If you had to build Stripe, how many engineers would it take you and how much time would it take to build a competitor?
Building a competitor to Stripe would likely require a significant amount of time and resources. The exact number of engineers and time it would take would depend on many factors such as the complexity of the project, the availability of talent, the resources allocated to the project, and the speed at which the team is able to work.

As a rough estimate, it could take a team of several dozen engineers several years to build a comprehensive payment processing platform that rivals Stripe. However, this is just an estimate and the actual number of engineers and time required could be higher or lower.

It's also worth noting that building a successful payment processing platform is a complex and challenging task. There are many technical, regulatory, and security hurdles to overcome, and it's important to have a deep understanding of the payment processing industry and the needs of businesses and consumers. Additionally, there is already a lot of competition in the market, so it would take a lot of hard work, dedication, and innovation to build a successful competitor to Stripe.