In the competitive world of tech startups, it’s easy to get caught up in the race for short-term success. But for one company, thinking long-term proved to be the key to winning the industry.
This company, called Stripe, started as a way to simplify online payments, but co-founders Patrick and John Collison had bigger ambitions. They wanted to build a platform that would make it easy for businesses of all sizes to transact online.
As Patrick Collison put it, “We want to build the economic infrastructure of the internet.”
To do this, Stripe focused on building a platform that could handle more than just payments. They expanded their services to include billing, fraud detection, and even loans. And they did all of this with an eye towards the future, as John Collison explained, “We’re really focused on building a business that will be around for decades.”
Their long-term thinking paid off.
Today, Stripe is valued at over $95 billion, making it one of the most valuable private companies in the world. And as their CEO, Patrick Collison, recently pointed out, “We’re still in the early days of the internet, and there’s so much more commerce to be done online.”
The success of Stripe serves as a reminder that, in business, thinking long-term can pay off in a big way.
As Harvard Business Review noted, “Leaders who focus on the long term are more likely to make investments in innovation, which can keep a company ahead of its competitors.” And as the co-founders of Stripe have shown, sometimes the biggest rewards come to those who are willing to play the long game.
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