John Collison

“I've actually come to the conclusion that giving founders more control over their life's work, which is what it is, is an acceptable price to pay to incent them to go public... Otherwise everyone just does what the Collisons are doing and says private.”

“I've actually come to the conclusion that giving founders more control over their life's work, which is what it is, is an acceptable price to pay to incent them to go public, right? So I've actually changed my opinion on that. I actually think, even though some of these control things are weird... weird control terms are an acceptable part, because otherwise everyone just does what the Collisons are doing and says private.”

“John and I were in college together. He was in his freshman year and we went to Startup School in 2009... and it was walking back that evening after Startup School that we decided to start Stripe.”

“They basically signed up all the AI companies that are selling shit online. And they shouldn't be getting anything like the money they're probably getting from the OpenAIs and Anthropics in terms of interchange fees. But who's got time to optimize that stuff?”

“I feel like there's at least a reasonable chance that 2026 Q1 will be looked back upon as the first quarter of the singularity.”

“Podcast: The a16z Show | Participants: A16Z Narrator, Georgie Hayes, John Collison, Patrick Collison”