I am excited to start my new role leading Asia Pacific Communications at Stripe; to help accelerate the region’s online economy and the commercial agility of APAC businesses with one of the world’s most ambitious and fastest growing technology companies.
Stripe is a technology company that builds economic infrastructure for the internet. You might have heard how the company helps businesses from all over the world access the global online commerce market with sophisticated software tools. In fact, many exciting Asian and global organizations are powered by Stripe – such as Amazon, Booking.com, Facebook, FashionValet, Grab, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Klook, Shopify, Slack, Spotify, UNICEF, Zoom Video Communications and many more. Stripe’s products are helping them quickly expand globally and build new kinds of revenue models.
So, why Stripe?
Well, throughout my career, I have been privileged to enjoy front-row seats at some of the most revolutionary companies during truly transformative times. It’s where I honed my love for the sense of adventure that comes from working towards an inspiring, yet challenging, future vision. At Stripe, I look forward to building what we’re calling a “global payments and treasury network” – creating the infrastructure that will make it possible for hundreds of millions of businesses to participate in global commerce via the internet, regardless of where they come from.
You’d think that much of this has been solved but only a tiny fraction of global commerce is happening online (~6-7%) and the financial services space is changing faster than it ever has. There are so many gaps to close to make it really easy for a company to do business wherever they want: accepting payments and understanding how consumer behaviours differ around the world is one of them. Being compliant is another. And keeping up with the fast pace of innovation in technology simply makes it incredibly costly and time-consuming for businesses to be competitive. If you’re a small business, a century old institution or a startup, how are you supposed to keep up? All this has become even more vital in a post-COVID-19 era, now that the whole world has come to rely on the internet to buy and sell goods and services.
Besides Stripe’s mission, I was also drawn to the company by the people I’ve encountered at the company. Speaking with them, I often walked away from each conversation feeling like I wanted to continue the conversation further with whom I felt were very gracious, bright, engaging people; clearly a great reflection of the company culture as well as the talent Stripe brings on board.
I also love how Stripe is committed to the APAC region. We are building out local engineering capabilities, with our hub in Singapore and our new engineering office in Japan, to ensure locally relevant solutions that help businesses grow further. Tens of thousands of businesses in Australia and New Zealand rely on Stripe since we launched in 2014 and 2017, respectively. We’re also available in Malaysia, Hong Kong, and are eyeing to expand into many more countries (stay tuned!).
All this is certainly a lot, but we’re only getting started! Some consider Stripe “the internet’s most undervalued company,” so there is still much more to do.
Wish me luck as I take on this new challenge!