1/ Both addressing all of commerce spend, one of the largest TAMs in the world. Levered to secular ecom growth horizontally and neither take on single vertical risk.
2/ Started by focusing on SMB merchants in a targeted way and doing this 5-10x better vs incumbents.
3/ Expanded to provide a fuller suite of offerings for SMB. Amazon added fulfillment, advertising, lending. Stripe added subscription & billing management, business incorporation, merchant loans, fraud prevention.
4/ Leveraged that expertise to expand into large merchants. Amazon now sells for iconic brands like @Apple and @Nike. Stripe has customers including @zoom_us @salesforce @Wayfair @SlackHQ.
5/ Incredible flywheel at both companies. Amazon has their two-sided marketplace. Stripe’s payment business is “build once” with low marginal costs. Their scale allows them to offer the best price and invest in the fullest suite of offerings, both breadth and depth.
6/ Both were early to recognize the convergence of offline & online commerce. Amazon bought @WholeFoods for grocery, is building Go stores for cashier-free checkout. Stripe is expanding into offline commerce with Stripe Terminal. This is a mega-trend over the next decade.
7/ Both @JeffBezos & @patrickc @collision are world-class operators and masters at capital allocation. They continuously push into new markets. Amazon invested in AWS, Kindle, Echo, Twitch. Stripe is investing in offline, card issuing, corporate cards which are all massive TAMs.
8/ It remains Day 1 at @stripe.
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