you may not have heard of john colson or his company, stripe, but investors have. the irish wonder is one of the most promising new entrepreneurs in years. cullisson sits down for a wide-ranging discussion with our reporters, john schwartz of "usa today" and hannah cool. letter from the financial times, this week on press here. good morning, everyone, i'm scott mcgrew. an elite group of silicon valley investors ranging from elon musk to peter teal have sunk a great deal of money into two irish brothers barely out of high school. clearly, there is something going on here we need to know more about. john cullisson and his older brother, patrick, had their first success in their teens,

selling their first software company for $5 million. enough to become the talk of the town in their home of limerick. but it's when they came to san francisco and their second startup when they achieved the kind of success measured with a b, naz billion. their financial service startup, stripe, has raised enough funding to be valued at $1.75 billion. stripe make it's easier for merchants to take payments online. john cullisson is co-founder at stripe. he recently took a pause from harvard to concentrate on the company. an interesting bit of trivia. john's leaving certificate score, i take to be a little bit like the s.a.t. s.a.t., was the highest in the country? i think i got that right, but let's introduce hannah cool. leer from financial times, john schwarz from "usa today." start with this leaving

certificate, like the s.a.t. s.a.t.? >> yeah the end of school year. >> highest in ireland in all of irish history? >> i'm not sure. it's little hard to -- >> if i were close, i would have checked. >> was it a perfect score? >> yeah, you can get a perfect score. >> did you? >> yes. >> the highest ever. >> but anyway. i don't know how they go about -- man that's so long ago. >> yes, what three years ago? >> no, no, we started stripe four and a half years ago now. >> oh, okay. >> and so, you know, we -- it was in 2009. we have -- i was in the bay area since 2010. >> let's start, all kinds of things i want to talk about i got a whole list here, i want to start with just the basic friction point. i have been buying stuff online for many, many years. we all have. we buy airline tickets, book hotels, we use paypal, use paypal now all the time, it seems to pop up on all kinds of websites. i'm having no trouble buying things online. but apparently, the vendors are

having trouble buying things online or you wouldn't be worth anything. >> i think that's right. old school way of people selling things online go to your desktop and put people ooit helps in the cart and checkout. people have been doing that a long time. you luke the past five years, what all the interesting companies are doing, all these totally new kinds of commerce, you have got subscription services like drop box, an ongoing relationship with them. global e-commerce companies like go pro just went public. a lot of very interesting mobile marketplaces like the lifts and insta carts and postnets of the world gobbling up offline commerce but doing it through your phone. for those companies, they have pretty complex, specific payment needs what stripe has. >> i'm sorry. a problem that they are having is it consummating you the transactions or that the process itself or what is it that they need to have solved? >> if you're building something like, say, a task grab it or an

insta card, you need not only accept payments easily from people on android and ios and all these different mobile devices but need to accept payments from people and then pay out the vendors on the other end. and so you know, very quickly gets pretty complex and that's just in the u.s. if want to go international, you are doing all this -- all this other work to handle payments. >> so, this is a failure of visa, master card, even paypal. some of them have experienced, like american express did, pay by tweet, they are trying or are they not? >> they are. i think it's inherently a reasonably complex problem. let's not forget, not even all within the purview of the visas and master cards of the world. one thing we announced recently was a partnership with ali pay i think everyone forgets about the online world, a minority of internet users actually have a credit card. >> tell people what ali paysome >> chinese, right? the huge, huge market. >> so, ali pay dumped a lot of profile for how successful they

are, but the largest payment online network in china and hundreds of millions of users. up to now, these people with ali pay accounts buying mostly from sites in china and been very difficult to buy from overseas markets. >> what makes that hard? can the chinese before what you did you did, could a chinese citizen buy something from an american store? >> yes, if you had an international credit card, which is pretty rare in china. >> i see. >> go ahead. >> i was going to ask you, one equation, get nothing bit con. i we i went to las vegas and felt i was on the set "the munsters'" television show, libertarian, male people but very passionate about what they do and it's glowing terms of acceptance. >> so, i think the thing that's cool about bitcoin, all a similar problem. we spent a ton of time this year

on letting merchants accept payments globally, because this is something that still in 2014 is unsolved. i think as you say, all shopping online a long time. if you are in the u.s., u.s. consumer buying from as you merchant, its ''s not the most broken thing ever. if you're a consumer in china or, you know, germany or south africa, it's pretty tricky. so bit coin is one way addressing it. >> more fluid, faster? >> nobody needs to give you permission to buy bitcoin. >> but you need to have quite a lot of money sometimes. one of the things i don't understand about bitcoin is that why would i spend it on -- lots of stores have come out saying we are going to take this, overstock.com was one and i can't help but think it is a bit of a -- if i had lots of bitcoin, going up in value very fast, i don't want to keep it i wouldn't buy a sofa with it. >> a chicken and egg problem, me as a consumer why should i buy bitcoin while there's no sites i can spend it on similar lakers

website, why should i accept bitcoin if no consume verse it. a lot of sites saying, okay, the consumer base is not giant now, think this may be a big thing in the future and want to get ahead of it >> do you think a big part of your business because people might want to keep that money? >> that's true. as a store of value, pretty volatile, see a lot of people doing, buying bitcoin to make a transaction and selling it afterwards but people solving the same problem. if you are a mer charngt the key thing you want is the largest possible base of consumers. >> when you did start accepting bitcoin, was it more just because it fit the theme of we are going to allow any currency into any currency shopping or because you believed in bitcoin or a bit of both? >> a little bit of both. we are not betting the farm, we don't think that all transactions on stripe will happen on bitcoin in two years. that said, over a five- ten-year time horizon, will

cryptocurrencies become a real thing? these trends are here to same given that bitcoin had so much ex-poesh sure the last year or two, why aren't we all checking out bitcoin these days. >> do you have bitcoin yourself? >> i do no i own a tiny bit of bitcoin. >> interesting things, like mark andreessen, make use a lot of predictions, usually they are wrong within the first year but usually right within five years. so may be too early. >> we underestimate change in the short term -- overestimate in the short term and overestimate in the long term. i think true for a lot of technological changes. you look at the paperless office. this thing always around the corner, actually happening. mobile, everything is moving to mobile and it didn't feel like it was happening and now it's happening. >> can i ask you about a rumor? amazon in the online payments? >> amazon is. >> no, getting into the -- like a square like device what they are going to develop? gonna get into the payment processing? like retailers? i have heard that.

>> amazon is pretty secretive. >> not your front line to the online services? >> kind of interesting if they did. >> can i ask about another rumor that involves you. what about -- >> we should do, hannah, take a break. because people will absolutely stick around to find out what your question is, right? that's pretty tricky, isn't it? be back with john cullisson from stripe after this.

welcome back to "press here." i know why you stuck around. hannah kuchler about to ask an important rumor question. >> i feel like there should be a drumroll or something. i was gonna ask if you were gonna tie up with twitter for e-commerce, the rumor? >> i can't comment on that we don't comment on rumors. >> watch him smile. >> i think that said yeah. >> i think the thing looking

from the outside is that ten years ago, people spending all their time in web browsers. look where people spend their time today, in facebook, in twitter, in pintrest, where they discover a huge amount about products, where a lot of purchasing intentsome so i think social buying is clearly valued. >> that time with amazon they just started? >> the hashtag? >> a key deal, john, early on was you got taken seriously by wells fargo, which is also based in san francisco. it's enormous bank. i don't want to spend too much time on your able. you know, a -- >> but it's about your age. >> a 20-year-old kid, 22, 21-year-old kid -- >> 20 at the time. yeah. >> a 20-year-old kid comes into wells fargo, says, hello, i'm new to your country, but i would like to make a major deal with you. how were you able to pull that off? >> you know, i think -- i mean, you should have them in here and

ask them. but i think part of what helped us was the fact that this was so unsolid. you could feel at the time that no one was getting it right when it came to online payments and mobile payments, just all this new stuff happening, waves of new companies, this was the time when the air b and bs and ubers of the world were emerging, weren't going to the banks to handle payments. >> we understand why zuckerberg might want facebook or something like that, but i don't really understand why -- >> you're not super passionate about payments? >> i'm not 20. >> you should have been. we very much came it tat at the approach, the reason we were passionate, we had been customers before, our life was miserable. we developed websites and mobile apps, interesting, right, great technology for building software for hosting us and getting it in front of customers, with these people who really laked our software around wanted to pay us and just accepting money from those people was extremely

difficult. you were generally working with people who kind of didn't get developers, didn't get online software and apps. >> where does the connection with peter teal come on? you went to harvard. we know what peter teal thinks about -- >> he did drop out. give the guy some credit. >> so it's interesting in that peter was, you know, one of our -- basically our first real angel investors and always gonna be awkward when he walks into a.radio and say to peter teal, like online payments are completely broken. >> let me explain that to the viewer so they get that joke. peter teal founded paypal and online payments. you walked in and said it's broken so the guy who invented it. >> peter and elon musk -- >> also with paypal.

>> get the need for a universal platform for accepting payments from people. we still don't have that >> are they disappointed in paypal, what it's done now? >> i think -- i mean, i think it's definitely true that the paid product today is eerily similar to the product of ten years ago. >> saying that -- >> i think the world changed a lot. >> make the same argument about twitter, too similar to what they have been for years. a problem. >> in terms of their growth. >> twitter's seen a lot of -- >> twittery lot of -- >> in terms of user growth, significantly lower. >> like it to be. >> how do you get a meeting with peter teal? >> you sold your first company for $5 million. very impressive. but it's peter teal. >> no, it's true. i mean, we -- we initially gotten a introduction from paul graham who is the founder of white -- >> did you it through -- >> exactly. yeah. and i think the -- i mean, this space is obviously interesting to people like that a product we

can show to people. what's interesting, you are not pitching, you know, you're not pitching a vague idea. likes here the product, here's how it works, how what the people using it says, more concrete to get in front of someone. >> can we talk about citizenship and immigration and whatnot for a second. you are a guest in this country? >> i am. >> you employ how many people? >> 120 people now. >> 120 people. you are creating wealth for americans. but you are here at the pleasure of the united states government. >> mm-hmm. >> and sometimes, you have candidates, i'm assuming, that you have -- want to hire that you probably can't. >> yeah. >> that bothers me as an american. we want more success stories like you. >> no, it's true. this is -- immigration is pretty personal for me. i chose to come here, first for college and then moved out here and it hasn't always been super easy, right? it's not like you're just -- it's not like people are encouraging you to -- >> still get sort of a lot of questions when you come in through the border because, i mean, i do, and i'm not here.

>> it's fine now, but i think the thing is -- the thing that i ways find tragic, right is that we look at all the successes. we look at the paypal is founded by, you know, peter teal. we look at google founded by sergey brin. look at space charge. and tesla co-founded by elon musk who similarly came here when he was pretty young. and i think, you know, people point to these as the immigration success story, but that -- selection there, those are the ones we know b picture now all the companies that -- >> we don't know. >> that are not happening and not just that they are not happening inside the united states, they are not happening at all because people can't come here and access, you know, the unique access of capital and business clients. >> how would you change it? >> people have been trying to figure this out for decades. >> what do you think zuckerberg said? >> um, i do think both on the entrepreneurial side and on the town side, i mean, we should be able to get -- get more people

in and not just because of sheer numbers but because increasingly, facebook is a global company. for facebook to do well, they need more than just an american perspective. and so, increase the company being started here need to be able to compete in a global market, if you want them to do well, and markets are getting into t >> john colson is the co-founder of stripe and taking it off. we look forward to having you back again. for now, that's all the time we have for you. thank you for being here this morning. >> thank you. up next, a career adviser at google who -- and linked in to said one of the most important things you can say at work is no. so, we're gonna talk to him next, or maybe we won't. thank you for being here this

thank you for being here this thank you for being here this welcome back to press here. success create lot of options. you would think that's good thing. my next guest says too many options is the first step to

failure. greg mcewen says quick success robs you of the single-minded focus that made you successful in the first place. mcewen's book, "essentialism, the disciplined pursuit of less" a self-help book for successful silicon valley winners. greg has taught the idea at linkedin and google and pixar and i've read a good portion of your book and the biggest lesson i got out of it is to say not a work. now, why would i, as the boss, want you to talk to any of my employees about how to say no? >> well, look, essentialism is actually about how to say no to the good things so you can say yes to the really great things. >> okay. i don't want my boss to know anything. >> i will push you on that for a moment the idea that people can't say no to anything is just nonsense. of course they are say nothing to things f they tried to say yes to everything, they would be saying no to something. this idea is there's no

tradeoffs. perfect example of this is an executive here in silicon valley doing great work at a company. the company gets purchased by a larger, more bureaucratic firm and when he is in that new company, he is trying to say yes to everyone and everything, be a good team player, a good citizen, all of those things but his stress is going up, the quality of his work is going down. and he almost decides to leave the company. but instead, he decides to try an essentialistic experiment, become really selective. this is what he gets back. his home life, he says i got my life back. i was able to go to the gym every night, able to have dinner with his wife, but at work, hold on one second, but at work -- what he got back was that his performance ratings went up. >> yes. >> and he ended the year with one of the largest bonuses of his career. >> that phrase, put people in the position to succeed and sometimes, the best way to put somebody in a position to succeed is to limit them in what they do don't ask them to do too much. ask them to do what's in their wheelhouse. i think that's true maximum

athletics. i think in business, that does work. you say no i think about apple or about the design team, likeson at apple who used to work there, well, tony from -- told me that some of the designs at google before joining google would never pass muster at apple. he said -- >> no. >> you have to say no. not good enough. >> you have got to ask questions to prioritize and what kind of questions do you ask yourself to prioritize? >> these are two great points. let me first take the tony thing. i was talking to tony this year in switzerland at a conference. one of the things he pointed out i think's brilliant, the same design ethic he applied both at apple and now at nest to the way you design your life. the ethic described by deiter rams originally 35 years industrial designer at braun, summarized the whole philosophy as less but better. not the same as just less, but less but better, incredible selectivity. so he said he applied that not

just to the products but the way he lived his career and choices he made in his life as well. now, coming to your question, questions that you can ask yourself. i mean this is exactly right. if you are overworked and, you know, underutilized, if you are busy but not productive, if this is the life many of us fall that this category, 'cause we are asking the wrong questions, more selective questions, give us more selective answers. >> that's okay, design in your room and, you know, concentrating on what's in front of you, but what if your job is a journalist or sales, marketing, get out there and meet people and you don't know whether this connection is gone dma be the one which, you know, gets you your next founder or next sale. how do you account for the fact that chance encounters make a lot of people's luck? >> well, first of all, let me just talk about this idea of fear of missing out, right? fomo. a real phenomenon. a lot more people experiencing it today than ten years ago,

five years ago. the counterargument is the joy of missing out. the jomo, every time -- every time -- every time you say no you are buying yourself space to think, to create and so on. so -- >> jomo, right? [ overlapping speakers ] >> we all work in an industry getting smaller and smaller, fewer of us doing more work than ever. i will disagree with you on one point, we are trying to do more with less, but when we say no, if you say no too often -- >> not set up for it. people are saying no too often end up getting laid off. that happened. >> start on this. the idea that -- i'm not advocating simply start saying no, you know, either randomly or completely or to become more difficult. what i'm saying is can you have the conversation, can you bring it forward? simply say, look, we only have this many resources what are a

few of the things we can best utilize my time and energy for what can we do to breakthrough? >> my previous question answered it, i asked if you're trying -- if i meet someone at work event and there's 50 people there and i didn't know that anyone was gonna be useful, i would have thought, oh, why go to this tonight? why not go home and see, you know, the gym or my wife -- not my wife but -- >> cutting yourself off to opportunity, if you say no. >> tell me more. at some point, you have to still be -- you can't simply do it all. so the question is how do you select what you do? so i was at a networking event recently, there's 500 people there everybody was -- it was almost like a meat market, everybody is looking over your shoulder, trying to connect with -- >> eyeing your badge more than your eyes. >> is this person worth my time and so on? jumping around between everyone. i knew it would be like that what i did, i went and sat down and i watched and i spent, literally spent the first, i don't know how long, 20 minutes

just sitting watching, thinking, reflecting. actually, i think it is being a journalist, asking harder questions instead of just jumping and reacting. as it turns out, well, maybe i shouldn't say all of the people that were there, but where i was sitting, well -- >> used to be watching. >> is that al gore was there and reed jobs was there and i ended up being table to talk to them on the list of people i would want to make a connection with instead of running around and being all over the place. >> there is something to say about focus. i don't generally like sort of the business cliche, but -- and i don't remember if it was black and the decker or who it was, a famous line where they realize they don't make drills. they make holes. and once they started thinking of themselves in that sort of fashion, the focusing on the thing we do, i see that in mission statements. you know, we are going to do the following and then it's a paragraph. we have 18 priorities. >> yeah, right. >> well, no you don't, you don't have any priorities.

>> exactly right a few ways to go on, this the word priority came into the english language in the 1400s, it was singular. stayed singular the next 500 years. only in the 1900s, did we start speaking in the plural and pry or test. >> what happened then? >> part of the industrial revolution, a certain logic that simply said you can fit it all in, you can have it all and that logic just isn't true and leds to a lot of damage. so, i'm always challenging people to go to know what's singular, if you could only do one thing, know, what is that thing? maybe you can do two or five or ten things, maybe. but if you could only do one, what is it and put your energy there? >> greg mcewen's new book is called "essentialism." i highly recommend that you read it, but you don't have to. it's really kind of up to you and have you to decide your own priority. press here will be back in just a moment.

that's our show for this

week. my thanks to my guests. i'm scott mcgrew and thank you for making us part of your sunday morning.

hello and welcome. i'm damian trujillo. today on the show, fireworks safety, plus a second chance for probationers. we begin with the annual san pablo fourth of july festival. last week on the show, we had a mariachi. so, this week, elvis. we all recognize the promoter of many concerts and whatnot. welcome to the show. welcome. >> thank you very much. >> you walked through the newsroom today and surprised a lot of people. talk about the reaction you get when you do that. >> it's