Stripe was very much the product of our past experiences.

Fundraising is a long and distracting process, and by the end of it, all you want to do is go back to building the product that you're working on.

Our initial idea with Stripe was that for people like us - those building apps and websites - it was incredibly difficult to take payments. So with an open mind, and maybe a useful lack of knowledge about the industry, we started building a payment product.

Our idea with starting Stripe was to build better payments technology for people building things on the web.

We asked ourselves and the world to base decisions on good science, and I really believe the United States can be the leader in delivering that message to our international trading partners.

I majored in political science and English, but starting from the age of 17, I've paid for everything that I've had in my life. It was a personal choice. My parents would have helped me in any way whatsoever, but for me, you know what? I can make my own way.

The first rule of world-building is available physics, which basically means that if you want it to feel real, it has to follow the same rules as this world, from gravity to how human behaviour works. If you have a fantasy element that doesn't obey the laws of physics, make sure that it has a fantasy explanation.

The relevance of Marxism to science is that it removes it from its imagined position of complete detachment and shows it as a part, but a critically important part, of economy and social development.