New business creation on Stripe is up almost 2x in a year.
That jump is bigger than the one Stripe saw during the COVID lockdowns. And since Stripe now handles a bit more than a quarter of all new Delaware incorporations, it is close to a picture of the whole market.
The new companies are also doing better:
Average revenue per new company went up slightly, even with twice as many of them
20% of Stripe Atlas startups charged their first customer within 30 days in 2025, up from 8% in 2020
The time to reach $1M, $10M and $100M in recurring revenue has roughly halved
The question? What to build!
Patrick Collison answered it in a conversation with Replit’s founder. He would start trying things right away, go after industries still running on clunky 1990s software and look at what is popular among young people but still low status.
📚 In this guide, we turn his three patterns into five Claude skills that find a market for you, check how exposed it is to the AI labs, and test the moat you can build there.
Inside you will find:
Why This Is the Best Time in History to Start a Company See the Stripe data behind the surge and why Collison’s first rule is to try anything.
How to Find the 1990s Software Still Running Your Industry Let Claude audit the incumbent software in any vertical and score where it fails.
How to Spot Markets That Are Popular but Low Status Find the behavior young people pay for that incumbents still ignore.
Why the AI Labs Won’t Eat Your Startup Learn where value goes when intelligence gets cheap, and test your idea against the labs.
How to Build a Moat With Hamilton Helmer’s 7 Powers Check which of the seven powers your idea can reach, and at what stage.
Why the Long Tail Is the Safest Place to Build Size a niche big enough to pay you and too small to attract big competitors.
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