a16z|Aug 17, 2026 16:27
Stripe's Will Gaybrick: "Build everything"
Against an industry that sees agents as a way to cut costs, Stripe is using them to build more: agents wrote 30% of code in a week, global tax filing shipped in 1/3 the time the US version took, and after AI made sellers 20% more productive, Stripe hired even more sellers.
President of Technology & Business @gaybrick sits down with a16z's David George to cover why there's no one left for Stripe to copy, why checkout pages will disappear, how agents plus stablecoins make micropayments real, and why tokens are becoming a currency worth protecting like dollars.
00:00 Intro
01:00 From payments to 30 products
02:30 1 in 6 free trials abused
05:50 Win the startups, then win them again
09:40 Borrowing from Google, Apple, and Ford
14:30 Minions: 7K one-shot PRs a week
18:45 Building everything vs. cutting costs
26:00 Why timelines keep compressing
29:50 What replaces the checkout page
34:20 The case against $9.99 subscriptions
37:20 Stablecoins solve a political problem
41:35 Tempo, a payments-only blockchain
43:10 Tokens are money now
49:00 How Stripe scales taste
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5iICDVn5gc
@gaybrick @DavidGeorge83(a16z)
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