest of shareholders.
bryanlarsen•55m ago
Also, private companies fail at a much higher rate than public ones do.
tptacek•18m ago
And, of course private companies fail at a much higher rate. The set of private companies includes every company that doesn't succeed to the point where it has the realistic choice to go public. Again: wrong comparison.
baxtr•55m ago
WarcrimeActual•1h ago
RobRivera•1h ago
thinkingtoilet•1h ago
derektank•1h ago
paxys•1h ago
j45•1h ago
Navigating the risk and growth allows them to navigate their growth and rewards while maybe in the drivers seat a bit more.
baxtr•53m ago
But for the good of all of society, it would be better if they did.
gamblor956•1h ago
Private companies can say whatever they want about their performance as long as they don't lie to their own investors; public companies can't.
darth_avocado•1h ago
jameskilton•1h ago
As an ex-Stripe, I understand the sentiment, and the tender offers are a nice middle ground for now, but I still would like to see them go public eventually.
adventured•1h ago
Raising money as a private entity is trivial these days if you're in the league that Stripe is. See: the comical AI private funding levels.
hypeatei•1h ago
Major investors and insiders. Stay the hell away from IPOs if you're not an institution getting access to shares at a reasonable price.
armadyl•1h ago
This is an incredibly odd sentiment, imo. What’s the desire to see them go public unless you personally are profiting from it? Going public would quickly set Stripe on a pathway to potential enshittification and at minimum starting to squeeze the consumers and businesses it provides services to more.
paxys•1h ago
jez•1h ago
shevy-java•1h ago
maratc•1h ago
tyre•1h ago
I can't really see a net-positive benefit to having public shareholders and reporting requirements. Do we think Stripe's leadership needs feedback from random investment advisors or analysts? Do employees need the distraction of daily-updating stock prices? Would quarterly reporting incentivize better decision making?
In my opinion: ehhhhhhhhhhhh
I see the benefit, but if you're joining Stripe you know the trade-off of RSUs in a company that doesn't provide daily liquidity. They provide it on a regular basis, so you're not locked in forever (a la my 2014 Gusto shares).
malfist•1h ago
toast0•56m ago
Of course, if you quit, the windows are no longer in force, although if you have material non-public information, you're still not allowed to trade. Maybe there'a a share price where you'd rather quit and sell than hold on until the window opens.
bryanlarsen•1h ago
kasey_junk•1h ago
They get to _choose_ who they let in if they are private (by definition).
They don’t need the public’s money and don’t want the headache of dealing with the public. I’d completely agree if I were them.
Disclaimer: ex-stripe who is still an investor.
bryanlarsen•51m ago
IMO, the best reason to avoid an IPO is to stay out of the media.
toomuchtodo•22m ago
(not ex-Stripe, but own startup equity and have no problem with them never going public if that is the choice; optimize for the enterprise and existing stakeholders, not the public market mechanics broadly speaking)
fnordpiglet•35m ago
tyre•28m ago
Also, not sure what you mean by "tiny". It's been billions of dollars.
coffeemug•33m ago
coldpie•1h ago
bryanlarsen•1h ago
The important part is that the Collison's control Stripe now. When that changes things may go down hill. It won't matter if it is public or not.
johnny_canuck•49m ago
giancarlostoro•48m ago
mattas•1h ago
stefan_•1h ago
paxys•1h ago
cmiles8•36m ago
Also there’s a ton of overhead associated with being public that nobody really wants to do so companies now stay private as long as they can get away with.
pewpewp•26m ago
StopDisinfo910•12m ago