Stripe CEO Patrick Collison has a direct way to get customer feedback: invite them to management meetings.
Collison shared a post on X this week that Stripe invites one customer to join the first 30 minutes of its leadership meetings every other week, which are attended by around 40 of the company’s top managers.
The guest then shares “candid” feedback about their experience with the payments platform.
The move may be unusual, but it received some support, including from Elon Musk, who replied on X the next day, “Good idea.”
Every other week, we have a customer join for the first 30 minutes of our management team meeting: they share their candid feedback, and ~40 leaders from across Stripe listen. Even though we already have a lot of customer feedback mechanisms, it somehow always spurs new thoughts…
— Patrick Collison (@patrickc) April 8, 2025
Collison said the practice consistently generates “new thoughts and investigations” despite Stripe already having plenty of other feedback channels.
Stripe, founded in 2010 by brothers Patrick and John Collison, provides software tools for online and in-person payment processing to millions of businesses globally.
Originally built as a payments platform for startups, it’s now used by half of the Fortune 100 and processed $1.4 trillion in payments in 2024, a 38% increase from the previous year, the company said in its most recent annual letter.
Following a secondary share sale in early 2025, the company was valued at $91.5 billion, making it one of the world’s most valuable private fintech companies.
However, as Stripe has scaled, it has faced criticism from some users who think the company’s focus has shifted toward large enterprise clients.
“Hi Patrick — you know I admire Stripe — but you should pay attention to the extent things have degraded for the indie community using Stripe,” Pascal Levy-Garboua, an investor and cofounder, commented on the post. “I messaged support a week ago – no reply, things are super complicated. There’s more stuff, but it’s a mess.”
Others praised the customer-in-the-room tactic as a way to maintain customer empathy. “Love this,” one user replied. “Keeps the culture focused on what matters.”
When Cloudflare’s chief technology officer, Dane Knecht, asked when they’d get an invite, Collison replied, “Would love to have you guys… will reach out.” Shopify’s head of engineering, Farhan Thawar, also weighed in, calling it a “great idea” and adding, “Lmk when you’d like @Shopify to attend.”
Stripe laid off 300 employees in January — about 3.5% of its workforce — Business Insider previously reported.
Despite the cuts, the company’s chief people officer, Rob McIntosh said it still planned to grow headcount to around 10,000 by the end of the year.
