I mostly agree with your point that two designs being the same, the bigger more established brand might garner more attention / praise than the other. However, I think design is also easier to get right when you have a good product.
Skimmed the blog because it seemed to be mostly fluff and presumably the author does not work at Stripe, but I do consider this a good design for the following reasons (some aesthetic, some practical, not exhaustive):
- Dead simple call to action & it speaks to two core audiences. Either you're a developer and you know how this works (create an account), or you're an executive and you know you want to talk to somebody (contact sales).
- The diagonal lines are cool because they stand out on the web (filled with vertical and horizontal lines) and they create movement within the design to draw your eyes over to the little illustrations.
- The illustration/hero image itself is nice because there's not so much detail that you get bogged down in the solution yourself, but the variety of big brands and different sorts of user experiences allow you to visualize your brand with a slick checkout experience right next to those "big players".
- Well-executed typographic contrast. Think colors, sizing, weights, and variation between title-casing and uppercase. This is important because it creates a visual hierarchy, so if you don't want to read the whole page, at least visually you "know" what is important.
- Color palate is well suited to the industry. Too lazy to find facts, but in general blues are known to be calm/soothing and green communicates or gives the perception of trust/success. Whether that is your success as a potential customer, or Stripe's success, idk; Just a vague designerish feeling.
- Finally, I think it would good given the points above - but the interactive elements really give it the kind of polish that would make me call it "great". IMO, these types of flourishes are signalling quality. Take them away and the site is just fine, but as the author mentions - to most people they give a sense of delight. Not over the top; just subtle, playful little elements.
Regarding the link you mentioned; I don't think it's a bad design, but not on the caliber of Stripe's. For me the typography is quite dull, and having read all of the text on the page; it's not really clear to me what valuable service they are providing. My impression is that it's a white-brandable video hosting site, with maybe some version control? I'm not exactly sure because I only gleaned that info from the 2 of the 5 bullet points, which are identical to the other 3 generic features.
Anyways, I'm just some guy who flunked out of design college - so take all this crap with a grain of salt.