Stripe's 2025 annual update and tender offer announcement demonstrates acknowledgment of employee economic rights and welfare principles, with transparent public communication supporting information access. However, active tracking infrastructure without visible privacy safeguards and lack of explicit privacy commitments represent structural contradictions to privacy and surveillance-related human rights principles. The content frames economic opportunity expansion while simultaneously implementing surveillance mechanisms.
Private markets is where the wealth is (if you invested at the bottom), as soon as Stripe goes public you're getting dumped on.
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.
The public can absolutely participate in this by way of syndication deals. Those syndicates are what's covering up the true extent of ownership and they're essentially charging for access with their fees. It's oddly shady, poorly regulated, and more expensive than just being public, but everyone can ride this ride.
> Businesses running on Stripe generated $1.9 trillion in total volume
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 remember when Stripe started and it was super fun to set it up as a developer and build stuff.
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)
Braintree had $1.53 trillion TPV in 2023[0], and it's just a subsidiary of Paypal which has tanked to $40 billion market cap despite revenue and profit that are probably lightyears ahead of Stripe.
Honestly, I wouldn't touch Stripe with a ten foot poll at this valuation. Fintech is an industry that just disappoints in the end.
I cannot comprehend why there are so few companies dominating the payments sector. It doesn't seem competitive. Anyone can build a payment processor, nobody can get regulatory approval.
I also don't understand the fear around SaaS recently... People believe some weird narrative about AI replacing SaaS apps... Oh boy, people actually think that building the thing is the hard part. The entire software industry is pure crony-play; the people who run the big corporations own shares of their SaaS providers so they have no incentive to cut those contracts. Same with payment processors. I can't believe people still think we have a free market.
You can point to any company that's successful and there will be conflicts of interest all over the place. It doesn't even matter what the company does TBH. It's irrelevant.
People are just competing on who can make the money move around in circles within their group the fastest. Money certainly seems a lot more abundant when it passes through many hands and people are just buying stuff from each other.
Stripe has been doing annual tender offers. Their stance on not being public yet is that they don't need to be, as an IPO is mainly a way to raise money.
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.
You need an annual income of $200K to become an accredited investor. If you don't have that, you anyways shouldn't be participating in risky private markets.
If anything they should also restrict options trading, sports gambling, prediction markets etc. to accredited investors.
Well when you're giving away your product for free... maybe open-source maintainers who want payment for their "free" products should consider going to business school?
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.
If you don't meet the financial requirement ($200K annual income or $1M net worth), you can also qualify as an accredited investor by passing the Series 65 exam and filing a form with the SEC.
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.
If a maintainer has chosen to open source and use a permissive license (key word chosen, this isn't a default), they are explicitly saying via their license that they are not charging for the use of the code. What's the issue here?
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).
Not all revenue is equal. Payments is interesting because the processor’s growth is directly tied to the growth of its customers. Stripe captures the vast majority of high growth SF startups. Stripe has better customers.
I find Stripes fees excessive too, but I don’t think I’ll ever switch. I’ve been running a small SaaS product on the side of other work for >15 years and if it taught me one thing, it’s that I need to reduce the things I have to maintain, reduce manual work, reduce the things that can go wrong. There’s nothing worse than having to fix a bug in a codebase you haven’t touched for a year and possibly in a feature you haven’t touched in many years. I simply love that Stripe handles not just the payment, but the payment application, the subscription billing, the price settings, the exports for bookkeeping. I’ve had a few instances where my site was used fraudulently to check stolen credit cards and it was quickly flagged and I could resolve it with Stripe. I’m sure someone can mention alternatives and I’m sure that I could build something that would work myself, but they keep a big part of what it takes to run the business out of my mind and I’m willing to pay for that.
Not sure what that letter said but open source^ isn’t good and I’m what people would incorrectly stereotype as someone who would love open source as a Marxist [sympathizer].
^outside of specific scenarios where it fights back against the status quo like open source AI models.
The general public absolutely cannot. You have to be an accredited investor or qualified purchaser; you need to have access; you have to pay carry & fees (maybe multiple, stacked middlemen).
It would help a lot if you elaborated why it's a 'ludicrous' valuation rather than asserting that it simply is. What method are you using to value the enterprise and why does your expected result not match the actual result?
Well, it's not exactly a fair comparison, since they're comparing a volume number with GDP, which is total value produced in a year. Volume numbers are usually much bigger than production numbers, since money moves around a lot.
If I pay a restaurant $200 for dinner and my three friends each venmo me $50 for their share, then the exchanged volume was $350, but only $200 worth of value was generated.
In the EU and had to switch from Stripe to Mollie due to Stripe thinking the client was a cruise company because they rent 'cruiser' boats for river leisure. Mollie was super easy to implement for them, and fees much better
PayPal is steadily decreasing in share of web payments, with the one redeeming part of their business being Venmo, which appears to be crushing Cash App.
Adyen competes primarily on price with no feature differentiation, and doesn't have the same ease-of-use.
Working at several large companies in payments areas who were Stripe customers, I'll sum up what the competition looks like by paraphrasing one of the executives I reported to: "we go to Adyen when we want to take a competing offer to Stripe for them to match".
It does seem like a lot, but if you look at growth rates, the differences are significant.
Stripe is also doing far more value-added stuff: If all you need is to process credit card Adyen is probably going to outbid Stripe. They almost always did last time I checked. But Stripe is offering a significantly larger product, especially to people running marketplaces. That was always the selling point for the doordashes and deliveroos of the world. Even for Amazon. So I bet that the skinny version that is just a payment processor would be worth a lot less.
They aren't the only ones trying to widen their horizons either: Paypal and Square/Block came up with plenty of plans to try to grow past boring payments. They just didn't execute on those things all that well, and somehow Stripe does.
valuation's are based on future returns, not current returns. If one believes they are growing and visa and mastercard aren't then the valuation might make a little more sense. (though I can't comment on the actualities, only the potentials).
Tender offer to provide 'liquidity to current and former employees' represents recognition of employee economic rights and fair remuneration principles; framed as supporting employee financial security.
FW Ratio: 50%
Observable Facts
Tender offer is explicitly described as providing 'liquidity to current and former employees'.
Announcement includes both current and former employee groups, extending economic participation rights.
Press release frames tender offer as company initiative to support employee financial welfare.
Inferences
Inclusion of former employees in tender offer signals recognition of ongoing economic rights beyond active employment.
Liquidity provision aligns with Article 23 principles of fair compensation and economic security.
Transparent communication of benefits demonstrates commitment to employee economic participation.
Annual letter and tender offer announcement represent corporate transparency and free expression of business strategy; information is shared openly without editorial restrictions.
FW Ratio: 50%
Observable Facts
Annual letter is published in public newsroom without paywall or registration requirement.
Announcement content is presented as company statement without editorial gatekeeping.
Page structure allows direct linking and sharing of announcement information.
Inferences
Free publication of corporate communications demonstrates commitment to information access and transparency.
Absence of access barriers suggests company values freedom of expression in corporate communications.
Public newsroom structure supports Article 19 principles of information accessibility.
Annual letter and tender offer represent participation in economic and social life; announcement signals engagement with employee participation in company benefits and economic opportunity.
FW Ratio: 50%
Observable Facts
Annual letter and tender offer announcement are publicly published without access restrictions.
Content is framed to include participation opportunities (tender offer) for multiple employee groups.
Newsroom structure enables wide dissemination and participation in corporate information sharing.
Inferences
Public announcement of tender offer invites employee participation in economic benefits.
Free access to corporate information supports broader participation in economic life.
Transparent communication structure demonstrates commitment to inclusive participation principles.
Annual letter frames Stripe's mission around enabling economic growth and financial access; implies commitment to dignity and equal opportunity in economic participation, core UDHR principles.
FW Ratio: 50%
Observable Facts
Page announces 2025 annual letter and tender offer for employee liquidity.
Content is published in public newsroom without paywall access.
Page contains GTM-WK8882T tracking tag and third-party tracking infrastructure.
Inferences
The annual letter framing suggests commitment to human-centered economic principles.
Free publication of corporate updates supports public access to corporate governance information.
Tracking infrastructure indicates data collection without visible on-page privacy safeguards.
Annual update framed around enabling 'economic growth' and supporting 'current and former employees' through liquidity; affirms equal dignity in economic participation.
FW Ratio: 60%
Observable Facts
Tender offer explicitly names 'current and former employees' as beneficiaries.
Press announcement is written in neutral, non-discriminatory language.
No visible gatekeeping or discrimination indicators in content structure.
Inferences
Inclusion of 'former employees' suggests awareness of equal dignity principles across employment status boundaries.
Transparent announcement of benefits signals non-discriminatory intent in distribution.
No explicit content addressing discrimination; however, tender offer structure applies uniformly to employee groups without visible differentiation by protected characteristics.
FW Ratio: 67%
Observable Facts
Tender offer beneficiary categories (current/former employees) are not explicitly differentiated by protected characteristics.
Page content and newsroom access do not restrict based on identity markers.
Inferences
Non-discriminatory framing suggests awareness of equal treatment principle, though no explicit anti-discrimination commitments are stated.
Announcement of tender offer to employees and former employees implies freedom of movement and ability to participate in economic systems; no restrictions mentioned.
FW Ratio: 50%
Observable Facts
Tender offer is announced as available to both current and former employees without stated geographic restriction.
Newsroom content is accessible from global internet without apparent regional blocking.
Inferences
Open tender offer structure suggests recognition of employee freedom to participate in financial opportunities.
Public accessibility supports freedom of movement principles in information access.
No explicit statement of community responsibilities; however, tender offer to employees and economic growth framing implies recognition of obligations to employee and broader community.
FW Ratio: 60%
Observable Facts
Tender offer is framed as company action supporting employee community.
Announcement is published transparently in public newsroom.
No explicit statement of community responsibilities or accountability mechanisms visible.
Inferences
Employee-focused tender offer signals recognition of community responsibilities to workforce.
Public communication suggests awareness of transparency obligations to stakeholders.
Tender offer structure extends benefits to both current and former employees, suggesting commitment to fair treatment across employment status; information is transparently communicated.
Tender offer structure provides financial resources for employee welfare; information architecture supports transparent communication of benefits and employee participation.
Public newsroom with free access to corporate announcements supports freedom of expression and information access; no paywall or registration barriers visible.
Free public access to corporate announcements supports right to participate in cultural, artistic, and economic life of society; no barriers to information access.
Public newsroom with free access supports transparency; however, behavioral tracking and GTM infrastructure indicate surveillance infrastructure not aligned with privacy-protective values.
Public newsroom and transparent communication suggest awareness of responsibility to inform stakeholders; no visible mechanisms for community input or accountability.
GTM tracking (GTM-WK8882T) and third-party tracking infrastructure are active on page; no visible privacy controls, cookie transparency, or opt-out mechanisms disclosed in page structure.
Annual letter and tender offer are framed as company-wide initiative supporting 'current and former employees' without acknowledging alternative perspectives or limitations.
build 1ad9551+j7zs · deployed 2026-03-02 09:09 UTC · evaluated 2026-03-02 11:31:12 UTC
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