Thread by @patio11

Five years ago we launched Stripe Atlas: stripe.com/blog/atlas-fir…

We've helped 20,000 companies form so far. Here's some of what we've learned:

An ongoing question for Atlas: are we serving the highest growth businesses in the world (like e.g. VCs), or do we want to enable unlikely businesses from unlikely people in unlikely places?

To which we answer simply: yes.

A lot of big things look very small in their early days, and they often arrive from the margins, from garages and hackathons and hobby projects that grow into something more.

The aggregate economic impact of Atlas users is staggering. $3 billion in revenue so far; almost 100,000 jobs created, in Silicon Valley, Shenzhen, the Schengen Area, Surat, and many places that begin with other letters, too.

These companies tell us they're going to hire another 120k people over the next year. If they hit their hiring plans, that's almost equivalent to adding another Google worth of jobs to the Internet economy.

Many Atlas companies are small today, and we remain dedicated to supporting them throughout their lifecycles. We've enhanced Atlas over the years with features like LLC support (common for businesses in the U.S. which aren't optimizing for the rocket ship trajectory).

But some Atlas companies have indeed achieved scaled success, and we're thrilled to have been able to help.

We've gotten more than 15 companies into YC via our biannual YC app reviews, and Atlas companies have raised over $4 billion in capital from professional investors.

For those keeping score, that's about double what Stripe has raised to support the business to date.

I think we've accomplished some fairly interesting things in 10 years. Check back on the early Atlas cohorts in another 5-10. They'll be almost literally everywhere.

Just as important as the economic impact is the impact Stripe Atlas users create in their communities.

Many have their own story to tell, and you can see some in the video linked on the post, but as long as I'm tweeting I'll tell you mine.

Back in January at VaccinateCA we made the decision to formalize our volunteer work into an entity and raise money / hire staff / start professionalizing operations.

Every day mattered; we were trying to get people information about vaccines in the face of a pandemic.

We used Stripe Atlas and got up and running very quickly, even with me in Japan and our other signing board member in SF.

(I eventually met @obra and @zoelle 5 months later, for our first time, after we got our vaccines.)

That gave us enough of a foundation to start getting bank accounts, processing payroll, and eventually pro bono representation to switch to a non-profit and get 501c3 status. It accelerated our impact on the Californian and eventually U.S. pandemic response by, probably, weeks.

There are still many things in the world which are too slow and too onerous. They tax the people making the future.

We're hard at work on fixing some of them, and broadening how many businesses Atlas is right for and what we can do for them.

More coming later in the year.

I have fallen into a trap I often fall into, which is caching stats from the Atlas community and assuming they remain true.

We got 25 companies into YC *in the W21 cycle alone*.

That program has scaled quite a bit from where it started, which was this tweet approximately 2 minutes after @taylorfrancis suggested the idea:

https://twitter.com/patio11/status/779402010315468800

Forgot to mention: Stripe Atlas is hiring engineers and others to work on those coming projects. Feel free to hit up @jeff_weinstein .

https://twitter.com/jeff_weinstein/status/1410641507426574337?s=20