ESSENTIALS MANAGEMENT Claire Hughes Johnson Stripe is growing at breakneck speed, and it has been for years. At the beginning of last year, it had 350 employees. Now, having freshly moved into Dropbox’s old digs South of Market, it’s at 750. But according to COO Claire Hughes Johnson, the biggest challenge the company faces isn’t bringing enough new people on board. It’s integrating them into a complex organism that can’t stop/won’t stop moving forward. Figuring this out (continuously) is her mandate, and there are few people in tech operating at her level. Stripe is in a rare and aspirational position these days. While growth has leveled off for many of the unicorns in its generation, it’s maintained its rocketship trajectory. When asked what wisdom she has to share from this experience, Johnson offers the following: There’s a list of questions companies should ask themselves as they head into rapid growth — ideally in that relatively brief moment right atfer clinching product-market ift. “A lot of companies don’t decide how they want to grow until they’re well into their growth phase,” she says. “For a long time, your actions pull your company along, and then all of a sudden it switches — your existing business starts pushing your behavior. External forces like feature requests, the need for more customer support, the need to create a team to do X when you never even needed to do X before — those forces start to dictate your decisions.” The key, she says, is pausing just long enough to be very intentional about how you approach each phase of growth. 65