The software payment platform for building an internet business, Stripe, launched a new global platform that removes barriers to entry for Start-Ups.
Danny Meadows-Klue was at Mobile World Congress to cover the announcement. Stripe has been behind the scenes supporting household names like Kickstarter, Pinterest, Twitter, and Slack, as well as startups like Deliveroo. Their growth since launching 4 years ago has been geometric, and by focussing on clean and powerful APIs, they’ve become a powerful platform for digital entrepreneurship.
Their mission is extreme: “We want to grow the overall GDP of the internet”, explains Patrick Collison, Stripe’s Founder and CEO, speaking at Mobile World Congress 2016. “It’s hard for developers around the world to build real digitally-centric businesses,” explains Collision, citing lack of payment tech versus the ease of being able to code in a developing or emerging market.
In the past, companies outside Western Europe, North America and the Far East have found it difficult to grow easily. Globally orientated tech firms have often needed to incorporate in more developed markets to build their services.
Today the platform is taking its next leap. “We decided to take what global start-ups had been doing and wrap it up in a single product, a new way for entrepreneurs anywhere in the world to start a new business,”
It will make it exceptionally easy to establish a US company, set up a US bank account, access legal advice and of course comes with a Stripe account. This is a SaaS style toolkit for enabling instant company set-up, and one that looks set to be a significant disintermediation play.
“What takes entrepreneurs months can now be done in seconds”, says Collision. They are starting with US incorporation but their plans are to run across dozens of countries. Their partnerships include Silicon Valley Bank, PWC for business advice, AWS for hosting, and many more.
This is one of the firms to watch for 2016.