Cancer Changed Everything: Finding Empathy, Balance, and Grace | Sharmeen Chapp (Stripe)

I think in order to lead with full empathy it starts with you the person you have to be able to drop your own ego be humble and show up with genuine good intentions right so this means you are listening to the people on your team and actually truly like actively listening to what they want what they need and I think the other big thing that goes along with this is that there's no need for competition sometimes I feel like people get caught up in like oh or I can only succeed if I'm doing better than other people and it does doesn't have to be that way like there's room for everybody to win and it's better for the business and your users as well now how do you balance uh this kind of high empathy and care with holding that high bar for excellence there's this common misconception that both empathy and holding a high bar have to be mutually exclusive and I just don't think that that's true I think you can do both at the same time one of my favorite examples is this leader who I really like respect and love working with at stripe will say in a meeting to someone on their team like I love you but this is terrible and let's work on it together to get it to a great place and we need to be able to give our teams the difficult feedback like that but the important thing in delivering that feedback is framing it in a way that's objective one of the rules that I like to set is that I have a goal to give feedback within 24 hours with actual examples so that it's super clear and I do this both for positive and critical feedback because it's just as important to recognize and reward the good work as it is to call out the work that need the all right so welcome my guest today is charmine is currently head of product for revenue and finance automation at stripe previously she led Creator and news products at meta and roll some IC tovp over six years at twitch Charming is the first guest that I actually reported to personally and to this day she's still one of the highest empathy leaders that I know despite dealing with setbacks and breast cancer so welcome sharmine thanks Peter it's really great to connect with you and to meet your community all right great so

let's start with like a difficult topic like probably toughest moment in your career and life I believe you had just joined meta and was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer what went through your mind back then yeah I was literally six weeks into a brand new job at meta in a senior leadership position super excited to like ramp up and make a great first impression with the company and the people on my team and then all of a sudden I get like the most terrifying diagnosis of my Lifetime right so I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared I was very scared especially in those first two weeks when I got the diagnosis I didn't know how bad it was I didn't know if it was something I'd be able to overcome or if I'd have to live with forever and that was super scary but you know as soon as I got some more information I was able to focus on the plan and kind of like my normal personality started to shine again and it was like look it's stage two it's early enough that we feel confident that we can beat this there's a very clear and set treatment plan and that's something that I can work with especially as a product manager right so I basically like product managed my entire cancer journey I had spreadsheets I did a bunch of research I just kind of tackled it head on and I am very grateful to be on the other end of it now I remember when my mom got breast cancer too when I was still uh in school and I remember it was like really difficult for my dad and myself to go through this but uh you actually chose

to be public with your cancer Journey so like yeah what was the rationale behind kind of just like sharing with about this yeah absolutely you know like I was one of those reare cases where it should not have happened like I had no family history no genetic markers I was 35 when I was diagnosed I was very young and I think like the actual chances of me getting breast cancer was like 0. 003% or something really low like that and what I realized was if it could happen to me anyone and we all have to be really Vigilant because catching it early in the case of cancer is literally the difference between life and death and that's just like so Stark to me and I was also diagnosed during breast cancer awareness month and so for me it almost felt like you know something really bad was happening to me but how can I turn it into something good and raising awareness felt like the thing that I could do to hopefully bring something better into the world out of this really scary diagnosis and so I posted about the entire Journey publicly and I know that not every woman who goes through breast cancer treatments feels empowered to be able to do that so my goal was also to be able to reach the people who had to go through this in silence and didn't necessarily have that level of support that I did just to kind of build that community and let them know that they're not alone and you were actually able to find a lot of support by posting public here right from like people that you didn't even know talk about that yeah I you know I think there were a few really beautiful things that came out of being so public about my journey one of them was that I was able to reconnect with people who I hadn't talked to in years like people from my childhood from high school and college started reaching out I hadn't talked to them in decades in some cases and so that was a really nice thing to be able to reconnect again and then I also got a lot of support just because I was posting publicly on like Instagram and Twitter which is now X and just garnered a lot of support from people who I didn't even know and a really special moment was when I tweeted that I was cancer-free that tweet went viral and so it is like by far the most popular tweet that I have ever posted and that was something that was super special at the time and I also love how you also like you don't come off across someone who like swears a lot to me but each time you post about this you say F cancer and I think that really resonate with yeah I mean it's like one of the worst things in the world and I yeah let's not be shy about it okay and meta is not a you know easygoing place right it's a pretty demanding place so

how did you balance work and family life going through I guess surgery radiation Kemo going through all this yeah you know I think before I even dive into that one thing that's really important is to mention I chose to work through my cancer treatments and that's not necessarily like the right choice for everybody right like everyone needs to make their choice for whatever makes the most sense for their personal case but for me cancer made me feel like everything in my personal life was out of control I had zero control over what was happening to me and work was the thing that gave me a sense of productivity being meaning and adding value into the world and so it gave me that sense of control and so that was one of the big reasons why I chose to work through my treatment and so you know when I was going through that it was really like there's no perfect answer to how you approach working and cancer and family life and all of that at the same time you basically just have to be really in tune with where you are every single day so for me my general approach is to be like over communicative about my energy levels what I was able to do and what I was not especially with work we set really strict priorities both with my manager and with my team and the cancer treatment schedule was incredibly regimented so that actually ended up being a positive because it allowed me to communicate exactly when I would be working and when I wasn't going to be well enough to work and based on that we were able to set like this is what you can expect from me during these time periods and this is when I'm going to be out of pocket because I have to recover I have very low energy levels and that worked really well I was fortunate to have incredible support system both with my team and my manager and of course also setting up a support system at home from friends and family and loved ones that helped me get through it so it sounds like after the initial moment of uncertainty like you basically kind of like PMD your cancer I did um and you've always being a very optimistic person but during this journey were there moments where you know difficult moments where you kind of lost hope or like just kind of yeah like wondering why does it happen to me yeah I mean I think you know thing about Hope was at the very beginning when I didn't know how bad it was going to be and that was what was super scary but the moment I had like the specifics of the diagnosis treatment plan and the chances of success coming out the other end like at that point I had a lot of Hope and I never let go of Hope anymore like it was just it was there it was a constant for me what I would say is not losing hope but there were harder days right there were days where it was very difficult I put a lot of guilt on myself whether it was Mom guilt like I was a new mom with an 11-month-old child when I was diagnosed so you know just like a lot of guilt around not being able to do everything that I wish I could it was in those moments that I had to remind myself that you have to give yourself Grace you are literally fighting for your life and you are doing the best that you can and that's more than enough and if I ever felt like I couldn't do that for myself I would just look at my son right he was one years old throughout the treatment and he was that like bright shining light reminding me why I was fighting why this was important and even beyond that just like the outpouring of love and support that I got from friends and family and strangers from around the world like that really helped keep me strong on My Darkest Days that's great to hear you know in Tech we tend to or focus on our careers and whatever the next ladder or Mone is but you know you were both a new mom and D with the thing like I guess what did you learn from this experience about what really matters in life yeah I you know I think cancer is one of those things where these learnings become very star free they're pretty much black and white but like nothing is more important than health family and having a good balance in your life that is absolutely Paramount to everything else and I hope that everybody can kind of live by that without having to go to cancer to realize it right like that's why I share as much as I do is like you don't want to have cancer to realize how important your health and your family are and that you have to set those boundaries and you have to prioritize it because no one else is going to do it for you and you know like you mentioned a lot of people are probably going through this privately you know maybe young women or other folks do you have it like before we close this topic do you have any advice for them to do with this yeah I think that one just knowing you're not alone and two we can do hard things I think that's the most important thing is like our bodies our spirit is so resilient and it's incredible what we're able to survive and to go through I would say that Cancer Treatments were probably not probably they are definitely the hardest thing that I've ever done but I got through them I'm on the other end I'm getting healthier again and I you know I'm very grateful for everything that I have that might not be the case for everybody and so I think we just you have to focus on what you have what you can do be positive give yourself Grace and just remember that you can do hard things got it and like just kind of bring home the message about getting early detection especially if a history in a family I think that's really important yes absolutely okay so let's switch to a little bit more positive topic you know I work for you for a couple years at twitch and you know you're one of the highest empathy leaders that I know do you have any tips for how people can lead with empathy and help others grow their careers yeah absolutely I think in order to lead with full empathy it starts with you the person you have to be able to drop your own ego be humble and show up with genuine good intentions right so this means you are listening to the people on your team and actually truly like actively listening to what they want what they need and I think the other big thing that goes along with this is that there's no need for competition sometimes I feel like people get caught up in like oh I can only do better or I can only succeed if I'm doing better than other people and it doesn't have to be that way like there's room for everybody to win and it's better for the business and your users as well right so at a high level like if you think about it you want your users to be happy you want your business to be successful and you want your teens to feel empowered to make that happen and if you show up with that empathy then you're building an environment for that sort of you know like emotion to thrive in the workplace okay so not get blocked down internal Shenanigans just focus on the end result yeah exactly and how do you balance this kind of high empathy and care with holding that high bar for excellence like do you have an example of this yeah so I actually I want to

kind of reject even the premise of the question right like there's this common misconception that both empathy and holding a high bar have to be mutually exclusive and I just don't think that's true I think you can do both at the same time one of my favorite examples is this leader who I really like respect and love working with that stripe will say in a meeting to someone on their team like I love you but this is terrible and let's work on it together to get it to a great place and we need to be able to kind of give our teams the difficult feedback like that but the important thing in delivering that feedback is framing it in a way that's objective right so you have to give objective actionable feedback for people to dig best so that they know how to do better in the future and always remember that giving harder feedback is the Kinder thing to do in the long run because if you don't give that critical feedback then they're not going to know how they need to grow how they can do better next time so it's truly a gift and giving it in a timely M manner yes so one of the rules yeah that's actually a good reminder one of the rules that I like to set is that I have a goal to give feedback within 24 hours with actual examples so that it's super clear and I do this both for positive and critical feedback because it's just as important to recognize and reward the good work as it is to call out the work that needs improv it as a leader are you also transparent with your team about kind of where you're good at where your gaps are absolutely yeah so I think this that only becomes more and more important as a leader because you want to build a team that balances you out as well right and the only way to build a really great team is to know what you're good at and to where your growth areas might be or just acknowledging like these are going to be my weaknesses and that's okay right and to make sure that like the team that you're building holistically has all of the things that you need to deliver for what your users need and do you do that through like you I know stripe has like a documentation culture but do you like just tell your team where you have a Charming dock I do yeah so stripe is actually famous for it's almost like what's your personal API Doc and so like how to work with charmine and and so pretty much every leader at stripe writes this document of how to work with them and it's supposed to be the way to just share with people like this is what I'm really good at this is how I like to communicate this is where I might fall short and like you're going to have to push me on and let's just be super honest about it so that we can get to the end goal as quickly as possible got it some of the more difficult times I've had at work are you know where you work for someone else who has a different style as you or maybe you think is like has some alter Mo ofate mind or something how do you work this folks like it you know how do you work different types of people yeah and you know I think there there's a couple of angles to this we've all worked with these people from a business perspective I think the best way to work with someone who might be different from you is to align on your shared goals it's really important to have a common objective that you are working towards together so that you can feel like not feel like but actually truly be on the same side together and if we're colleagues you know the idea is that we are on the same side right we want to make the same users happy we want to be able to make the same company be successful and so it's really just snapping back to like what are those share goals or the common ground that we can align on and then I think everything can fall into place from there the second part of this is maybe more of like the personal aspect of like how do you work with people who are that different from you and for me something that I've always done is I acknowledge that I have something to learn from everyone every person has their strength that you can admire or look up to and learn from and then in the cases of where you might not agree with the way that they are operating then you can tell yourself you know what that's what I don't want to do and you learn what not to do and that's also a good thing and so I think you can really you can take away good lessons from all of the interactions that you have with people okay so it's kind of like a mindset of approaching cic conversations with I can learn from this person but like is there some sort of just push on this a little bit like do you have certain words or language or phrases that you use to level set these meet meetings yeah yes I do and so one of my favorite Frameworks when I've had to had really difficult conversations with people is I will say hey that interaction that we had was trust breaking for me how can we turn it around into a trust building moment for us moving forward and I have always felt like that kind of a framework gives room to talk about like okay why was it trust breaking what was the action that broke trust and ideally as colleagues we want to be building trust and working towards a high trust situation and so let's talk about what we can do differently to get there and those types of Frameworks really make room for us to have the difficult conversation but in a very objective way so that it doesn't get bogged down by emotions and then turn into something that isn't a good interaction yeah I love that phrase because when you say something is trust breaking like people will pay attention right it's not yeah you can easily ignore yeah and it's a lot more dogmatic than saying hey you made me feel bad like what is a person supposed to do with that right like when you frame it in the thing that's more productive and like business oriented then I think it's easier to the conversation got it Switching

gears a little bit you know you're leading Stripes automation products how do you and also stripe also has a very deep attention to detail right yeah so how do you balance the vision work with the execution work is the same thing or how do you balance these two yeah I actually do think that they're two sides of the same coin and I have a framework for this one too that I really love to use it's both great to reflect on how I'm operating and a great way to talk to my team about how they're operating so it's basically looking at like operating high and operating low and understanding what is needed from you in the moment based on where you are in your product life cycle or career or your journey at a new company so operating High that's the easy one like in the sense of like it's you know you have a North star Vision that you're marching towards you're able to set that Vision get people inspired and excited about it and like kind of setting the strategy for the team that everybody can understand operating low is when you are getting into the details and making sure everyone's operating efficiently like really understanding what's happening on the ground and being able to kind of like defend the decisions that are being made for the product and the users and figuring out based on your role what is most needed from you at any given time that's really like the hard part about this balance and the other thing is like people usually tend to operate one way or another like they'll gravitate towards one of them because it's their comfort zone and that is usually the Fatal flaw that prevents people from being able to grow like somebody who's really good at operating low could get dinged for not being able to set a vision and inspire a team and someone who's really good at operating High could get dinged for not really knowing what's happening on the ground or in the details and questioning like well what are you doing all day right and so I think those are kind of like common pitfalls and people really have to learn to balance both of those at the right time to truly grow as a leader in a company so you almost have to uh push yourself to do the other end right cuz like your natural tend tendency is to yeah like my natural tendency is to just operate low yeah to it is and you know I think for me I've kind of swapped it kind of depends on where I am in my career like sometimes I gravitate towards one the other and I have to call it out like myself out and say hey I'm doing a lot of operating in this category and why am I avoiding the other one and let me push myself to be uncomfortable and to kind of go back in that direction and so it's you should be checking in with yourself pretty much every month like which direction did I operate more in last month and what do I need to do more of let's talk about when you join stripe like and you know send a vision for your team did you do you like spend a few months trying to understand what's going on first or like how did you yeah that's actually a really great question so stripe I think as a company you know every company values different things and I think what stripe really values is one like there's a huge focus on being users first like just really obsessed with our users and putting them at the Forefront of everything we do which is incredible and then two strip really values leaders and everyone at the company being really humble and so you show up you leave your ego at the door everyone's there to learn and that's really what counts and so for me when I joined it felt more important to operate low and to dig into the details to understand the products and the space like as you know I was coming from a decade in consumer products so it was my first time working in syntech on a SAS business with sales teams and I had a lot to learn and so I just I showed up and I left my ego at the door and I just asked a lot of questions I spent a lot of times with the a lot of time with the teams digging into the details and just getting familiar with our product and then eventually was a process to kind of craft a Direction andion with the team yeah so I think from there you use that as like the foundation and the building blocks to understand what the team needs and then you can start to distill what that highle strategy is and you know I think the thing that was most important for our team at stripe was really being able to focus on like building an incredible product for our users and so a big push on product L growth and then platformization so that we were building in a way that was super efficient and giving our users the best set of tools to be able to help their businesses grow got it okay let's talk about your career now like you had a great career I would actually like to go back to even before you joined twitch right I don't know if you remember this yeah but you actually have trouble becoming a PM in the F

first place right can you talk about the really early part of your career yeah absolutely so I started as an electrical engineer and I actually worked in systems engineering in the defense industry right so I worked as a missile integration engineer and a radar algorithm design engineer and I wanted to move to the Bay Area coming out of defense and I had a lot of companies tell me like well defense is really slow moving how do you know you're going to sit in the Bay Area and even be successful here and I learned a lot through that process like I learned that most of the companies wouldn't talk to me unless I had a referral even then they questioned a lot about coming out of defense and wanting to enter the Bay Area Tech scene and I really had to get my narrative down so that they understood the reason I was leaving defense the reason I wanted to work in the Bay Area was because I was one of them I wanted to operate more like that and I wanted to be at a company that was pushing me to grow in that way and so you know I had to learn those steps the hard way before I figured out how to start Landing interviews and being successful in interviews with companies for these types of roles and then eventually someone took a bet on you right was someone twitch or yes it was twitch so I had been an engineering manager for a handful of years I had joined a Bay Area startup also as like a product engineering manager and that startup sailed miserably but like we built the device that we were trying to build and so from an engineering perspective I was like oh we're successful we built this device but literally nobody wants to buy it and so that was a huge gap in product management I was like I never want to be in this situation again so I am going to go learn what it takes to be a product manager and that was really like the moment when I joined twitch I switched from Engineering Management to product management and I did that almost like lateral or step down move where I went from being a manager to an IC because I wanted to focus on learning product and really proving to myself that was a role that I could do well yeah a lot of time I also have trouble switching to pm and I mean I think anyone can do this job giv me enough time yeah and a lot of time it's just kind of like having faith in yourself what people are telling you know I don't know why it's so hard to switch to this job but yeah I I truly think that like the Bay Area puts the product management role up on a pedestal the irony was that you when I was interviewing for product roles I got a lot of like NOS that people wouldn't even talk to me because I didn't have it on my resume yet and then I'd literally been a product manager for one month and a company that had said no to talking to me all of a sudden was reaching out to like ask if I wanted to interview with them and I was like have I really learned that much in one month other than having product manager on my LinkedIn title like nothing else has changed in the last one month but that's all it took for them to want to talk to me so I think we're a little bit silly sometimes interesting yeah usually the recruiter just looks at the title or the company that's kind of unfortunate but that's true yeah so we worked together

at twitch and I think you were there for like six years and you grew from IC to VP you know H so how can people grow from IC VP in six years so you know I think the first thing to remind people is that it wasn't in a vacuum that I Grew From IC to VP right like I had years of management expertise before and I'd been an engineer before and so that Foundation is part of what helped me grow so quickly and then I think the second thing that goes along with it is that twitch went through a lot of growth at that time so we grew from 300 to over 2,000 employees and the challenge in a fast growing company like that is that you need to be able to keep up with the growth of your own personal career right and that personal career growth is a combination of hard work not being able to not being scared to seize the opportunities like one of the things that I did was at twitch every year I was working on a different product taking on a new challenge or I was growing and pushing myself out of my comfort zone and you know there was one role in particular that was really pivotal for my career when I joined the executive team at twitch and when I made that choice someone else at the company literally told me I wouldn't touch that team with a 10-foot pole that's going to be a career Ender and it was super harsh and I took it and we turned it into something amazing together and it actually for me when my career took off and so I think it really goes to show that like not being scared of the challenging problems and being comfortable with making yourself really uncomfortable is when we grow the most and I think that's really like people have to ask themselves their appetite for that level of discomfort because the greater risk you take the greater your opportunity for reward so like if there's uh someone listening to this like they're doing a good job in their current scope and role like how do you seize these opportunities or talk to your manager ever that you want to you know take this bigger challenge yeah I mean first I think it's important to be super open and communicative with your managers like if you feel like you can take on more you're getting bored like I think being bored is probably like the scariest thing for a manager to have it like someone on their team say that they're feeling that's like a sign that you're just you're not setting them up for Success you're not keeping them excited and invigorated to come to work every day and it's really important for managers to understand that and so what I would encourage people is like be super honest tell them what your expectations are how you're feeling how you're doing do you want to work even more than you are right now do you want to take on more scope do you want bigger challenges or perhaps do you want to Coast because of what might be going on in your personal life like when I went through my cancer treatments right like you know everyone's at a different point in their life and they should always be updating their manager on what their appetite is for risk or for discomfort at any given time got it and on

the flip side you've also worked on a few projects or products that have been kind of like deprioritized or canceled like that that's usually one of the worst moments as a PM but how did you walk how did you manage that your career yeah so I think we were both there at twitch when it happened and for me one of my biggest Reflections as I look back on my career is when we were at twitch and the project we were working on got deprioritized it happened to me like it happened to us when I was at meta and the project I was working on was deprioritized it was driven by me I was senior enough at that point that I was understanding what the business needs were I was looking around the corner I was identifying that what we were working on didn't align with the future of the business strategy and I preemptively said we should probably wind this down and align our resources more towards what matters for the business right now and I think that was for me personally like the biggest sign of growth is acknowledging when you are not in alignment with what the business needs and preemptively or proactively making a change to get in alignment and you know I think one of the best examples from the twitch one was once we switched that project and then started working on something that was super important for the business at the time our team had some of the most exciting announcements at twitchcon that like really had our users like cheering and super thrilled about what we were building for them right and so it ended up being like it's not worth fighting the up battle and try to go against the grain It's always important as product managers product leaders to say what does the business need are and are we in alignment with that because that's when you get the best success let's talk about the meta experience a bit more because it's kind of a scary thing like you are hired to work on this product and you kind of Scar okay actually this is not the right thing to do like how did you go through that um yeah I think you know it started with some early conversations right just acknowledging like hey look very straightforward this is the direction that meta wants to go it was the year of efficiency and we were very clearly outlining what we wanted to do for the Facebook app and the things that I was working on just did not line up you couldn't connect the dots and when you can't connect the dots I think that's a really important like signal that you need to have a conversation about it happened to be that another part of the business that I was also reading did connect the dots and really nicely align and so we had a great opportunity to move people from one team to the other and so in that case we had a solution right in front of us which is like look this is really important for the business let's bolster that while we wind down this thing that doesn't make sense got it and by proactively having these conversations you probably you know people probably respected you more right you actually real realize this yeah I mean it kind of goes back to what we were saying earlier about giving critical feedback early and quickly like it's a kindest to make the harder changes because then it sets everyone else up for success in the long term because if you don't do this proactively at some point you're probably happen to you anyway yeah right so yeah it's better to have control over the situation and to be able to guide it with your knowledge than have it happen to you okay so another really hard thing I'm not sure if you have experience with this but another hard thing is let's say the CEO really believes in a product right but like you actually don't think like you're in charge of like shipping and execu on it but you actually don't think it makes sense so how do you I do you have experience with that or like some senior exact yeah so I you know I think I have some experience with this I've also seen a lot of product managers struggle with this so one thing that I'll say is the biggest Pitfall any PM can fall into is saying I'm building this product because the CEO said so we as PMS should never be doing something because another executive said to do it we should have conviction over what we're building for our users we know our users best we're the ones on the ground talking to them regularly looking at the data and parsing through uxr and understanding what they really need and we should be developing our road maps based on that conviction what I would hope is that any executive who might have an idea or push for something would also be logical and reasonable if we present data and facts and uxr that might push us in a different direction and so I think you know navigating these situations is very tricky but it's important to do it with an open mind and have that like brainstorm discussion and kind of lay out your justification for why you think you should be going in a certain way but if you're saying that you built something because someone else said so like that is not putting yourself or your users on a path to success so I guess if you're in that kind of situation it sounds like your advice is to gather the evidence put together like a really good document or something and just have a heart-to- heart with the executive about this absolutely and you know I think in Amazon like and twitch which was part of Amazon like they had a really great framework for these types of discussions and escalations and then there were cases where people had to disagree and commit right like that was one of Amazon's values and so I think there is a balance in how you approach it you probably want to get your senior leaders on board in advance and build out that support before you go into a conversation like that and you also have to be willing to say okay I might have to disagree and commit and then what does that outcome look like got it so we talk about Stripes soon but like I would love to flip it around you know as a senior leader what kind of PMS in or like do you like respect the most or like what kind of trait do they have that you that's a really good question so you know I think what I care about the most as a leader is setting an inspiring vision for the team that gets everybody excited and then creating the environment where everyone feels empowered to realize their goals and to make them a reality right like that is like my number one goal as a leader is basically set everyone up for Success everyone should be excited about coming to work every day and everyone should have the agency to chase after their goals with as much like hustle and Gusto as they want to and so what does it look like to create that kind of environment and how do I make sure I don't fall into this like trap of telling people what to do or being too top down with the decisions that I'm making and so I think the most important thing that I can do is be very outcome focused with my requests of the team right like this is the outcome that we're looking towards and we want you to figure out the best way to get there so we'll spend a lot of time like figuring out our goals and our okrs and making sure we're aligned and then that gives the team a lot of room to just like Sprint on their own and not have to worry about it so that's from my perspective so then with that in mind if we think about like who are the most successful like what traits of PMS on the team it's going to be people who are eager and hungry to learn and to grow right they are going to be very obsessed with users they're going to be talking to users regularly looking at the metrics and the graphs every single day and they're going to be using that information both like uxr and data driven information to build their intuition and gut on what is important to prioritize for our users there is no dir of work for us to do in our team and so the harder part is what order to do it in and what difficult prioritization decisions to be making along the way and when you say alcome Focus it's not just about the numbers right there trying to pin a picture of the customer experience yeah exactly and so we you know we actually try to actively not syn about Revenue when we talk about outcome Focus stuff instead we look at usage and adoption and the experience that our users are having with our products and so just making sure that there's an attention to detail on product craft making things as seamless as possible and the user experience should be as intuitive as possible and I actually think that like that value is deeply ingrained at stripe like in the early days the stripe Persona was the impatient developer and you can imagine with that Persona in mind it made it really clear what decision needed to be made as they were building out their product and developing and that's really I think why stripe was so successful and has been is because we have this strong focus on who our user is and building for them yeah the developer just wants to get to the close ample the doation that's why Stripes is so good yeah set up and accept payments in the next five minutes and if you get stuck the documents are really easy to navigate and tell you exactly what you need to do or what you might have been missing and that just has to keep expanding and scaling as continues to grow too so okay

so let's talk about stripe then so you know after a decade working on live streaming and everything consumer why did you go to stripe and also we talk about outcome like what's the outcome that you want for your org or like the customer as stripe that's a great question so I think it's been really awesome to switch from consumer product and be able to bring those skills to fintech like if you look at my career I got to go from helping streamers and Gamers earning a living doing what they love at twitch and then from there I was helping create ators build communities and earn a living meta and now it's stripe it almost feels like I'm taking it to the next level where we are helping ambitious businesses all over the world to manage and grow their revenue so with that in mind like the switch from consumer to fintech doesn't feel like that much of a stretch and it's actually been really exciting and empowering to be able to work at a business at this level of scale and I think what's really interesting is like because of the internet right now where we are is that an inflection ction point for how businesses run their companies like Revenue models are more complicated because of the internet the one-sized fits all approaches that businesses used to use are no longer a thing either like businesses have to adopt multiple Revenue models they need modern software to set up in scale as you might be familiar with like with the AI boom usage based billing is also becoming increasingly popular across internet companies and so with our products in the revenue and finance automation we are helping companies set up their revenue models charge their customers in various ways and we're basically here to help ambitious businesses grow and like our Cornerstone product stripe billing is one of the largest billing providers in the world today with over 250,000 users and so it's like a really exciting place to be and I think this industry is booming and no one's really thinking about that like endtoend software suite to help companies grow and that's what we're trying to build that's awesome how do you adjust your style based on the culture of company or maybe you pick companies that match your values and your style how do you yeah I actually think it is it's probably more of the latter like especially the longer you've been in your career when you're going through interviews you should be interviewing the company and the team and the people just as much as they are interviewing you because you are most likely to succeed when you are in a place that lines up with your values and what you're looking for in your next role right and so for me person Al like I don't think of it as adjusting my style because I always want to be authentic and genuine and I want to be myself right when I show up to work but what I think it's important to adjust especially when you're at a new company is identifying how you choose your time how you choose to spend your time right so you have to figure out like what does stripe care about what matters here what's important and then based on that have a filter on how I spend my days and where I am putting energy so that I'm being intentional about doing all of the right things uh what are some examples of strip values that like you're spending more time on or like you know trying to yeah live yeah so stripe cares a lot about being humble I mentioned this one before I think everyone is just like really Earnest asks a lot of curious questions and just comes to the table just ready to learn and eager to help and so that one really resonates with me like I have a lot of similar feelings and always want to be able to operate like that and then the other one is the users first I think this one's more common across a lot of companies but I have seen the way stripe puts users first is kind of like unparalleled compared to what I've seen in the industry like so much so that at our annual conference when we are announcing products we do a live demo as if we were one of our users to show that we can do this on stage in front of thousands of people and that's how easy we're making it for our users to be able to do it too like we literally put our in their shoes on stage during a keynote and so I think it just like stripe takes users first to a whole new level which is really awesome and then the other thing that I mentioned around like operating high and low I think stripe holds a really high bar which I deeply love and respect and appreciate because I know that our leaders and my peers are also going to help me push myself to be the best version of me that I can be like a high bar for like products that you guys deliver or just everything right like high bar for products High bar for technical just being your best self at work being a great manager being a great leader all of it it's awesome got it yeah that that's awesome I see like uh strip PMS like Jeff and these other folks just like engaging the customer all the time on Twitter yes and the customer support is like really great yeah Jeff is awesome we get to work closely and I think he famously has an SLA of like less than five minutes response time to any Outreach on Twitter it's incredible yeah that's great do you have any you

know kind of closing words of advice given everything you've been through and for like I think my typical audience is people in Tech you know in different companies yeah you know I think my closing words of advice especially reflecting on the last few years of my life is to give yourself Grace we are always so focused on the next thing and pushing ourselves and I think it's just important to remember that self-care matters too and if you take care of yourself you can actually go a lot further in the long run and so just make time for that and everything else will also keep falling into place you know maybe you can have high expectations for yourself but like don't push yourself too hard like find that balance yeah absolutely like if you get sick take a day off right you'll recover faster if you take a day off and rest versus try to work through being sick and then it'll take a lot longer to recover so you know that's like an obvious example like but I do think that like the pandemic and everything that this world has been through has given us a new lens on taking care of our health and then balancing that with our work lives yeah sometimes I get anxious if I like you know am not being productive and I have to like fight against that like actually playing for kids is being productive or like Yes actually going to workout is being productive yes exactly and I think like exercising and working out is one of the things that people tend to forget the most like especially when you're super stressed you don't think you have time to work out but if you even do like a 20-minute workout you will be in a much better mindset both physically and emotionally and you can likely be more productive after that and so just carving out that time and remembering to do it as hard as it might be is probably the most important thing we can do for ourselves got it so where can people find you online and like maybe follow with you yeah so I am on X as Lucky Charms and I'm also on Instagram as Lucky Charms but there's an underscore between the lucky and the charms it's a longtime nickname from high school that just stuck and I like it you can also find me on LinkedIn I tend to post there pretty commonly under my full name charmine chap thanks so much shine this was awesome it was a pleasure great to see you Peter