Descriptions:
a16z General Partner David George is joined by Will Gaybrick, President of Product & Business at Stripe, to discuss how AI is changing the way Stripe builds products, organizes teams, and thinks about the future of internet commerce. Stripe has evolved from a payments company into a multi-product financial infrastructure platform, while a new generation of AI companies is growing and monetizing faster than previous software cohorts.
Will explains why Stripe sees AI productivity as an opportunity to build more rather than simply cut costs, including how its internal coding agents now generate thousands of pull requests each week. They discuss creating founder-like agency inside large companies, building smaller and flatter teams, and why Stripe believes dramatically more software will be created as the cost of building continues to fall.
They also look ahead to agentic commerce, why checkout pages could disappear, the potential return of micropayments, stablecoins as infrastructure for a global economy, and a future where AI agents increasingly buy software and services from other machines.
Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro
01:00 – What Is Stripe Today
08:00 – The AI Cohort Explosion: 50% More Signups & Software Creation Booming
14:25 – Stripe Minions: From 1,200 to 7,000 PRs a Week
19:24 – Build Everything: Going Long vs Going Short on Your Future
28:00 – Agentic Commerce: The Missing Primitives
37:28 – Stablecoins & the Global Money Movement Platform
49:00 – Scaling Taste at Stripe
Resources:
Follow Will Gaybrick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-gaybrick-5730347/
Follow Will on X: https://x.com/gaybrick
Follow David George on X: https://x.com/DavidGeorge83
Follow Stripe on X: https://x.com/stripe
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