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The Collison Installation: How Stripe's Founders Went to Your Office and Installed Their API for You

By Patrick Collison · Startup Growth · 1 min read

People would postpone switching to Stripe forever. So the Collison brothers went to their offices and installed it for them. Paul Graham now calls it the 'Collison Installation.'

Key Points

Paul Graham calls it the 'Collison Installation' — they'd go to people's offices and install the API
Two purposes: user research and creating a 'why now' moment for adoption
Nothing is as sobering as watching someone use the first version of your product

There's nothing so sobering as watching somebody use the first version of some new product.

The Collison Installation

Collison: People would always talk about the Collison brothers running around going to people's offices and installing their API into the web apps. In true 'do things that don't scale' fashion. Paul Graham now calls it the Collison Installation.

Paul Graham calls it the Collison Installation. They'd go to your office and install the API for you.

Nothing So Sobering

Collison: It served as a really good way to do user research and get UX feedback. If you've done this — you design what you're absolutely certain is the most streamlined, user-friendly, frictionless way to do whatever the product does. Then you put it in front of a user and ask them to do it.

They find it completely impenetrable. They're clicking all the wrong links. They can't find the next button even though the next button is there, blinking and green. It's invariably incredibly painful. There's nothing so sobering as watching somebody use the first version of a new product.

They can't find the next button even though it's blinking and green. Nothing so sobering.

Creating a Why-Now Moment

Collison: The other reason was — we'd suggest to somebody they switch to Stripe and invariably the response is 'oh yeah, sure, that sounds awesome.' But they'll postpone it. And they'll postpone it again. There's never a moment where they say 'this is the evening I'm going to switch to Stripe.'

Going in person created a why-now moment. Well — we're here at your house.

People would postpone forever. Going in person created a why-now moment. We're here at your house.