de Milliano: Starting an early-stage company doesn't teach executive leadership
Eeke de Milliano · What makes (or breaks) executive hires | A deep dive with Eeke de Milliano (Stripe) · Mar 6, 2025 · at 53:15
Eeke de Milliano, Global Head of Product at Stripe, reflects on what she learned while working on founding an early-stage startup versus being a growth-stage tech executive.
0:00 / 0:04exact quote · 4.1s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I don't think you learn much starting a company early on about being an executive.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Eeke de Milliano
De Milliano: Globally plug-and-play executives do not exist without value alignment
“The other thing that came out in all of these, like, conversations with folks is, like, if your values aren't aligned, there's, like, literally no way it's going to work. I think it's just actually pretty hard for there to be, like, globally relevant execs. Li…”
de Milliano: New executives face massive incentives to change company strategy
“New leaders have in almost every single scenario a huge incentive To say that they need to change the strategy.”
De Milliano: Bad executive hires drive star employee attrition by destroying trust
“Reason number one why it's bad, but like reason number two why it's bad is because everyone looks at that bad hire or that bad fit, basically. Again, like, I don't think they're generally bad people, but like that person who isn't a good fit, and they look at …”
Patrick Collison designed Stripe's culture guide to repel half of candidates
“And at one point, like, Patrick Ping made me, he was like, hey, like, I really want us to write a guide to Stripe's culture, and I want us to share it with candidates when they join, when they are considering Stripe. And ideally, half of the candidates who rea…”
Stripe's internal culture doc was eviscerated on Hacker News
“There was some controversial, controversial, there was some stuff in there that was basically just like, you got to be willing to work really hard to actually, you know, be successful here long term. Oh my gosh, it was so controversial when it came out on Hack…”
Milliano: Large companies must accept some employees won't work extreme hours
“I do also think it's true that at some point, I don't know, companies get big enough that you have folks who maybe are just not, Up for that, and like, you just have to kind of be okay with that if you want to have that many employees in your company.”