[0:00:03] Hi, today we are talking to Greg Brockman of Stripe, which is an online payment startup that allows companies to receive payments without a merchant account or gateway. It is a Y Combinator company. Greg Brockman was an undergrad at Harvard from where he transferred to MIT in his sophomore year and later dropped out to join Stripe. So Greg, can you tell us a little about how you met the founders of Stripe?
[0:00:33] Sure. So at MIT, I had always been sort of picturing myself as wanting to do a startup at some point, but didn't think that I was quite ready. And I realized also that if I wanted to get to the point where I was ready to start doing a startup, that I would have to go and teach myself a lot of things outside of school. And so I was working on projects, and also I was meeting with some people just who were doing startups to...
[0:01:00] Learn how they were doing things, how they were thinking about what they were doing. And one day these people got in contact with me from this company at the time called slash dev slash payments. And they just seemed like people that I really wanted to work with. And I realized that I was just willing to do whatever it took to start working with these people. And so I ended up dropping out, joining, and today we're Stripe.
[0:01:25] So you were the first engineer, the first hire and were involved in recruiting the subsequent product team. So were you just three or four people at the time that you joined them? So for a long time there were four of us. And so the founders both were very technical and writing a lot of code.
[0:01:52] The other guy also started out not knowing how to code a ton, although he had some amount of background in it, but basically figured out all the things that you need to do in order to become an engineer, and these days is also overriding just as much code as everyone. So I was reading your blog about the importance for you of working with people that you want to be around.
[0:02:18] Particularly the example that you gave of liking the math team at Harvard, but not so much the physics study group. And it was just about the team dynamics. Can you tell me a little about how you guys make sure that you are getting the people that you want to work with at Stripe? How are you maintaining that culture? And I'm also going to include that blog link at the end of this video. Yeah, so I think the biggest thing that we do
[0:02:47] I mean, there's sort of this philosophical choice that we made of always making sure that the people that we hire are people who we not just work really well with, but that we also really want to be around. And the test that we use here is something we call the Sunday test, which is if this candidate were alone in the office on a Sunday, would that make you more likely to want to come in just to hang out with this person? And if the answer is not a clear yes,
[0:03:16] Then that's not someone that we can hire. And at times, this has actually been a very difficult decision whether or not we actually want to stick with this. And you see some engineer who's just really, really technically brilliant, who you know is going to be awesome, make the company possibly more likely to succeed, at least in the short run. And then you realize that, but I'm not sure this is someone that I actually really want to spend time around. It's been this existential crisis for us trying to decide.
[0:03:45] Are we actually willing to stick through and stick with our principles? And we found that actually by sticking with it, you give up that short-term optimization of having someone who's going to be able to help you solve these immediate problems. But in the longer term, you end up with a team that's way more cohesive, where everyone's really enjoying themselves and having a good time. And I think that in the long run is the thing that's going to make us be way more successful than we might be otherwise. Sure.
[0:04:14] The Sunday test is a good one. Do you also do trial periods? We don't do trial periods. The way that I like to think about the interview process is that you have maybe your initial phone screens or something. You have some low touch, low intensity initial screening. And then maybe you have something in the middle, something that we've tried or things like have a take-home worksheet or have some project to work on.
[0:04:43] Once a candidate, at least for our engineering process, once a candidate comes into the office and we've spent the time to meet this person and have this person meet us and that exchange has happened, at that point I always want it to be the case that we gather all the info that we need in order to really make a decision. Because I think that it's really important that there is this transition period where it's clear to everyone involved that this is the decision point. Up to here, all the info has been gathered and ready to make a decision.
[0:05:11] And so we've done trial periods in the past. And I think that it's just a very distrustful thing because you have someone who's working with you who is unclear. Are they really part of your company? Are they going to be here in the long term? How should you be thinking about this person? And I think that that's just very demoralizing for everyone involved. Sure. Sure. Makes sense. So after you, when do you find the next five people for the product team?
[0:05:40] For the vast majority, it's personal network. And the thing about personal network is that, you know, you think that, oh, this is how I get just the first few people, but I only know so many people and then I'm going to run out. But the really nice thing about it is it turns out that everyone you hire also has a personal network. And so you can scale it pretty far. And really, to date, the vast majority of our hires have time through just either people we know directly.
[0:06:07] Or friends of friends or people who were referred to us by people who we know very well. And so the first, I guess the first three or four people after me were all through exactly that. The personal network, the YC network, being in an exciting space like online payments, being in the Valley.
[0:06:29] All these are pluses, but did you, in spite of all of this, did you find it challenging to attract some of the people that you wanted, maybe because of the talent crunch in the Valley or any other reasons like that? So, I think that the biggest challenges that we've run into have been on the sourcing side, not so much on the closing side. And, I mean, you know, there are always going to be examples of the people who will pick other things or who have other things going on.
[0:06:56] I think that maybe the number one competitor that we've run into, which has come up several times, is people choosing between joining Stripe and starting their own company. And those are the ones that we really want to get and also the ones that are hardest to tempt away. So you say sourcing remains a challenge. So outside of the personal network, has there been any source that has been a positive surprise for you where you've found people? Yeah, honestly, the answer to that is no.
[0:07:26] I think of the 25 people that we have, I think all but maybe one or two came through personal network or referrals. And the challenge going forward for us is going to be trying to figure out what are other avenues that will work. And I've spent a significant amount of time trying to explore alternative routes.
[0:07:51] You get a lot of inbound email from recruiters who are saying, I've got this candidate who I think might be a fit for your company. And we've had zero luck with any of those. And there have been a number of other avenues that we've tried and really haven't found anything that works for us yet. You're 25 people now. So how has the process changed when you were hiring the fifth person as opposed to the 25th person?
[0:08:15] Yeah, so the process has changed a lot because it's evolved from being something that was really for, really just like, I am directly your friend and that I've known you for years and here's what we're doing and here's why you should come and work with us. And that that was really what it was like in its entirety for the first few employees. And it's shifted significantly because we've started talking to a lot more people.
[0:08:44] And even though I talk a lot about personal network, now it's much more the extended network. It's usually people who there is a one or two hot connection to, but we don't know personally. And so now we have to start thinking about, okay, you don't know us, we don't know you. How do we mutually exchange this information? And so at this point, we have a decent and well-defined process that we go through in terms of doing first phone interviews and then bringing candidates into the office.
[0:09:14] And are you trying to get more people from MIT to drop out and join you? So I think that dropping out is actually rarely the right decision. And I think that it's definitely a very, it's a function highly dependent on the individual. So I actually don't really actively encourage people to drop out because I think that it's just so personally dependent.
[0:09:40] And I think that for people who it's right to do, that they definitely should make that leap. So I know the priorities and the opportunities have changed, but do you see yourself going back and finishing school? Yeah, so I'd be slightly surprised if I went back. And I think that the most likely reason that I would go back would be that I find that, oh, I actually want to do some other random field. And then I have this nice option of going back to either Harvard or MIT. And then at that point,
[0:10:10] It would make sense to go and get a degree. But certainly for the kind of thing that I'm doing, so for being in tech and certainly being at a startup, there actually is not that much utility in having this piece of paper that says that you have to complete these classes. There's so much more to chat about, Greg, but I think we'll end it here. Thanks a lot for taking the time. All right. Cheers. Thank you.