Interview

Patrick Collison: "What If You Succeed?"

In 2009, Patrick and John Collison went to Startup School in Berkeley, got sushi in Potrero Hill afterward, and decided on the walk home to start Stripe. The reasoning, as Patrick remembers it, was that “we might as well because it probably won't be that hard.”

It took two years to launch.

Seventeen years later, at Startup School 2026, he talks with YC's Harj Taggar about dropping out of MIT twice, why founders should ask what happens if they succeed, and what Stripe's own data says about the best time to start a company.

Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply
Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

Chapters:
00:00 — Intro
00:07 — What Should You Still Learn in the Age of AI?
02:01 — Knowledge Still Matters
05:12 — Should You Drop Out of College?
09:58 — Why Stripe Worked
12:10 — Building Stripe Before Launching
17:20 — Is the Lean Startup Still the Right Playbook?
19:07 — The Hidden Reward of Building Stripe
22:36 — Will AI Kill Your Startup?
25:17 — Why It's Never Been a Better Time to Start a Company
29:23 — What Stripe's Data Says About the AI Economy
30:45 — Build Something People Truly Need

Source attribution: Original source