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Stripe's Patrick Collison: We Watched Every Single API Request From Our First 10 Users

By Patrick Collison · Product · 2 min read

For the first 10 users of Stripe, every time somebody sent an API request, it sent an email to us. Every error generated a high-priority email. At that stage you have to be kind of masochistic.

Key Points

Every API request from the first 10 users sent an email to the founders
Every error triggered a high-priority email — they'd fix it and reach out within 15 minutes
Pre-product-market-fit metrics are unhealthy — with 20 users, just look at everything they're doing

At that stage you have to be kind of masochistic. We'd always be waking up to emails telling us all the terrible things about Stripe. But that was a helpful to-do list for the day ahead.

An Email for Every API Call

Collison: We really tried very hard to understand in very granular detail what exactly people were doing, where they were tripping up. For the first — call it 10 users of Stripe — every time somebody sent an API request, it sent an email to us. We were looking at every single API request.

If we saw users do something weird — well, why did they do that? Were our docs confusing?

For the first 10 users, every API request sent an email to us. We looked at every single one.

15 Minutes Later, It's Fixed

Collison: Every time anyone ever hit an error, that generated a high-priority email to us. We would try to immediately go solve it.

That generated this pleasant user experience where — it's frustrating when you hit an error in some service — but we could then often 15 minutes later reach out and say: hey, we saw you encountered this problem. It's all fixed now.

Every error was a high-priority email. 15 minutes later: hey, it's all fixed now.

Pre-PMF Metrics Are Unhealthy

Collison: Generally speaking, pre-product-market-fit metrics are actually relatively unhealthy. Probably not that many people are using your product. If it's 20 users, you can in some sense afford to just look at everything they're doing and try to understand what's working and what isn't.

Pre-PMF metrics are unhealthy. With 20 users, just look at everything they're doing.

The Public Chat Room

Collison: We had a public chat room for providing support when people were integrating Stripe. Public — which had some downsides. If we'd broken something or someone had embarrassing issues, everyone would see it.

We thought that was kind of good because it put more pressure on us to have the product be good.

If we broke something, everyone would see it. We thought that was good — more pressure on us.

The Masochistic Feedback Box

Collison: At the bottom of every web page, we had a little text box with placeholder text to prime people to tell us things. Most of the prompts were negative — 'the worst thing about Stripe is...' or 'I really hate the way Stripe does...'

At that stage you have to be kind of masochistic. We'd always be waking up to all these emails telling us all the terrible things about Stripe. But that was a helpful to-do list for the day ahead.

At that stage you have to be masochistic. All the terrible things about Stripe — that was the to-do list.