My view on Stripe’s business prior to joining was “Stripe is basically a B2B SaaS company with extremely reliable capture of upside when users succeed.” I believe that substantially underappreciates the actual business. Large portions of Stripe’s business add another loop on top of the B2B SaaS loop, where Stripe is effectively indexing on its ability to grow the count and success of customers who are themselves structurally equivalent6 to B2B SaaS companies.

Combine this model and what a former colleague dubbed Patio11’s Law (“The software economy is larger than you think, even after taking into account Patio11’s Law”) and you have my biggest surprise since joining Stripe.

I believe that Stripe likely has another trick to play, which plausibly includes a loop on top of this one, where Stripe will perhaps index on the number and success of companies which index on the number and success of their customers, where those customers are structurally equivalent to B2B SaaS companies, who index on the number and success of their customers.

I've seen this multi-level thing at other companies -- this is actually more common than believed. I may discuss this on a cast soon.