I've been at my current gig for ~8 months, so I went back to my notes to find out what 21 year old Tara thought about her first 8 months at Stripe.
Tara Seshan
4,733 posts
Tara Seshan
@tarstarr
- team naming is using the words “experience” “platform” "operations" and “engineering” in various configurations until you die
- I wrote a long essay on why most of the low-code-no-code tool builders haven't made it out of the teenage slumps -- Airtable & Retool are big ones that come to mind. Warning: it's LONG.
- Helped my mom organize her spice cabinet and may have had a Freudian slip?
- Probably one of the most impressive business leaders I have ever seen is Jorgen von Knudstorp, the former CEO of LEGO.
- Ok all of these Indian people really need to stop being CEOs because it's unrealistically raising my parents' expectations.
- Just for the record, my fam *doesn’t know where I’ve worked for the last 7 years* but also thinks I’m BFFs with Sundar. As usual, not sure whether I should be humbled or flattered.
- product management
- A truly monster gigantic enormous set of ships from the Billing team, a collection of amazing human beings who regularly have nightmares about prorations, fractional cents, and product catalogues so that YOU don't have to.
- Claude Artifacts are insane — I cannot believe how good the product is. You can ask it to build most little internal tools in minutes (at least, the UI) and customize further via code. Feels like a superpower for semi-technical people.
- When we wrote the charter for Stripe Billing ~3-4 years ago, the dream user was Atlassian: they're the canonical example of an enterprise-scale SaaS business that "doesn't have one business model." Seemed very aspirational at the time. Super 😍 they're now live on BillingReplying to @collisionAtlassian joins great company in Notion, Slack, The Atlantic, and 100k+ other forward-thinking businesses building their subscription billing platform on Stripe.
- I'm here to say that the "mob" and "mafia" metaphor is overused, I'd rather call us the "yakuza". The mob hires too many people, I'd rather be low on opex and headcount like the yakuza.
- Replying to @ArmandDomaI read this as "Beetlejuice coded" who's with me
- I decided to move back to SF in October, and knew that this time, I wanted to invest in my community. But as a pandemic side effect, I forgot all of my social skills! @cremebruleecart showed me the Pancake Way. If you like pancakes and live in SF, join us?
