Claire Hughes Johnson on being a “learning organism” during Stripe’s growth, and more scaling advice for leaders

Our guest today is Claire Hughes Johnson, former COO of Stripe and author of the new book, “Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building.”  Claire joined Stripe as its COO back in 2014 and, over the course of her nearly seven years in the company’s executive suite, she oversaw rapid growth as Stripe scaled from under 200 employees to over 7,000. Prior to Stripe, she spent 10 years at Google leading various high-impact business teams.  In today’s conversation, In today’s conversation, Claire takes us behind the scenes at some of the most pivotal moments in her life that turned her into the type of leader she is today, including: The inside story of her lengthy, no-stone-unturned process of interviewing with the Collison brothers for the COO seat.  How she applied some of those same lessons for hiring exceptional talent, including the right way to do reference checks and her own theories on why it’s so hard to get executive hiring right.    How her parents instilled her deep curiosity and fierce independence at a very young age.  Why she believes all high-performers are “learning organisms.”  You can follow Claire on Twitter at @chughesjohnson. Check out her new book, “Scaling People,” as well as the book she recommended from Fred Kofman titled “Conscious Business.” You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson.