Stripe Acquires Indie Hackers

Digital payment company Stripe just recently acquired Indie Hackers, a website and online community that works boost the success of independent startups, helping entrepreneurs reach profitability.

Indie Hackers founder Courtland Allen wrote in a company blog post on the acquisition, “When I set out to build Indie Hackers last July, there weren’t many places that put profitable online businesses in the spotlight. I wanted to create a community where successful founders could share their valuable stories and insights and where aspiring entrepreneurs could go for inspiration and advice.”

The exact financial and other terms of the deal have yet to be released, though Allen wrote that operations will continue as normal at the site.

On Stripe’s end, cofounder Patrick Collison had this to say in a hackernews quoted by TechCrunch: “Our goal in acquiring Indie Hackers is to simply ensure that the site becomes as successful as possible. We already see a very large fraction of new internet companies choose Stripe; we’re mainly hoping that Indie Hackers can help us grow the overall number rather than to grow our fraction. (Our product has to do the latter part.)”

The goal on Stripe’s end, as Allen said, appears to be to grow the GDP of the internet. Stripe itself is a startup that makes software so businesses can take and track digital payments. Acquiring Indie Hackers could grow Stripe’s access to and ability to cooperation with a greater number of startup companies.

Last year, Stripe garnered a valuation of $9.2 billion, after a $150 million round of funding. Stripe Chief Financial Officer Will Gaybrick said in December that while investor interest had picked up as the company added Fortune 500 companies to its client roster, Stripe is content being a private company.

“We are very happy as a private company right now,” Gaybrick said in an interview, noting company isn’t gearing up to launch an IPO in 2017 because it simply doesn’t need to.