Hey! Justin here, and welcome to Just Go Grind, a newsletter sharing the lessons, tactics, and stories of world-class founders!

Simplify Your Startup’s Finances

Mercury simplifies your finances by powering them from your company’s bank account*.

After five years of creating a powerful banking experience loved by over 200K startups, Just Go Grind included, Mercury is building upon that bank account with new products that power critical financial workflows. This new software allows founders and finance teams to simplify financial workflows, like paying bills or sending invoices.

The best part is it’s all happening right within your bank account, which gives you complete visibility into money movements, precise control over cash flow, and faster bookkeeping.

Apply in minutes at mercury.com to join over 200K ambitious startups that trust Mercury to simplify their finances.

Patrick Collison, Co-Founder of Stripe

Patrick Collison is one of the most fascinating people I’ve come across in my research so far into some of the world’s best founders.

Just like Christina Cacioppo, who I wrote about last week, he’s a voracious reader and maintains a massive book list on his website.

And like Tope Awotona, Tony Xu, and Iman Abuzeid, who I wrote about a few weeks back, he immigrated to the United States and certainly made the most of it.

His story, from growing up in a small rural town in Ireland to building Stripe, a company valued at $50 billion, with his brother, John, is nothing short of remarkable.

Here’s how the venture capitalist Chris Sacca described Patrick via The Tim Ferriss Show:

I love that last line, “his success is no accident,” because when you read more about his story it becomes abundantly clear.

Given that Stripe has been covered ad nauseam by some phenomenal writers over the years, this story will be much more focused on Patrick and the lessons we can learn from his journey. I’m also not going to cover much about the last few years of Stripe - I find the early days of most companies infinitely more fascinating.

Before we dive in, I’m just going to suggest two amazing pieces for you to check out if you’re interested in learning more about Stripe:

1. Stripe: Thinking Like a Civilization by Mario Gabriele

2. Stripe: The Internet's Most Undervalued Company by Packy McCormick

Let’s get to it.

Subscribe to Premium to read the rest.