After selling their first startup for $5 million dollars, Patrick and John Collison dropped out of MIT and Harvard to launch their next business; Stripe

After 6 months of coding, they launched their prototype in 2010. But competing with giants like Paypal wasn’t going to be easy, so the Collison brothers needed to acquire customers fast and cheap.

To land their first users, they went directly to where their potential customers were hanging out; Hacker News.

After writing a post on the site announcing their new product, they managed to get 300 sign ups for Stripe.

Then, they started using a tactic that would later become legendary in Silicon Valley known as “the Collision installation.” When they pitched potential customers, instead of just sharing a sign-up link, they would physically take the person’s laptop and install Stripe for them on the spot.

With scrappy strategies like this, Stripe grew into a $50 billion company and the go-to payment service provider for internet businesses.

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