Billion Dollar Unicorns: Stripe is in no Rush to List

An Allied Market Research report published earlier this year estimates the global mobile payments market to grow 33% annually to $3,388 billion by 2022. The growth in the market is expected to be driven by the Asia-Pacific region. Billion Dollar Unicorn club member Stripe is a leading player in the industry, which also happens to be the most valuable financial technology startup that is still privately held.

Stripe’s Financials

San Francisco-based Stripe was founded in 2009 by brothers John and Patrick Collison who wanted to set up an online platform to simplify the process of accepting payments for websites and apps. Today, Stripe’s service allows websites to accept payments online and through mobile apps by embedding a simple code.

Over the past year, it has also expanded its offerings to include additional services such as Atlas, a program that helps entrepreneurs launch their own Internet businesses and Stripe Radar, an anti-fraud tool for big businesses.

Stripe earns revenues by charging a transaction fee of 2.9% of the transaction value plus a commission of $0.30 per transaction. It does not report its financials, but analysts use its pricing structure to estimate its revenues at $450 million for 2015. Its profitability status is still not known. Its customer list is impressive as it includes names like Target, SAP, The NFL, Lyft, and Macy’s on its banner. It has expanded internationally as well and last year end began establishing presence in the Asian markets.

Stripe is venture funded so far with $440 million raised from investors including Capital G, Visa, Thrive Capital, Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, General Catalyst Partners, Sequoia Capital, Allen & Company, Y Combinator, SV Angel, Aaron Levie, Chris Dixon, Elad Gil, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Andreessen Horowitz. Its valuation has been steadily increasing. Its last round of funding was held in November 2016 when it raised $150 million at a valuation of $9.2 billion. Prior to that, a July 2015 round had valued it at $5 billion.

Stripe’s Listing Plans

Many were expecting Stripe to go public this year. But Stripe is not looking to list so soon. It wants to be able to stay independent for as long as it can manage. It believes that a company should go public once it has attained a point of stability, and right now, it still hasn’t. Its unwillingness to go public does raise concerns among its employees who are finding it difficult to cash in on the valuation by selling stock.

Stripe is probably also evaluating Square’s (NYSE:SQ) performance before it lists. Jack Dorsey’s Square appeared to have delivered a turnaround quarter recently. Square had listed in 2015 at a pre-listing valuation of $6 billion. Many expected the stock to soar post listing, but that was not to be. After flailing a bit, the company assigned its leadership position back to Jack. In the recent quarter, Square’s revenues came in at $462 million and valuation for the company soared to $7.7 billion. Square’s valuation may not give Stripe a vote of confidence. At roughly 4 times its size, Square is valued less than Stripe.

I would wait for more insight into Stripe’s financials before accepting its lofty valuation.

More investigation and analysis of Unicorn companies can be found in my latest Entrepreneur Journeys book, Billion Dollar Unicorns. To be a part of the conversation, please register here. The term Unicorn was coined in a TechCrunch article by Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures.

This segment is a part in the series : Billion Dollar Unicorns