Stripe CEO’s Letter — Product Strategy Masterclass

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It is said that clarity of thought represents the highest form of human intelligence.

Partrick Collison’s [Stripe CEO] recent stakeholder simple and humble letter [https://stripe.com/files/stripe-2021-update.pdf]is a fine example of this species and has several valuable nuggets that catch the eye.

While there is no guarantee for success, the odds are significantly higher when the building blocks are clearly defined and optimised for execution.

Here are a few highlights:

1. Crisp Mission statement: Grow the GDP of the Internet. Only 12% of global spend in 2021 happened online. While Stripe processed a staggering $0.5 TRILLION worth of payments, it’s wasn’t just the large players. At least 100 businesses passed $1M in lifetime sales each day as more economic activity happens online and there definitely seems to be a nod to helping small and medium businesses trying to sell to customers worldwide.
2. Streamlined Strategy: Comprised of four(4) key pillars [not fourteen] and uses simple/actionable language like increasing rate of new business creation by reducing barrier to online entry and lower the cost of scaling with technology [APIs & services]
3. Clear customer segmentation: Digital natives vs digital transformers and emerging digital entities such as creators[creator economy]

4. Product focus: Clear callout of new product features such as Stripe Tax and Revenue Recognition that drove impact and growth backed up with numerous large customer examples such as La Monde, Ford, Atlassian [not just alpha/beta]

5. Strengthening [and not losing sight] of the foundations: Payments means trust and not customer would trust any payments platform were it not backed by reliability and security. Acknowledged increasing cybersecurity threats and significantly expanded capital investments to combat the same.

6. Reiterating Design Principles: Stating “User First” and working backwards [thankfully it’s not AI first]. Tip of the hat to the sophistication and maturity of user base [not treating them like second-class citizens].

What do you look for in your communications from leaders ? Leave comments below…