I think a lot of people learn to code messing around with things while in secondary school. And for me, it started up as a hobby and a plaything, and I just became more curious over time.
John CollisonHelp each user personally. Sure that won't scale to a very large size, but when a startup is just starting out, it really helps you have an advantage as a small and nimble company.
John CollisonWith Stripe, people who previously operated online or offline in a very limited capacity now have all the tools to work like a real online business. That's a very valuable thing.
John CollisonAuctomatic was a compressed start-up experience, going from start to launch to acquisition in under a year. We spent a long time building the product before getting our first customer, whereas with Stripe we made sure we had paying customers from the very start.
John Collison