Don't make somebody the CMO, or even the head of marketing, if your marketing team is two people... You want more flexibility.
Lessons from scaling Stripe
Featuring: Claire Hughes Johnson (Former COO of Stripe)
12 quotes · 11 insights
Watch Full EpisodeOrganizations run on energy that dissipates from the center
Leaders create leverage by developing others
Your job as the manager is to enable people to be their very damn best on your team.
Pivot toward expertise, not away from pain
Product market fit is just the product, and that is not a company, and that will not scale.
Own problems beyond your scope to create momentum
Be a force for positive momentum and it will be actually a real career maker.
Politics and interests complicate pure strategy
Having just the right amount of tension in our relationship was how you knew it was working for the company.
Address small conflicts before they become catastrophic
Ask a question. Make an observation that you own. So if I said, 'I feel like there's something we're not talking about, and I wonder...' Oh, I own it.
Overcommunicate your vision - repetition is necessary
Never think that one communication, meaning an email or an all hands, reaches the audience. You have to be smart about how you communicate.
Success comes from deciding, not deliberating
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 you're going to like slow the whole company down.
Explicit clarity prevents wasted cycles
Make the thing that's implicit explicit.
External wisdom beats internal assumptions
Anytime we were confronted with anything, even things I felt I'd done before, that I had the experience and we were going to build it, they were like, 'Well, who have you talked to?' Or 'What have you read?'
Build systems, not one-offs
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Do very few things consistently and try to do them well, and then see if they're working for you.