Digital payments platform Stripe invites customers to join its management team meetings on a bi-weekly basis so it can get “candid feedback,” according to co-founder Patrick Collison.
In an April 8 post on X, the fintech giant’s CEO said the company has a customer join for the first 30 minutes of the meeting, which is attended by about 40 leaders “from across Stripe.”
“Even though we already have a lot of customer feedback mechanisms, it somehow always spurs new thoughts and investigations,” he wrote.
It’s an interesting strategy from Stripe, which was founded in 2010 and is considered to be the highest valued private fintech in the world (its most recent valuation was $91.5 billion).
Over the years, startups have complained anecdotally that Stripe is more focused on its larger customers than the smaller ones it set out to serve. But the company must be doing something right. Stripe’s annual letter in February penned by Collison noted that payment volume in 2024 grew to $1.4 trillion, up 38% on the year before.
Stripe also added in the letter that it is now used by half of the Fortune 100 companies, underscoring how it has catapulted from a startup working with other startups, into a major enterprise player.
In the post on X, Collison responded to Cloudflare CTO’s question of when his company would get an invite with a, “Would love to have you guys…will reach out.”
To the point of smaller businesses feeling neglected, one investor wrote: “Hi Patrick – you know I admire @Stripe – but you should pay attention to the extent things have degraded for the indie community using Stripe. I messaged support a week ago – no reply, things are super complicated. There’s more stuff, but it’s a mess.”
Many praised the move with one user noting: “Love this. Keeps the culture focused on what matters and helps reconciles (sic) reality.”
And, naturally, some Stripe customers used the X post to post their complaints (here and here).
However, one high-profile founder seemed to approve of Stripe’s approach: Elon Musk replied to the post with a simple, “Good idea.”
