We’re talking Big Tech, small start-ups and how they scale, disrupt and sometimes become one. Our special guest is Stripe CTO David Singleton, who we nabbed for an exclusive interview during his recent visit to Dublin. 

David has been a fintech whizz ever since he built some invoicing software for his parents when he was a kid. But before he was the technical lead of a global financial services and software company, he spent many years in engineering at Google. 

Google was once among the born-on-the-internet companies disrupting industry incumbents, but now it’s one the Big Tech behemoths eating up small businesses that threaten their dominance. 

We explored this dynamic between big and small, and asked David about the scaling journey in between. He explained what makes crafty software businesses so nimble, and shared his own top tips for managing fast-growing software projects.

You can follow David over on Twitter, @dps, and check out these links for a bit more background on this conversation:

— Stripe is a multibillion-dollar company founded by Irish brothers John and Patrick Collison. For more on what it’s about, check out this recent article on Silicon Republic: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/stripe-david-singleton-payments-engineering-dublin 

— Eileen O'Mara, head of EMEA revenue and growth at Stripe wrote this piece on scaling start-ups in Europe: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/start-ups/stripe-research-europe-startup-ecosystem

— Check out this earlier interview with David on Silicon Republic, when he had just joined Stripe as CTO: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/stripe-david-singleton-payments-engineering-dublin

— At the top of the ep, we mention the controversy surrounding Tesla’s autonomous driving claims. HeadStuff Podcast Network members can hear more on this in v1.7_bonus: You drive me lazy (originally released 18 January 2022)

— And at the end, we mention this great discussion on building and scaling a start-up with Intercom’s Des Traynor at Future Human 2022: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/start-ups/des-traynor-intercom-future-human-entrepreneurship

We’ll release David’s interview in its entirety for HeadStuff Podcast Network members next week, and we’ll be back in a fortnight with an all-new episode. 

For Tech’s Sake is a co-production from Silicon Republic and The HeadStuff Podcast Network, hosted by Elaine Burke and Jenny Darmody. Thank you to Megan Fox for production, Matt Mahon and Dall-E for our graphics, Claudia Grandez for her social media support, and all at the HeadStuff team.

If you want to support The HeadStuff Podcast Network, for our sake, for tech’s sake and for many more great podcasts, visit HeadStuffPodcasts.com.

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