SAN FRANCISCO — Stripe, a San Francisco-based payments provider and one of the world’s most valuable private startups, this week hired Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan to advise on its potential public listing next year, two people familiar with the matter said.
If the listing goes ahead, Stripe’s public debut would be one of the largest and most anticipated of any startup of its kind, potentially reopening moribund public markets for new products.
Stripe told employees on Thursday it was considering multiple avenues for shareholders to cash out over the next 12 months, people familiar with the matter said. Possible avenues include a direct listing, in which a company takes its stock public but does not issue new shares; a tender offer, in which employee shares are sold to outside investors but remains private; or a regular initial public offering, the people said.
Information earlier reported In Stripe’s plan.
Investors value Stripe, founded by brothers John and Patrick Collison in 2010, at $95 billion by 2021. Last year, the company slashed its internal valuation by 28% to $74 billion and laid off 14% of its workforce, or more than 1,000 people, amid a market turmoil for tech start-ups.
The company, which sells payment processing software to companies including Peloton, Wayfair and Amazon, has delayed entering the public market. But early investors, sitting on big returns, and employees, whose stock is about to expire, are eager to cash in on the company’s success.
Stripe has raised more than $2 billion from investors including Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.
Market watchers typically view Stripe’s performance as an indicator of the health of the overall startup market, as it begins serving other startups before expanding to larger customers.
Like many tech companies, Stripe ditched overly optimistic growth plans last year because of the economic downturn. “We are overly optimistic about the near-term growth of the internet economy,” Patrick Collison wrote in a November announcement announcing the layoffs.
