Fireside chat with Patrick Collison and Karri Saarinen

San Francisco - This afternoon I walked from our office on Market and Third to the Accel office in South Park.

What's happening: Via an invite from George Pike and Christine Esserman from Accel, I attended a fireside chat with Patrick Collison (Stripe) and Karri Saarinen (Linear).

Did they talk about Founder Mode? Oh yes. Founder Mode was the first question Karri asked Patrick.

My takeaways:

• Patrick has been Stripe's CEO 14 years; they now have 8,000 employees
• “I would like to understand it better” Patrick Collison re: Founder Mode (me too)
• Patrick felt Paul Graham's Founder Mode essay missed mentioning the importance of having awesome leaders.
• Collison: Pre and post product-market fit (PMF) companies are completely different. After PMF, recruiting the leadership team becomes very important. 
• "Steve [Jobs] was so freakin' good at recruiting and getting the best leaders." Collison
• Stripe was adamant for a long time they shouldn’t have managers. That was a mistake.” Collison
• A lot of giant software companies weren’t the first movers. 
• “We want to employ really good people. Really good people don’t enjoy working on shitty things.” Collison
• The original iPhone software team was only 20 people (the whole thing). 
• Carmack's Law. I think Patrick Collison coined a new term this evening. He defined Carmack’s Law as the principle that no software project is too large whereby a single person could not write it entirely by themselves. The term pays homage to John Carmack, who built Doom largely on his own.
• Stripe Press is considered a form of marketing and a way for Stripe to communicate internally. All its books are somewhat related to things Stripe cares about.
• 1% of all internet GDP now flows thru Stripe 
• Karri Saarinen originally from Finland, moved in 2012
• Stripe has an internal guide on how to build good SaaS products: First the idea; then speak to 5 or more people who have the problem, share and iterate what you’ve built (e.g., via Slack); once they're happy, then open it to 100 customers; metrics come later
• “If you have 100 happy people, then you add in the metrics, the growth, and all the rest.” Collison

Stripe: The mission at Stripe is to increase the GDP of the internet. The company provides a suite of software and APIs for online payment processing. We've been a happy customer since 2015. 

Linear: The startup Linear is a purpose-built tool for planning and building products. Accel led their Series B round in 2023. 

Enjoy the pics!

Selfie with Patrick Collison (Co-founder and CEO, Stripe)

Karri Saarinen, Linear Co-founder and CEO, holding some Pausox

Selfie with George Kalogeropoulos (CEO, HealthSherpa)

"I think you should always put the craft into the main thing” Karri Saarinen (Linear CEO)

A nondescript entry to a top-tier VC firm

Rooftop view in San Francisco's South Park

Still not many women at tech meetups in SF. And still only one Hawaiian.