This document discusses scaling culture at Stripe. Some key points: - The recruitment process at Stripe is extensive, involving 11 formal interviews, lunches, a written project, and interviews with founders and senior leadership to take recruitment seriously. - As a company scales past 100-250 employees, social relationships are not enough to get work done and more processes are needed, but processes can also kill startup culture. Stripe addresses this by creating mailing lists to share critical information as the company grows. - Founders must embrace culture every day and maintain a long term vision through their actions as scaling can threaten culture if not managed properly.

1. Scaling culture @Stripe
Guillaume Princen
Head of France & Southern Europe @Stripe
Startup DreamTeam @TheFamily
May 19, 2015

2. Have a global long term vision (and apply it!)
Source: MIT Technology Review (January 26, 2015)

3. Stand by your vision… whatever the risks

4. Transparency
Source: Wired (12.19.14)

5. Transparency
Transparency

6. Transparency

7. Transparency
Fear
Uncertainties
Doubts
All
The
Hands

8. Trust & risk-free environment

9. Recruitment – take it seriously
My recruitment process
• 1 skype with recruiter in SF
• 1 skype with Head of International
• 1 written project (“My plan for Stripe in France”)
• 1 visit to London:
– Interview with UK Country Lead
– Interview with Head of International
– Lunch with the 2 above + an Account Support + an Engineer
• 1 skype with COO
• 1 trip to San Francisco, and interviews with
– Patrick (co-founder)
– John (co-founder)
– COO
– Head of Risk
– Head of Global Operations
– Head of BizOps
– Lunch with Legal officer, Data engineer, Product engineer
– Coffee with Recruiter

10. Recruitment – take it seriously
My recruitment process
• 1 skype with recruiter in SF
• 1 skype with Head of International
• 1 written project (“My plan for Stripe in France”)
• 1 visit to London:
– Interview with UK Country Lead
– Interview with Head of International
– Lunch with the 2 above + an Account Support + an Engineer
• 1 skype with COO
• 1 trip to San Francisco, and interviews with
– Patrick (co-founder)
– John (co-founder)
– COO
– Head of Risk
– Head of Global Operations
– Head of BizOps
– Lunch with Legal officer, Data engineer, Product engineer
– Coffee with Recruiter
• 2 references to provide
11 “formal” interviews
+ 1 written project
+ 2 lunches
+ 1 coffee
+ 1 Eurostar trip
+ 1 American Airlines flight to SF
+ 2 references

11. Recruitment – take it seriously
My recruitment process
• 1 skype with recruiter in SF
• 1 skype with Head of International
• 1 written project (“My plan for Stripe in France”)
• 1 visit to London:
– Interview with UK Country Lead
– Interview with Head of International
– Lunch with the 2 above + an Account Support + an Engineer
• 1 skype with COO
• 1 trip to San Francisco, and interviews with
– Patrick (co-founder)
– John (co-founder)
– COO
– Head of Risk
– Head of Global Operations
– Head of BizOps
– Lunch with Legal officer, Data engineer, Product engineer
– Coffee with Recruiter
– 2 references to provide
Sunday
afternoon test

12. Customer-centric

13. Rituals & folklore
• Twin Peaks jog (Tuesday)
• Board games night (Wed)
• Hacktrips
• ATH

14. Beware when you scale!
• Dunbar’s number: somewhere between
100 and 250 employees
• Social relationships between people are
not enough anymore to get things done:
you need more processes…
• …but processes can kill your (startup)
culture

15. Beware when you scale!
• Email transparency can become a little chaotic with 250
people…
• …we created notes@ and decisions@ mailing lists to make
the most critical information available to all in a frictionless
manner
• E.g., for France, now we have:
– france@stripe.com
– France-archive@stripe.com
– France-notes@stripe.com (new)
– France-decisions@stripe.com (new)

16. 3 things to take-away
• Culture is a Founder topic, and the Founders
have to embrace them everyday
• Long term vision and actions are key to
maintain culture
• Beware of culture as you scale!

17. Thanks!