The podcast discusses the different strategies of Edge and Stripe; Edge going for the fat part of the long tail and Stripe targeting the long tail of customers. It also talks about the leverage in the business and Stripe's challenges as it continues to grow.
Square, a web 2.0 era company, plans to let stock option grants for previous employees expire, affecting more than 100 early team members who were granted restricted stock units (RSUs) in 2016 with a seven-year window before expiration. The expiration date forces Square to go public to allow the RSUs to be exchanged for value.
The two companies have different strategies for acquiring and retaining customers - Stripe focuses on a large number of tail customers while Adyen targets larger enterprise customers. While both companies have seen success, Adyen's approach has resulted in maintaining and raising long-term profit projections.
Starting a product business at the low end of the market with small and medium-sized businesses allows for the possibility to move up market over time, while starting at the top and staying there is easier than trying to strip complexity out of a product and moving downmarket.