Facebook Wasn't Obviously the Thing
Collison: I always love the story that in the famous house where Facebook started in Palo Alto, Facebook was not the only company they were working on. There was also that peer-to-peer file sharing thing.
Facebook had launched at Harvard in I think February '04. That subsequent summer — call it six months later — it was not obvious that Facebook was the thing to be working on. They were pursuing multiple ideas in parallel.
Six months after Facebook launched, it was not obvious it was the thing to be working on.
Stripe Didn't Look Great Either
Collison: Similarly with Stripe — even once we built this little prototype that we thought had promise, it wasn't obviously a great idea. We came to the Bay Area in the summer of 2010 and I decided to work on Stripe as our bootstrapped internship.
A lot of really good ideas don't seem particularly great or big upfront. Certainly speaking from personal experience, Stripe did not.
Even once we built a prototype, it wasn't obviously a great idea.
A Little Pond That Was Actually an Ocean
Collison: Over the course of working on it that summer — instead of just thinking about it — we shifted from seeing Stripe as this nice little tool that makes developers' lives easier, to realizing that when you survey the broader landscape, the whole edifice is broken.
What we thought was a little pond was actually a much larger ocean. That summer we made two decisions: drop out of school — or as our mom continues to prefer we call it, take a leave of absence — and raise money from Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, and Sequoia.
What we thought was a little pond was actually a much larger ocean. The whole edifice is broken.