Lessons from scaling Stripe | Claire Hughes Johnson (ex-COO of Stripe)

What I say to people at Stripe in th- in our onboarding, I used to run a session, I was like, "If you're not sure who the decision maker is, one, it's probably you. And I'd rather you act that way than not, because y- you're gonna, like, slow the whole company down. Follow a process and get it done. And don't forget to actually make a decision. And if you don't know who the decision maker is and you're worried it's not you, just ask. Like, don't get stuck. Too many people get stuck, and it makes your l- like, work terrible, right? I mean, what do we all care about? Progress, impact, momentum. I mean, if a- if a- if anything, I would say about, like, advice to people generally is be a force for positive momentum, and you will, it will be actually a real career maker. (laughs)

(instrumental music) Welcome to Lenny's Podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today, my guest is Claire Hughes Johnson. Claire was most recently chief operating officer at Stripe for the past seven years, where she helped scale them from a small startup to the legendary company that it is today. Before that, she spent about 10 years at Google, where she was VP of self-driving cars, VP of global online sales, director of sales and ops for Gmail, YouTube, Google Apps, and AdWords. Before that, she was in politics. She's also on the board of HubSpot and The Atlantic. And this week, she's releasing an incredible book called Scaling People, which, in my opinion, should be and likely will be on every founder's bookshelf. In our conversation, we dig into many of the meaty topics that her book covers, including building your operational cadence, defining your company and personal operating principles, your company's operating system. Also tons of tactical advice around saying things that you cannot say, building self-awareness, distinguishing management from leadership, so much more. I say this a couple times in our conversation, if you enjoy my newsletter and podcast and the fact that it's very tactical and full of templates and frameworks, you will love Claire's book, and you will love learning from Claire. I had such a good time chatting with Claire, and I know you'll learn a lot from this conversation. With that, I bring you Claire Hughes Johnson after a short word from our wonderful sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Linear. Let's be honest, the issue tracker that you're using today isn't very helpful. Why is it that it always seems to be working against you instead of working for you? Why does it feel like such a chore to use? Well, Linear is different. It's incredibly fast, beautifully designed, and it comes with powerful workflows that streamline your entire product development process, from issue tracking all the way to managing product roadmaps. Linear is designed for the way modern software teams work. What users love about Linear are the powerful keyboard shortcuts, efficient GitHub integrations, cycles that actually create progress, and built-in project updates that keep everyone in sync. In short, it just works. Linear is the default tool of choice among startups, and it powers a wide range of large established companies such as Vercel, Retool, and Cash App. See for yourself why product teams describe using Linear as magical. Visit linear.app/lenny to try out Linear for free with your team and get 25% off when you upgrade. That's linear.app/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Vanta, helping you streamline your security compliance to accelerate growth. If your business stores any data in the cloud, then you've likely been asked or you're gonna be asked about your SOC 2 compliance. SOC 2 is a way to prove your company's taking proper security measures to protect customer data and builds trust with customers and partners, especially those with serious security requirements. Also, if you want to sell to the enterprise, proving security is essential. SOC 2 can either open the door for bigger and better deals, or it can put your business on hold. If you don't have a SOC 2, there's a good chance you won't even get a seat at the table. But getting a SOC 2 report can be a huge burden, especially for startups. It's time-consuming, tedious, and expensive. Enter Vanta. Over 3,000 fast-growing companies use Vanta to automate up to 90% of the work involved with SOC 2. Vanta can get you ready for security audits in weeks instead of months, less than a third of the time that it usually takes. For a limited time, Lenny's Podcast listeners get $1,000 off Vanta. Just go to vanta.com/lenny. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash Lenny to learn more and to claim your discount. Get started today. Claire, welcome to the podcast.