Stripe’s Culture Decoded

The list of foundations to Stripe’s culture is inspiring:

1/Turpentine
2/Writing
3/Meticulousness
4/Principled decision-making
5/Ambition
6/Talking up
7/The API metaphor

The API metaphor: When spinning up new projects or processes (ex- standing up company planning, welcoming newly acquired teams into Stripe, building Stripe Press), I was often encouraged to think of myself as the “API to X.” I always think about this.

Good API’s make things easier by providing a layer of abstraction between complex systems and I think it’s a pretty good metaphor for collaboration and communication. Abstract away the crufty bits so the interfaces are clean and interactions are more elegant (and more pleasant).

Brianna @zebriez