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John Collison

Co-founder · Stripe

Claims
79
Episodes
14
Shows
2
Named items
2

Books, apps, and tools

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service / likes

ElevenLabs

“I don't know how big self-serve is, but as a user, I like to be able to fiddle with ElevenLabs and not have to go talk to sales.”

Cheeky Pint · 14 Apr 2026

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / likes

The End of Accounting

“One of my favorite books about accounting is the End of Accounting, which talks about how GAAP is basically poorly suited to this day and age.”

Cheeky Pint · 17 Sept 2025

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

Claim ledger

What John said.

79 transcript-backed records

01 / recommendation

You should get more connections on LinkedIn so that there is content in your feed and your view is that you should separate out the people you want to interact with and having stuff to do in the app.

“You should get more connections on LinkedIn so that there is content in your feed and your view is that you should separate out the people you want to interact with and having stuff to do in the app.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

03 / preference

You have been much more of a believer in the AR form factor than almost anyone I know for a very long time. What gave you the conviction that this is the right form factor?

“You have been much more of a believer in the AR form factor than almost anyone I know for a very long time. What gave you the conviction that this is the right form factor?”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

06 / prediction

There's been a general trend, I think, of businesses directly monetizing, like having their equivalent of direct revenue be more relevant with AI because the inference costs are real.

“There's been a general trend, I think, of businesses directly monetizing, like having their equivalent of direct revenue be more relevant with AI because the inference costs are real.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

07 / evaluation

As I think about Snap, one of the things you've done well is you've kept it cool, and you've avoided the "ick" of it feeling like it's too big, which again, sometimes social networks run into.

“As I think about Snap, one of the things you've done well is you've kept it cool, and you've avoided the "ick" of it feeling like it's too big, which again, sometimes social networks run into.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

08 / belief

As I think about the funding rounds you mentioned being hard, one of the investors I know who has consistently had the most steadfast belief about DoorDash is Michael Abramson, who was at Sequoia back in the day.

“As I think about the funding rounds you mentioned being hard, one of the investors I know who has consistently had the most steadfast belief about DoorDash is Michael Abramson, who was at Sequoia back in the day.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

10 / evaluation

I think people maybe thought that big chains were going to do it more, where you're right, the billboard effect for an actual retail presence is hard to compete with, where you get this very cheap customer acquisition from the fact that people know your name from the high street or maybe have been to you, and as a ghost kitchen, you need to make up for that awareness gap.

“I think people maybe thought that big chains were going to do it more, where you're right, the billboard effect for an actual retail presence is hard to compete with, where you get this very cheap customer acquisition from the fact that people know your name from the high street or maybe have been to you, and as a ghost kitchen, you need to make up for that awareness gap.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

11 / evaluation

I think he said, "You have to do the math and work out that the economics of this business do work," and they do, therefore, a more compelling product experience will win.

“I think he said, "You have to do the math and work out that the economics of this business do work," and they do, therefore, a more compelling product experience will win.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

12 / preference

I think about one of the beliefs that informed their products most strongly was that no-shows are terrible for restaurants, and a restaurant reservation should be like a flight reservation, where you don't just get to decide you're not going to go to the restaurant.

“I think about one of the beliefs that informed their products most strongly was that no-shows are terrible for restaurants, and a restaurant reservation should be like a flight reservation, where you don't just get to decide you're not going to go to the restaurant.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

13 / preference

Two topics that are on the minds of all our customers today are, yes, stablecoins and then AI, specifically with respect to changing buying, agentic commerce. On stablecoins, I think maybe DoorDash is not where I would start.

“Two topics that are on the minds of all our customers today are, yes, stablecoins and then AI, specifically with respect to changing buying, agentic commerce. On stablecoins, I think maybe DoorDash is not where I would start.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

14 / evaluation

Then there's the really old-school restaurant where the owner might greet you and might comp your dessert or something, but it's very sporadic and very dependent on the owner being there because as you say, when the new waiter or waitress is there, they don't know you.

“Then there's the really old-school restaurant where the owner might greet you and might comp your dessert or something, but it's very sporadic and very dependent on the owner being there because as you say, when the new waiter or waitress is there, they don't know you.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

17 / evaluation

As I think through AI applications for DoorDash, one thing I'm struck by is that the LLMs are pretty good recommenders, just by tossing things into context.

“As I think through AI applications for DoorDash, one thing I'm struck by is that the LLMs are pretty good recommenders, just by tossing things into context.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

18 / belief

I think people have an intuition around big LLMs where there are these very expensive training runs, and yes, they depreciate quickly, but there's so much usage that all of the models trained to date have paid off their training runs and then some.

“I think people have an intuition around big LLMs where there are these very expensive training runs, and yes, they depreciate quickly, but there's so much usage that all of the models trained to date have paid off their training runs and then some.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

21 / preference

Maybe you want to have a subscription with some unlimited tiers, but I don't know if you had the experience of you're using Claude, and you're typing away your queries, and eventually you hit some rate limit, and it's like, "Sorry, you've hit your usage limit," and you want to be able to do the thing that you can do with Claude Code, which is just pay per API.

“Maybe you want to have a subscription with some unlimited tiers, but I don't know if you had the experience of you're using Claude, and you're typing away your queries, and eventually you hit some rate limit, and it's like, "Sorry, you've hit your usage limit," and you want to be able to do the thing that you can do with Claude Code, which is just pay per API.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

23 / evaluation

It's one thing with SaaS where you get these vertical-specific providers, but I would imagine one of the biggest risks for you guys in being intermediated is if there is, like in this example, a closed captioning service that is on a two-versions-old version of ElevenLabs and hasn't upgraded. That's a problem because you want people to be using the latest and greatest model that you've developed, and you'll be deploying new capabilities every week.

“It's one thing with SaaS where you get these vertical-specific providers, but I would imagine one of the biggest risks for you guys in being intermediated is if there is, like in this example, a closed captioning service that is on a two-versions-old version of ElevenLabs and hasn't upgraded. That's a problem because you want people to be using the latest and greatest model that you've developed, and you'll be deploying new capabilities every week.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

24 / belief

I think what Elad is getting at is a feeling where I saw a tweet go by that someone was saying, "What you have to realize to explain what's currently going on in the Valley is that every tech executive has severe AI psychosis right now, and is spending a huge amount of time writing code and talking to AI and things like that.

“I think what Elad is getting at is a feeling where I saw a tweet go by that someone was saying, "What you have to realize to explain what's currently going on in the Valley is that every tech executive has severe AI psychosis right now, and is spending a huge amount of time writing code and talking to AI and things like that.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

25 / belief

I think Waymo is a good example of this question I have, which is Google does cut projects, and there's various things you've tried where you said, "We're actually not going to fund this part of X all the way, or we're going to retire this product.

“I think Waymo is a good example of this question I have, which is Google does cut projects, and there's various things you've tried where you said, "We're actually not going to fund this part of X all the way, or we're going to retire this product.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

26 / belief

I think the root of your question is, if you think of Search as a prompt that is not longer than one line, returning a bunch of different ranked results, as opposed to just telling you the right answer or something.

“I think the root of your question is, if you think of Search as a prompt that is not longer than one line, returning a bunch of different ranked results, as opposed to just telling you the right answer or something.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

28 / uncertainty

If you actually talk about all these rules, I don't know about SOC 2 in particular, but for example, a lot of compliance regimes have this notion of doer and approver being separate for something.

“If you actually talk about all these rules, I don't know about SOC 2 in particular, but for example, a lot of compliance regimes have this notion of doer and approver being separate for something.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

30 / evaluation

Yeah, I think what you're saying is there's a strategy component to how should we be doing things, and then there's an hourly labor component to compliance, which is like, "Oh, we did 10 times as many sales.

“Yeah, I think what you're saying is there's a strategy component to how should we be doing things, and then there's an hourly labor component to compliance, which is like, "Oh, we did 10 times as many sales.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

31 / evaluation

The joking reference that everyone makes is they talk about competition from Claude Code for software products is, "You're not just going to vibe code your X in a weekend." But obviously, something like SOC 2 is actually the kind of thing that a Lens or coding agents are good at working with because there's just so much training data out there, and it's a codified set of rules.

“The joking reference that everyone makes is they talk about competition from Claude Code for software products is, "You're not just going to vibe code your X in a weekend." But obviously, something like SOC 2 is actually the kind of thing that a Lens or coding agents are good at working with because there's just so much training data out there, and it's a codified set of rules.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

32 / evaluation

Again, it naively feels like you will have a similar effect with compliance as we had with IT, where the profession very much stays around. It actually gets more skilled rather than… I think the stuff we do in IT is harder than the basic IT, the 10-person company would have done.

“Again, it naively feels like you will have a similar effect with compliance as we had with IT, where the profession very much stays around. It actually gets more skilled rather than… I think the stuff we do in IT is harder than the basic IT, the 10-person company would have done.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

33 / prediction

It feels like the data you have of anonymized prior audits is an incredibly powerful network effect that cannot be replicated because it doesn't exist in the public interest.

“It feels like the data you have of anonymized prior audits is an incredibly powerful network effect that cannot be replicated because it doesn't exist in the public interest.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

34 / evaluation

What's going on there? As in, we think society cares, society should care. It's valuable to not lose this data, and yet it does not seem to impair what investors deem to be the terminal value of the company.

“What's going on there? As in, we think society cares, society should care. It's valuable to not lose this data, and yet it does not seem to impair what investors deem to be the terminal value of the company.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

35 / preference

Compiling that rule book into the steps that are actually actionable for me, because I am not a farm, and so all the farm parts of the rule book don't apply to me.

“Compiling that rule book into the steps that are actually actionable for me, because I am not a farm, and so all the farm parts of the rule book don't apply to me.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

36 / evaluation

That's generally… Obviously, there's lots of sexy stories of people who dropped out of college to start something. That's generally a bad time because you talk to university students, often, their ideas for companies are pretty half-baked.

“That's generally… Obviously, there's lots of sexy stories of people who dropped out of college to start something. That's generally a bad time because you talk to university students, often, their ideas for companies are pretty half-baked.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

37 / prediction

The other thing that feels like it's changing in this ecosystem is that the costs of having data breaches are going up because Europe, in particular, is getting very strict about notifications.

“The other thing that feels like it's changing in this ecosystem is that the costs of having data breaches are going up because Europe, in particular, is getting very strict about notifications.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

38 / prediction

I feel like you could have an opinion on this because we have filled out a lot of security questionnaires at Stripe, and I think we'd be very happy if the machines could take over from here.

“I feel like you could have an opinion on this because we have filled out a lot of security questionnaires at Stripe, and I think we'd be very happy if the machines could take over from here.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

39 / evaluation

LLMs are good at text or tokens, specifically, and obviously perform best at domains that have some single corpus of text they can work on, like coding, where it's very helpful that everything was just textual already.

“LLMs are good at text or tokens, specifically, and obviously perform best at domains that have some single corpus of text they can work on, like coding, where it's very helpful that everything was just textual already.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

45 / belief

Where, I think people don't think so much about this dynamic, but for a sports bookie, the best possible punter is someone who is kind of unsophisticated, bets on, like, their home soccer team's game.

“Where, I think people don't think so much about this dynamic, but for a sports bookie, the best possible punter is someone who is kind of unsophisticated, bets on, like, their home soccer team's game.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

47 / evaluation

There is also, when you're an exchange like this, you have to spin up market making. And in the end, the New York Stock Exchange doesn't have to think too much about market making because just the economic incentive is there.

“There is also, when you're an exchange like this, you have to spin up market making. And in the end, the New York Stock Exchange doesn't have to think too much about market making because just the economic incentive is there.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

52 / belief

We talked about this a bit in our annual letter in the context of agentic commerce, where, again, I think people are trying to pitch too much of the end state of fully autonomous, the robots just choosing a few.

“We talked about this a bit in our annual letter in the context of agentic commerce, where, again, I think people are trying to pitch too much of the end state of fully autonomous, the robots just choosing a few.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

57 / recommendation

We can give you an address that you can give to your customers, and they can mail checks to it, and we will turn it into digital money, and the fact that a bunch of atoms and an envelope going through the postal system were involved, you can forget about those details.

“We can give you an address that you can give to your customers, and they can mail checks to it, and we will turn it into digital money, and the fact that a bunch of atoms and an envelope going through the postal system were involved, you can forget about those details.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

59 / prediction

I think you tend to see structurally in these smaller… I mean, it's a large market in total, but where there's a finite universe of buyers, the distributional advantages are very powerful.

“I think you tend to see structurally in these smaller… I mean, it's a large market in total, but where there's a finite universe of buyers, the distributional advantages are very powerful.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

60 / belief

I was curious about the tape actually means. It feels like… When I think about AI predictions, one thing I'm really struck by is how, still in 2026, every time you open a chat window, it's contextless.

“I was curious about the tape actually means. It feels like… When I think about AI predictions, one thing I'm really struck by is how, still in 2026, every time you open a chat window, it's contextless.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

62 / evaluation

I don't know if they've talked about this stuff publicly, but you know that their internal metrics similarly show that the faster the product page loads, the more people buy it.

“I don't know if they've talked about this stuff publicly, but you know that their internal metrics similarly show that the faster the product page loads, the more people buy it.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

63 / prediction

Exactly, the repair thing, it feels like, can be solved, because also, I think part of the bet, part of Elon's claim, is that we will just be so power-limited that you have no option but to go to space.

“Exactly, the repair thing, it feels like, can be solved, because also, I think part of the bet, part of Elon's claim, is that we will just be so power-limited that you have no option but to go to space.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

64 / commitment

I will posit that many networks have been upgraded in place, but somehow the loose network of businesses paying each other via PDF invoices has proven very resistant to in-place upgrades.

“I will posit that many networks have been upgraded in place, but somehow the loose network of businesses paying each other via PDF invoices has proven very resistant to in-place upgrades.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

66 / evaluation

Yes. So you've talked a lot over the years about aggregation theory and really popularized this idea where pre-internet, often power would live with the supply, whereas on the internet, because of the different marginal cost dynamics and things like that, power will rest with the demand aggregators.

“Yes. So you've talked a lot over the years about aggregation theory and really popularized this idea where pre-internet, often power would live with the supply, whereas on the internet, because of the different marginal cost dynamics and things like that, power will rest with the demand aggregators.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

67 / evaluation

I see. So I mean famously, yeah, the restaurant economy and places like Taipei would have been really good, but it's gotten worse because people are eating in more with Uber Eats and stuff like that.

“I see. So I mean famously, yeah, the restaurant economy and places like Taipei would have been really good, but it's gotten worse because people are eating in more with Uber Eats and stuff like that.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

73 / evaluation

One of my favorite books about accounting is the End of Accounting, which talks about how GAAP is basically poorly suited to this day and age.

“One of my favorite books about accounting is the End of Accounting, which talks about how GAAP is basically poorly suited to this day and age.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

75 / evaluation

How do you get people using the product and then how do you make it better when you’re using the product? And when we started Stripe, we were very much building stripe in a single-player mode where you have your Stripe account and the fact that other people use Stripe is, well, they didn’t at the time.

“How do you get people using the product and then how do you make it better when you’re using the product? And when we started Stripe, we were very much building stripe in a single-player mode where you have your Stripe account and the fact that other people use Stripe is, well, they didn’t at the time.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

76 / preference

Yeah, I think maybe also, you’ve probably picked up on this dispositionally, we’re just not naturally drawn to pre-announcing products before they’re anywhere close to—we like to do a thing and hopefully we get it right.

“Yeah, I think maybe also, you’ve probably picked up on this dispositionally, we’re just not naturally drawn to pre-announcing products before they’re anywhere close to—we like to do a thing and hopefully we get it right.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

78 / evaluation

I think there’s a general view that the economics of US agriculture are really hard and it’s challenged from a labor point of view.

“I think there’s a general view that the economics of US agriculture are really hard and it’s challenged from a labor point of view.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

79 / prediction

” But when people have money in crypto, they will store it in Coinbase, or in Binance, or what have you. And so our view is that for whatever job is being done, there will be a whole bunch of other counterparties that we are going to integrate with and work with.

“” But when people have money in crypto, they will store it in Coinbase, or in Binance, or what have you. And so our view is that for whatever job is being done, there will be a whole bunch of other counterparties that we are going to integrate with and work with.”
Speaker
John Collison
Publisher
Cheeky Pint
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