"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I mean just because you don't see it as having changed the world doesn't mean it hasn't. I've worked at companies that couldn't use stripe / existed before it was a thing and accepting payments was/is a difficult problem subject to all the regulation from multiple countries and building and maintaining it yourself is a total crapshoot.

Starting a business and accepting money with stripe is super simple comparatively.

A lot of world changing happens behind the scenes and isn't necessarily super flashy. They lowered the barrier to entry making it much easier for anyone building new things to get their customers paying which is world changing for people involved in doing business and business has always been a huge part of humanity whether you like it or not.

I wonder how many things exist because one person somewhere was able to integrate stripe over a few hours and start making money versus needing a team to maintain a payments system.

How have dropbox and stripe not changed the world?

I remember paper filing cabinets, PCI compliance, jump drives, etc.

If those founders hadn't changed the world, they wouldn't be rich.

Sure, Dropbox and Stripe aren't dismantling apartheid or eradicating polio, but these products do solve real problems and make life a little bit more bearable for millions of people.

We should give credit where credit's due and acknowledge this impact.

I'd call it "changed the world relevantly" and "changed the world irrelevantly"