Patrick mentioned in a tweet that they met with a bank in Ireland, and they essentially laughed him out of the room (can't find the link, it was a few years back).
He elaborates further on his blog:
>I’m sometimes asked whether Stripe could have been started in Ireland. It’s impossible to really know the counterfactual, but I suspect not.
>Stripe wasn’t easy to get off the ground. It required convincing banks to work with us, and to take a bet on an unproven startup. I actually spoke to some banks in Ireland when we were starting out, and it was pretty clear that getting them to work with us would have been a very tough battle. I doubt we’d have been able to pull it off.
> But I’m not sure that asking whether Stripe could have been started in Ireland is the right question. Most technology start-ups don’t have to convince banks to work with them. The interesting question is probably “how hard is to start a successful start-up in Ireland compared to doing so in Silicon Valley?” (I’m not claiming that Stripe itself is yet successful—it's still very early days.)
There are some counterexamples, but every single one of those I can think of is self-funded and doesn't rely on VC or bank funding beyond what would be strictly necessary for any business.
You can do it, but it's a hard slog, and many of the success stories (Intercom, for instance) end up relocating out of the country once they look for VC funding because Irish (and European) VCs are so damned risk averse.
He elaborates further on his blog:
>I’m sometimes asked whether Stripe could have been started in Ireland. It’s impossible to really know the counterfactual, but I suspect not.
>Stripe wasn’t easy to get off the ground. It required convincing banks to work with us, and to take a bet on an unproven startup. I actually spoke to some banks in Ireland when we were starting out, and it was pretty clear that getting them to work with us would have been a very tough battle. I doubt we’d have been able to pull it off.
> But I’m not sure that asking whether Stripe could have been started in Ireland is the right question. Most technology start-ups don’t have to convince banks to work with them. The interesting question is probably “how hard is to start a successful start-up in Ireland compared to doing so in Silicon Valley?” (I’m not claiming that Stripe itself is yet successful—it's still very early days.)
https://patrickcollison.com/post/stripe-ireland
As an Irish person who has followed the Stripe story, it's infuriating.