Stephen Roland’s Post

Heard of Stripe? A #FinTech company that allows both private individuals and businesses to accept digital payments, it’s known for its emphasis on a transparent and rigorous hiring process to maintain a high-quality team dynamic. Here’s what we can learn from their success: - Effective Onboarding: Stripe invests heavily in a thorough onboarding process, ensuring that new hires are fully integrated into the company culture from day one. - Emphasis on Autonomy: Employees are given significant autonomy in their roles, encouraging innovation and personal responsibility. - Global Hackathons: To develop unity and innovation across global offices, Stripe regularly organizes hackathons that also serve as team-building events. #BusinessSuccess #Leadership

Yesterday I shared how Stripe won by niching down and focusing on helping developers. But if you want to see how this strategy works in a much different space, look at Carhartt. Carhartt doesn't sell "clothes." They don't even sell "work clothes." They sell "clothes for people who work really damn hard." And you can see this focus show up in their product, their marketing, and even their choice of distribution channels. It's why Carhartt is a $1.7B company. ===== 𝗜 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗕𝟮𝗕 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗻𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. 𝗛𝗶𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 🔔.

Roughly two-thirds of the 50 companies making the Disruptor 50 list describe artificial intelligence as “critical” to their businesses. And it starts at the very top: for the first time ever, a company repeats as the list’s No. 1: OpenAI. No. 2 is the military defence AI company: Anduril Industries. No. 3 … well you can read about it 🚀👀

It was a great couple of days in San Francisco for Stripe Sessions. I know, for those in my network, this is probably the umpteenth post you've seen...but I am going to share a few of my reflections anyway. 1. The Jensen Huang fireside chat with Patrick was off the hook. I didn't take any notes because I was listening so intently. I'm inspired by leaders and companies that are not scared to break the conventional mold. 🤯 Jensen has 60 direct reports. Why? Because he doesn't believe in privileged access to information. How? No 1:1s. At that level, it shouldn't be necessary. Feedback is given publicly and it's a gift for everyone to learn from everyone's mistakes. ✍ He is not quick to fire people, but prefers to "torture you into greatness." Jensen went from cleaning bathrooms to the founder and CEO of one of the largest companies in the world. This stuff can be learned. 2. In the AMA with Patrick and John, Patrick commented on how a beautiful building is an act of generosity. 👨🎨 Some may think that beauty and craft is a bit esoteric in the context of a payments conference, but it's a reflection of the "soul" of a company. There is a greater purpose at play and I really admire companies with depth that goes beyond just the products they build. 🗿 If you have not heard of Monumental Labs, check them out. If you are like me and you are uninspired by the blandness of modern suburban cities and find yourself in awe over ancient stonework, you'll think it's super cool. 3. Mic drop 🎤 to Stripe on all the big announcements and the stage performance. You wowed the crowd and made us laugh trying your best to make us laugh. 📈 Global GDP is $100T, but as Patrick states, that's not a cap. Stripe's mission is to grow that number, in part by enabling new market-making businesses with all their cool tech, allowing more people to participate and benefit from that economic growth. (Patrick's reflection on Ireland's progress made me tear up a bit) 👂 The voice of the customer is heard. For all of us building businesses, it is so important to identify the customer value first, and then revenue will follow. 👩💼 It made me pretty antsy to go build :-) It's a lot of work to put on a great conference. Kudos to the people who put in the work to make it all happen. 👏 And for everyone I connected with, it was great seeing you all IRL!

"We're just getting started!" What great looks like for Stripe in the Asia Pacific region from Mike Clayville. "We're just getting started. There's so much more for us to do. There are so many more enterprises that need our help transforming. Every day there are thousands of founders who have great ideas that start their companies in Asia. What great looks like is that we continue empowering all of those founders. to create a successful company find their market footing and grow into a really important transformational company for the industry. But at the same time, we're enabling the other 85 per cent of commerce that's not online, mostly locked up in traditional enterprises to digitally transform and begin to really engage their customers in a meaningful way that enhances the personalization and the customer experience. That's what success looks like to me." Main Site: https://lnkd.in/gA9we_pM Full YouTube Video:https://lnkd.in/g-Ah-4_z Newsletter Signup: https://lnkd.in/gWedr5RK LinkedIn Page: https://lnkd.in/gTZHdUB5 #stripe #mikeclayville #digitalpayments #financialinfrastructure #mobilepayments #businessasia #digitalasia #digitaltrends #success #whatgreatlookslike #asiapacific

Stripe has decided to offer a tender offer so employees can sell some of their shares at a $65 billion valuation (below $95 billion peak, but not bad considering the drops). This may mean they're stalling an IPO until the market is more stable, but is part of a pattern of successful companies helping their employees liquidate before an exit event. The challenge is that if you join a company after it is already successful, you may not be eligible for these tender offers (they usually require 2 years at the company) and the tenders are usually limited to 20% or 30% of your shares up to a limit. Now that liquidity events are few and far between with acquisitions being stopped by regulators and IPO markets still cautiously slow, tens of thousands of private company employees are hurting with equity compensation. I'm hearing more and more private company employees want to jump to Public stable companies with liquidity for this reason. And the reverse is true. I hear tons of Big Tech employees sick of the politics wanting to jump to startups. The grass isn't always greener. Go in with your eyes open...

I wanted to share an update from my first day at Stripe because I truly was blown away by how organised and welcoming everyone was. Stripe is truly a company full of culture and class. 🏆 1. New Hire Onboarding- What a powerful team full of energy and genuine excitement to help us. A variety of well built content that makes complicated learnings fun and easy to understand and absorb. Thank you Robyn Fagan and Tesera Adjaloo Acera 2. Top Quality Swag - Even a stunning book published by Stripe. Such a nice finishing touch. 📚 3. A global welcome - So many other Stripes from all around the world connected and sent welcome messages making me feel like I was part of something special from the very first day. 💜 4. Tools and technology - Quirky little systems and tools developed by Stripes which actually makes life so much easier. Great technology partnerships ensuring the highest standard of data security and customer protection. Super impressive! 👩💻 6. Operating Principles - It is not often that a company lives and breathes their values. Stripe truly follows and respects all their operating principles. Everyone goes above and beyond to put users first and give 110% of themselves each day. 👏🏻 7. The Office - I love that they only provide healthy snacks. The office is an absolute vibe. They have created a space that makes me want to be in the office every single day. I have not seen as many people in the office on a Monday since pre-Covid times. 🤩 Thank you Stripe and everyone who has been a part of my journey in the last few weeks.

“My intuition is that more of Stripe success than one would think is down to the fact that people like beautiful things and for rational reasons. Because, what does a beautiful thing tell you? It tells you the person who made it really cared, and you can observe some superficial details, but probably they didn’t only care about those and did everything in else in slapdash way. So, if you care about the infrastructure being holistically good, indexing on the superficial characteristics is not an irrational thing to do.“ Couldn't have said better and proud to have Patrick as an investor in @linear. We shouldn't accept poorly made things and that lack beauty. (- Karri From linear writes on Stripe prioritising craft in thier products) https://t.co/dxsXdBvcXO

Patrick and John Collison are the co-founders of Stripe. We discuss how to create a strategy and culture that inspires ambition, why sweating the small stuff pays off, and how Stripe views its progress toward its goal of raising the internet's GDP.   John: I don't think Stripe is a payments company. I think payments and commerce, all these things are really important. But for me, my mental model of Stripe is, Stripe is an infrastructure company for facilitating transactions and exchanges and so forth between these different businesses, and we deliberately articulate our mission as increasing the GDP of the internet. Patrick" And so good cultures are often not regressed to the mean. They are differentiated. They have something that people strongly believe in a way. They strongly act that is different from every other company. And that, again, Apple shows that it can certainly persist beyond the founder. Maybe you need a founder to get it going. I don't know. I think this metonym effect that John references is a huge deal., Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Colossus

Patrick Collison created $50 billion of value as a co-founder of Stripe. He has also built the largest carbon removal program in the world. 𝗔𝘁 𝟯𝟱 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗼𝗹𝗱, 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝟭𝟱 𝗽𝗶𝗲𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗵𝗲’𝗱 𝗴𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗽𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳: (From his personal blog, in a post titled “Advice”) 1. Go deep on things. Become an expert. 2. In particular, try to go deep on 𝘮𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘪𝘱𝘭𝘦 things. One of the main things you should try to achieve by age 20 is some sense for which kinds of things you 𝘦𝘯𝘫𝘰𝘺 doing. 3. Don't stress out too much about how valuable the things you're going deep on are... but don't ignore it either. It should be a factor you weigh but not by itself dispositive. 4. To the extent that you enjoy working hard, do. Subject to that constraint, it's not clear that the returns to effort ever diminish substantially. 5. Make friends over the internet with people who are great at things you're interested in. The internet is one of the biggest advantages you have over prior generations. Leverage it. 6. Aim to read a lot. 7. If you think something is important but people older than you don't hold it in high regard, there's a reasonable chance that you're right and they're wrong. Status lags by a generation or more. 8. Above all else, don't make the mistake of judging your success based on your current peer group. By all means make friends but being weird as a teenager is generally good. 9. 𝘉𝘶𝘵 having good social skills confers life-long benefits. So, don't write them off. Get good at making a good first impression, being funny, speaking publicly. 10. Make things. Operating in a space with a lot of uncertainty is a very different experience to learning something. 11. More broadly, nobody is going to teach you to think for yourself. A large fraction of what people around you believe is mistaken. Internalize this and practice coming up with your own worldview. 12. If you're in the US and go to a good school, there are a lot of forces that will push you towards following train-tracks laid by others rather than charting a course yourself. 13. Figure out a way to travel to San Francisco and to meet other people who've moved there to pursue their dreams. 14. Find vivid examples of success in the domains you care about. If you want to become a great scientist, try to find ways to spend time with good (or, ideally, great) scientists in person. 15. People who did great things often did so at very surprisingly young ages. So, hurry up! You can do great things. -- 👉 P.S. If you enjoyed this post, you'll love my newsletter - a 3-minute breakdown of the strategy playbooks and growth hacks behind the world’s greatest companies. Join 35,000+ strategy nerds from companies like Google, Meta, Atlassian, and Netflix: https://lnkd.in/g2FWfXGR