Driving Cars and Acquisitions
Random Prediction: Stripe gets bought by Visa, MasterCard or Paypal.
I indirectly own some Stripe stock, but I’ve got no inside information.
I find Stripe a great product to use for a small business. They have covered a lot of edge cases (specific forms of subscriptions, taxes etc.) that aren’t as well covered by PayPal, or at least as easy to use via API.
Still, I don’t quite understand how Stripe maintains profit margins with the competition of PayPal and Adyen. Stripe Link (where you save your card info) is one effect to get a moat, but I’m unsure whether Stripe can capture the market share that PayPal have with people having a personal account.
I’m uncertain whether Paypal’s pyUSD digital currency will have a big impact, but it shows PayPal have the capability to do something like this, whereas perhaps Stripe have to be more careful with spending.
I like that Stripe’s founders are young though, they have many years and can come up with many great ideas more. That’s not easy though.
All in all, I think Stripe maybe need to make it big fast. Otherwise they get Slacked (i.e. SalesForce buying out Slack). And unfortunately I don’t think interest rates are in Stripe’s favour, because the market is now valuing profits, and valuing profits that are nearer rather than farther term.
Coning.
There are videos going around of protestors putting a cone on the bonnet of a self-driving car. This immobilises the car and leaves it stuck in the middle of the street.
Ironically, these protestors may be helping the self-driving companies, because they are giving them the weird training environments that they need to find edge cases.
Thiel
I’ve listened to probably three different Thiel videos over the last 2 years, and it’s remarkable to me how consistent he is on his message, and wording.
The core thesis I’m getting is that the culture wars/diversity debates in universities (and perhaps more broadly) are a distraction to hide from the lack of scientific/human progress in recent decades.
The repetition helps me to get the arguments. Maybe most public speakers (or at least those who are well honed on a message) have the same consistency in delivery. I’m unsure.
Are we making less progress (scientific and human). I’m unsure but open to the idea. I’m trying to re-read/listen David Deutsch some more and better understand his/Popper’s theory of knowledge generation.