i have interviewed you both separately many times, i am so excited to have you here together. we will start at the beginning. born in rural ireland. what was it like growing up? countryside.n the it was a 40 minute drive to get to school in the morning. none of the friends we went to the school with lived anywhere close to us. when we came home from schoowe could not go run around and play with them. we had to play with each other. the other thing to do is read books. we did not get the internet until i was a teenager. you got used to reading these products and services. just scrutinize the fine print. i would be like offer not available in the republic of ireland. this the sense that

amazing world and internet out there, but not all of those opportunities being available to someone in the middle of the countryside in ireland. it is focused on global access and expansion of opportunity and all those things. this was not conscious in any way. now, looking back over the last 20 years, i think that mindset was instilled by the experience of growing up in 1990's ireland. >> how did you discover computers? >> we were free range kids. i am always struck in the u.s. by people needing finer grained controllers for their lives. half-hour increments are not precise enough. in our case, our parents were both entrepreneurs, they had started. we had a lot of latitude to figure out what we were interested in and go explore that.

the one who started with programming but that was very self-directed. >> we read a lot. our ine was to your to library and get to books. >> walk to the library. >> yes. two new books. read the books. repeat the next day. at 1.i happened to get a programming book. >> so you read about programming? >> i read about the internet. for years before we had the internet. i got a programming book. i read it and it seemed awesome. and built my first website and was very proud of myself. >> did you follow the older brothers lead? >> i certainly got into it when i was a teenager. >> didn't you hack each other's website? i think that is an important

duty of a 16-year-old older brother to help educate the younger brother in the security downsides. >> you made it to m.i.t.,sly. harvard. in 2090 both dropped out. how did you make that decision? safety in numbers i suppose. >> patrick has dropped out of college twice. started college, we have been building all sorts of side projects and things like this. -- you think anyone ever don't set out to start a huge thing. you don't set out to build a large company. you set out to solve a problem. this huge disconnect between the fact that all these new services were getting started, it felt like such a land of opportunity. then if you want to do anything on the business side, it was

like going back to the 70's. it was helpful that we were young when we started out, and that we weren't coming from being industry professionals who have en in the industry for 30 years. you can bring a fresh perspective to it. we started approaching it from the perspective of the people who proved to be the most important decision maker of all. the software developer who is building the stuff. the realization that what we initially conceived of as being sort of the niche product for developers. this notion. the character of the problems we were addressing in terms of what is the global economic infrastructure for the internet, and why is it not possible to payments,tomers,

revenue from internet users anywhere in the world. >> how did your mom and dad feel about this? >> i often wonder, were i in their shoes, how would i react. they were always supportive. ton and i are hugely lucky have parents like that. >> she got in. you moved to blend us our ace to build a company. walk me through the early days of building. >> the early days of building weren't that glamorous. johns myself and programming all day everyday. we wanted to get up and running as soon as possible. we accepted the first -- in january of 2010. a couple weeks after starting to work on it. the feedback loop was what does this business want and how are we going to have meant that. let's make it happen as quickly as we can.

when we are ready let's add a second business. say that no one has to sail for strength to succeed. what's that mean? i think there is a desire to set these things up. x versus y. whenever there is a narrative. a very large fraction of the time, when people are building businesses, they are building businesses in white space as opposed to replacing another business directly. motivating for us is that 5% of global commerce takes place online. say is what we mean when we no one has to fill. >> you have done a lot of partnerships with companies that could be conceived as you are competitors. apple, google. walk me through the strategy. >> we think all of those consumer payment methods would be successful overtime. but what has been lacking is a platform for the businesses to

manage complexity of doing business online in 2018. when you talk to a business and managing thered, payments, the treasury, regulation, compliance, all the complexity that goes with that, take doing it in the u.s., then take doing it all around the world. that was a hugely heavy lift before hand. it had this damaging effect. only large companies could do it and not very quickly. you look what businesses are doing today. models are changing. more global. much more complex. that is what we are focused on. like pay has been growing we'd as a payment method. that is phenomenal. >> on a global basis, the market side is in the opportunities. ♪

news, yourg broke the are now working with amazon, facebook, microsoft, booking.com, lyft. serve suchstart up huge companies? >> our success with these larger companies, it is not coming despite the fact that we started working with startups. it is because of it. in that when you start as a , you can bamboozle them with fancy sales materials. they are not going to be deceived by it. they will assess you on the product merits. what helps them innovate fastest. it is really punishing. we were forced to build a product that helps them execute as quickly as possible. makes money by charging a

small fee on every transaction. you are processing billions of dollars a year for hundreds of thousands of companies. you are reportedly valued at $9.2 billion. some say your evaluation is not justified. we have seen come he's going to the public markets that have .een able to the market do you have any concern that you won't be able to hit that mark? are certainly all paranoid that we need to execute strongly. tackling the financial. the potential market size support that can evaluation, absolutely. many times over. the company is so vast and so much smaller than it will be if we had good infrastructure. >> do you see it as a public company? >> someday. quite possibly. the way we have thought about

ourselves is that we are in such an expansion phase. we are so far from reaching the plateau of that -- where things will stabilize and the whole state -- will business becomes protectable. i was in asia last week and there is such vast opportunity there for every internet business. we are just so fixated on -- we are really capitalizing on the opportunities. we will then back stall from that to whatever the long-term structure of the company is. we will fit it within that. >> speaking of what is happening more broadly, we are in the world of great uncertainty. with president trump being elected. exit. facebook and apple and google on the other hand, sort of squelching all the smaller companies. in a way that you can say squelching intervention.

could that hurt? given that you depend on businesses getting started. >> when you zoom out and take stock of what is happening, the number of internet connectives -- users and people in the world continues to rise incredibly quickly. around the world, middle classes are rising. 100,000 people are leaving poverty every day. i global basis, the market sizes and opportunities presented for people who want to do something or build something significant, those opportunities have never been greater. there's always a concern that the particular giants of the day are overly dominant and -- generally speaking, those giants have only prevailed for a particular window. i think there is always been

this preeminent technology companies. i don't see anything distinctly different about the current generation. >> coming from irelt do you think of brexit? the generalerned by trend we are seeing in a number of countries around the world toward more inward looking and more retrenchment. in part, because i don't think it is a global long-term trend. it has been a mistake to bet against more global interaction. assuming there will not be more migration. culture. goods and services and things like that. i don't think things like brexit will change that. >> as the trump administration takes things in a different direction, what are your biggest concerns? >> we benefit from such an amazing set of tail wings. in that the more people

employed, the global inequality is falling. there is so much good that is happening that i think -- >> there are some things that are alarming and bad. >> absolutely. where i was going to go is that when you really zoom out and all of the full series, the major trends are going in the right direction. some of them that concern me is what are the tale of events that could jolt these off course? it is not clear just how much influence a single person and a single country can have against all of these broader trends. note that that is what gives me concern. our determination was that bitcoin was not a good payment method. ♪

>> cryptocurrency is all the rage right now. stripe initially accepted

bitcoin but recently stopped. i you at all concerned that it will be on the wrong side of history? >> we are absolutely open to revisiting this. i think it is a valuable thing to have exist in the world. i generally wish them the best. this was not so much a decision where we wanted to be the outlier, we were just looking at data. it was declining rapidly. if it starts increasing again, sure, we will go back and add it. >> is it hype, is it reality? that itetermination was was not a good payment method. which is a different discretion than cryptocurrencies generally. >> because value shifting so dramay. >> the speed and cost of posting production was the main thing. we remained fascinated by cryptocurrencies from a technology point of view and just the general speed of execution. gettington of companies

distracted by then it he projects of putting this database on the blockchain because people are not really wetted in the technical details necessary. >> there's a concern that bitcoin and blockchain pioneers are still mostly young and mail. tech industry is grappling with the diversity problem. if industry doesn't start doing a better job, what are the consequences? >> the tech industry has to be a place where people of any background or any demographic or whatever can really thrive. there have been some big missteps on that front. people are paying a lot of attention just to silicon valley . there is this ripple effect around the world. homeally tried to start at

as it were. company andbuild a a culture and an organization that we can really be proud of, and that we can really feel good about, where people of any background can really thrive, we have not achieved anything of the value. >> you guys have some good -- interesting things. an open for plan -- open floor plan. gender-neutral bathrooms. interesting email transparency policy. people can choose to make certain emails available. it is on -- >> a former uber engineer who wrote the viral post about sexual harassment, ultimately, resulted in the ceo leaving the company, she now works there. what do you see yourselves continuing to do to attract and retrain -- retain women or

underrepresented minorities? >> there are initiatives. things about making sure that we will becoming moms and parrots stay with the company. -- parents stay with the company. initiatives we work on for female entrepreneurs. specific hiring practices. interviews and hiring goals. especially that we set for managers. i think sometimes people leave a bit too quickly once their checklist of initiatives, then they're done, i think if you're actually going to take this seriously and do it well, i think it has to be something that is deeply suffused in the culture. that everybody lives everyday. can have a good list of initiatives. it is not really in the culture, then it will not work. >> before we go, i understand .here is a third brother i hear he is even more tech savvy than you are. tell me about him.

>> he is four years my junior. he was very interested in this topic that we talked abou, the implications of technology and the fact that more of our lives are moving online. he was interested in that before it was the talk of the town. before he was the cool thing to be into. stored nonprofit around digital rights and privacy's. he still that she now works for a company called tour who produced trace this or privacy preserving software. he is the one to watch really. he is taking a different take on the stuff. was born with cerebral palsy. i'm curious how that impacted your relationship as a trio. >> it affected the whole family environment. whatever circumstances he grew up in, you consider normal.

was veryfor us, it no-nonsense. disadvantaged, unfortunate piece of luck. you ju figure out what the game plan is to overcome it and you work to make that happen. he walks and runs and swims and cycles. that took a lot of work. wallowing in self-pity or anything like that. both of our parents were entrepreneurs. people sometimes ask us what inspired us to become much of earners. for us, it was the normal thing. i see it as a theme running through our upbringing in general. this no-nonsense way in which both he and our parents approach it, i find it inspiring. to keep perspective.

the challenges of building a fast growing company. seeing the work that he has invested, over decades, -- >> what is your advice for aspiring entrepreneurs? or people who want to do it you do. >> the first thing is you don't have to be here. that is very different versus 10 or 15 years. it depends on the company you are building. we are serving other technology companies. it can almost certainly do wherever you are today. i would take advantage of the communities, tools, knowledge that is available and start where you are right now. >> how do you see yourselves navigating your partnership, relationship as brothers, as the company grows, and the stakes

only get higher? >> we have survived this long. i'm not too worried about it on a go forward basis. it is -- >> who gets the last word when you disagree? >> i can't even remember the last time we had a discussion on figuring that out. we are still hiring very quickly. there's the next problem, next interaction. one of the things i find enjoyable is when you have a high trust environment, which we do, you are not focused on the meta-structure and how do we arrange the lego bricks. you are focused on the next problem. >> where will you be in five years? we substantially completed this work. of building this globally unified economic infrastructure.

that serves companies of every size. and makes it possible for more companies to get started. is absolutelyit crazy that if you start a business, good luck selling to customers in america. if you start a business in germany, good looks on to china. we should be up in arms over the fact that the internet to stomach its infrastructure available today. it is not complete. i am proud of the progress we have made. we have quite a ways left to go. in five years, i hope that that foundational infrastructure has been put in place. and at that point, we can be putting our sites to what comes after. scheduling our catch-up for five years from now. thank you so much for joining us. it has been great to have you. ♪

♪ scarlet: coming up on "bloomberg best," the stories that shaped the week in business around the world. upheaval in italy. a political stalemate sends shockwaves through the global market. >> italy is basically a country that is raking down. >> we are in a situation today where the fundamentals of italy are very good. kevin: what we are seeing basically across the board is reduction of risk. scarlet: another week of actions and reactions on global trade. >> it no longer appears to be america first. it is almost like america alone. scarlet: chinese equity markets open up as the mainland shares join mainland indexes. the u.s. jobs report provides