Stripe

"China is well-positioned to win the total commodification of everything. America’s strength is creating new sources of value that machines can’t yet touch." Ben Thompson, the internet’s premier tech analyst, joins John Collison for a wide-ranging conversation on the mechanics of the internet economy. They discuss the origins of Stratechery and the "1,000 true fans" model, why Taiwan is the most convenient place to live (and the best Uber Eats market), and why the public markets are wrong to think SaaS is "canceled." Ben also explains why the US failure to control the TikTok algorithm is a disaster, why he’s a "crypto defender" in an age of infinite AI content, and gives John some very direct feedback on Stripe’s ACH implementation. Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gWt783nF Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/gxgQYu6s YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gAqp9QYi Substack: https://lnkd.in/gyHCPcHd

Lobster DNA never degenerates, and they can repair themselves indefinitely. In principle they are capable of living forever. Mole rats don't get cancer. There is a jellyfish that can revert itself back to an embryo-like state, with undifferentiated cells that can grow into whatever limbs or organs it needs. Nineteenth-century cities grew fast. Berlin’s population grew twenty times, Manchester’s twenty-five times, and New York’s a hundred times. Between 1833 and 1900, Chicago’s population grew around five thousand times – on average it doubled every five years. The first vaccines were produced by injecting brain tissue from rabid dogs into rabbits' brains. Today, we can design vaccines rapidly thanks to genome sequencing and electron microscopes. In the last five years, we've developed the first effective vaccines against four new diseases. And the rate of progress is speeding up. San Francisco has an average of eight bus stops per mile, whereas European cities tend to have only four stops per mile. Moving to a European model only adds 1–3 mins of extra walking to get to a stop, and can boost speeds by 20–30%. And it can save money for investment in better buses or more frequent services. If facts and stories like these interest you, you might already be a Works in Progress subscriber, and our new issue will be arriving to your door this week. If not, there's still time to subscribe and receive it. Subscriptions are available now in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and across the European Union, shipping now. https://lnkd.in/e_fN8tvf

Minions are our homegrown coding agents. They’re fully unattended and built to one-shot tasks. Over a thousand pull requests merged each week at Stripe are completely minion-produced, and while they’re human-reviewed, they contain no human-written code. In a world where one of our most constrained resources is developer attention, unattended agents allow for parallelization of tasks. We frequently see engineers spinning up multiple minions, to enable them to parallelize the completion of many different tasks. This can be particularly helpful during an on-call rotation to effectively resolve many small issues that might arise. Read our blog post: https://lnkd.in/gaRMvxX7.

Selling across borders is getting more complicated. In our new report, we break down what this means for your region: 🌎 US states implemented over 400 sales tax rate changes in the first half of 2025 alone, and US retailers are losing the de minimis exemption on low-value shipments. Brazil is launching a dual VAT reform that will require nonresident companies to register for tax purposes locally. 🌍 France, Poland, and Belgium are making electronic invoicing mandatory for B2B transactions in 2026 to close VAT gaps. 🌏 Thailand has abolished duty exemptions for imports valued at $1,500 and below, while the Philippines introduced a 12% VAT on digital services like streaming and SaaS. Read the full report: https://lnkd.in/eht3-RhR.

Alex Atallah and the team at OpenRouter let more than 5 million developers access hundreds of different AI models through a single interface. Stripe now powers OpenRouter’s payments, tax compliance, and invoicing: https://lnkd.in/gwVD7zpi.

We've used Stripe since the early days—Checkout, Billing, Invoicing, Link. Stripe has been a critical partner in Gamma's growth from pre-revenue to a $2.1B valuation in two years, and now as we scale worldwide. https://lnkd.in/gSzusPFy

Gamma is used by 70 million people worldwide to create presentations with AI and recently crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue. "Stripe gives us the financial infrastructure to support Gamma's expansion—from self-serve subscriptions to larger business deals. Checkout, Billing, and Invoicing have helped us move fast across geographies and customer segments." — Grant Lee, CEO and cofounder of Gamma. https://lnkd.in/eBcXMCfj