Does this mean IndieHackers become the propaganda arm for Stripe's customers? Or is this a goodwill purchase? Maybe it's cheaper than a national ad buy targeted directly at potential new customers?
There's a lot of alignment between what I want to see (personally) and encourage (via Indie Hackers) and what Stripe's mission is: more people starting companies and finding success. It goes much further than simply advertising. If Indie Hackers and other efforts to inspire + educate + empower entrepreneurs can grow to have sufficient impact, then it will materially improve Stripe's bottom line. And of course, Indie Hackers stands to have a much higher chance of accomplishing this with some actual support from Stripe.
Congrats on building something real and I hope the acquisition works out well for you and the company in the long run. I've enjoyed, and been inspired by, a number of IH articles.
IndieHackers' founder got really good at getting startups to provide detailed information, and then also on publicizing the crap out of IH itself. If I had to guess, Stripe wants that skillset in marketing (or "growth hacking" or whatever else the cool kids call it now). All of that can feed Stripe's customer pipeline.