Speaker 1 00:00:05 Hey, welcome to Subscription Heroes. I'm Scott Herf, your host and co-founder, chief Product Officer of Turnkey. Today I sit down with Darren Kelly, who manages strategic partnerships at Stripe. I've gotten to work with Darren as a Stripe partner and she's one of the most effective partnerships managers had the chance to work with. We discussed today what it takes to support a massive initiative like Stripe's App Marketplace, which launched in May, 2022. How the app marketplace increases stickiness and promotes a wide range of businesses and her approach to creating partnerships that yield actual business results while lasting. Enjoy. I'd love to start with Darren, your background, your journey from Box to Stripe and what you're focused on there.
Speaker 2 00:00:46 Thanks for having me, Scott. Uh, excited to be here and chat with you a little bit today. So I've been at Stripe now just over three years, um, past my three year Stripe anniversary, as we like to call it in April. Simultaneously feels like the quickest three years and longest three years of my life. When you throw in a global pandemic, learning how to remote work <laugh>, um, some wild macroeconomic ups and downs. But I'm here on our product partnerships team, um, and I get to work with specifically partners who are building apps in our marketplace, uh, like turnkey. And I joined this team about six months ago. Before that at Stripe I was on a different flavor of partnerships, what we call our platform partnerships team are software companies that are building their own payments and financial services businesses on Stripe infrastructure to offer, uh, to their customers to be able to run their businesses.
Speaker 2 00:01:38 And I joined Stripe from Box, as you said. I was there about six years working on their business development team on more of the, uh, kinda what we called i v ecosystem side of the house. So similar product partnerships, um, integrations with other software companies to really provide a better experience for joint customers who wanted to use our tools together, streamline those workflows. And so how could we use those integrations to drive growth for box drive growth for our partners? And so have always spent my, my career in partnerships and in some flavor. And I was excited to come to Stripe after a run at Box, really just because of the uniqueness of what I thought the company was doing and how I would get to work with some different types of partners. Um, at Box it was a lot of other like enterprise software companies, which was incredible and useful. And then coming to Stripe, it was small businesses in some cases, uh, unique like niche vertical companies who are, are offering services to plumbers or SMB practitioners or you know, you name it. Uh, everyone needs to accept payments, uh, turns out and, and get paid. And so the, the breadth of the offering just was really excited and lots of different ways that partnerships, um, could help accelerate that. So it's been a, definitely a wild ride, but really, really fun as well. And it's, there's still so much to do from here.
Speaker 1 00:03:01 Well, and you get to see the, the good bad and the ugly kind of on the front lines cuz these are people who love Stripe. Either have long histories, short histories, you know, like you said, all kinds of verticals. I mean, I imagine the stories you already have after six months or Well, and, and three years in total are pretty wild.
Speaker 2 00:03:20 It's definitely, uh, one of the, the best parts of, of the job. And we're actually coming off of the heels of our annual, uh, user conference Stripe Sessions. That was last week for the first time I r l in person since 2019, our largest event to date, which like 3000 I think customers Wow. Partners Stripes all coming together at a pier in San Francisco, <laugh>. And it was like the most condensed, accelerated, like, how are you doing? What are your customers doing? What are you building? What's working, what's not working? What can we do together? So, uh, a a crazy like 12 hours, uh, altogether, but it's amazing like what that in-person time can, can do for, for relationships and honestly just like ideas, right? Kind brokering partners to partners, partners to Stripes. Yeah. It's a beau beautiful thing to be old <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:04:15 Yeah, we were sad we couldn't make it up. We were trying to to to pull it off and one of the appeals was it's one day so it's not, you know, an entire weekend or anything and not in, and not
Speaker 2 00:04:26 In Vegas,
Speaker 1 00:04:27 Right? You don't have to deal with the, the heat and the um, you know, all the bachelor parties but <laugh>, you know, not that San Francisco can't have fun. But yeah, we, uh, we were sad we missed y'all. It looks like an incredible event. I just like, I like the style too. It's just very, hey, we get our audience come in, concentrate on one night and then move on, you know? Well
Speaker 2 00:04:47 Hopefully the first of, of many in-person events back, uh, this year and and beyond. So I'm sure you'll, you'll be able to make one of the future ones here shortly. I'll make sure of it. Yeah, <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:04:57 Totally. So one of your big focuses is Stripe Marketplace, right?
Speaker 2 00:05:02 Yes. Working with app partners who have integrations in our marketplace.
Speaker 1 00:05:05 Awesome. And that's, so that's a year in about, I think it was like May 20th or so, it officially launched last year. Disclosure we're one of the first apps on there. Turnkey was, so gotta point that out. You can go install it right now. But, you know, are there any surprising trends or data points or, or patterns you've noticed? Um, you know, after it being out there in the wild? I mean this is such a huge undertaking, huge initiative and I'm just curious if anything is kinda emerged from that.
Speaker 2 00:05:35 One of the reasons I was so excited to join the team about six months post-launch was because I think there is, we're just getting started with like what the, at Marketplace and what integrations can do for not just customers of Stripe but other Stripe ecosystems. And what I mean by that is there's a lot of different ways that businesses run on, on Stripe today. Some are, uh, what we would call kinda direct users. So they're using Stripe to kinda power their, um, their own business, uh, abilities to, to capture, uh, to capture payments, um, online, offline. Um, their teams are in the Stripe dashboard day in and day out to kinda run their finance, right? Marketing, you know, whatever workflow it may be. But we also have a set of users on Stripe, uh, which is actually my prior world called platforms. So this is an existing ecosystem within itself of software companies who are serving customers who may or may not know that they're transacting on Stripe and they just know that they're working with said home services platform, practice management software, you know, you name it, right?
Speaker 2 00:06:46 And they have integration needs as well, right? You know, a lot of the same challenges that our direct users face around wanting to stream their, streamline their marketing campaigns or capture more revenue, streamline cancellation workflows and things that Turnkey is solving. Like they have that and platforms have to figure out how to solve that for their customers. And so we're starting to take the marketplace in a a really exciting, well I'm personally very excited. Uh, I think it'll be exciting, uh, in the fullness of time for everyone, uh, what we're calling embedded apps. And so this idea of can apps and uh, integrations built to Stripe actually be made available for our platform ecosystem to embed and service to their end users to benefit from that connectivity and all of the great kinda underlining business optimization that our app partners provide. So super early days on that.
Speaker 2 00:07:45 Um, we mentioned it in our keynote last week, but I think if that's something that we can, can pull off and execute, um, we'll just continue to I think, solve some really big pain points for our platform partners around creating really deeply integrated payments connections for their customers and also be great for our app partners because then you can integrate once to Stripe, but then immediately your app becomes distributable by our, our huge network of platforms who are also running their businesses on Stripes. So really accelerates and expands the potential of, of adoption and growth that you can see from a partnership with Stripe.
Speaker 1 00:08:25 Yeah, the evolution of this into like micro business apps to me is really smart and interesting and the Stripe ecosystem at this point is so wide and deep, but at the same time you can easily like not know Stripe does something <laugh>, you know, cuz it's just so big. So if someone wasn't aware of this particular initiative or product, do you have, are there any examples or like case studies that come to mind of an app at work living in Stripe's ecosystem that, you know, Stripe didn't build,
Speaker 2 00:08:53 As you said? Turnkey was one of our first app partners <laugh>, so everyone listening go download it right now. But in all serious, I think Turnkey is one of my favorite apps for a couple of reasons. Like forget that that functionality is actually useful for customers. That's great. But I think it's also the fact that customers are using it, right? And they're telling you, they're telling us like how it's helping them get yeah, real impact to be more effective in how they run their business. And that's super exciting to see. And I think our teams looking for those pockets of, you know, not just installs and growth, which are important, but actually like retention and usage of the app. It's solving a real business problem, which I think will in turn result in, you know, retention of that customer stickiness and more engagement with our mm-hmm <affirmative>, our respective products.
Speaker 2 00:09:42 And the other reason I think that turnkey has like been one of my favorite apps is honestly like your partnership. I think that, you know, engagement of being an early adopter, the feedback that you've been so willing to provide to the team, like we're so grateful for it. And integrations and apps can sometimes, yes, solve a great product experience, but if the, the partnership collaboration isn't there, there's right potential, the kind of like un unseen potential. And so it's like the more that we can collaborate with each other and actually like share what those customer use cases are, act on those and, and really be in it as partners, um, I've found are like the most successful apps. Cause they're like just willing to have that conversation, um, versus it being more one-sided.
Speaker 1 00:10:30 Let's take a little break to tell you about Turnkey, the ones making this podcast happen now. I think turnkey's awesome, but I am super biased because I'm a co-founder, but I love what we're doing for subscription companies. You might look at your churn numbers and think there's gotta be a way to turn this around. There's gotta be someone who can improve retention and help us track down why people are leaving your product. And that's why Turnkey's here, Turnkey's the only platform that fixes every type of churn for you. We handle retention for customer obsessed teams like Jasper Fair Drop, AI, dungeon and Casto. We lower cancellations by up to 42%, recover up to 89% of failed payments and even increase customer l t v by 28%. And we do it with our user-friendly, customer-centric, cancel flows, modern failed payment recovery and AI-driven feedback analysis. So if you wanna run a healthier subscription business, head to turnkey.co to get started.
Speaker 1 00:11:28 What's been cool working with you and the team is that obviously we're, we're a smaller company than Stripe by many orders of magnitude. And you know, the dynamic there can be, well it's just Stripe and as the company, not the people within Stripe and we don't know who we're working with and you know, we're, we're we see, uh, you know, a catchall email alias and that's all we see. But you have been so willing to be the face of this partnership and do the hard work to get us in front of the right people or point us to the right resources that we didn't know were, you know, existed. And I think that's one of the, the best models of a partnership dynamic. I've, I've had the, you know, benefit of working with. And so it's, it's been super cool seeing there are these great people at Stripe, they are here to help us. You know, we, we, it makes us wanna show up and produce better integrations or work harder on, on this part of the, the integration, you know, and, and and also too that there's actually a business benefit too. It's not just for the sake of building something. Our customers are using it, we're getting customers from it. Yeah. So, you know, just the sheer size of, of the opportunity is, is really cool and you've personified it.
Speaker 2 00:12:40 I appreciate that. So I mean, definitely takes a village. I might be the face, but I'm back by product management and eng teams and legal. And that's one of the most interesting things about partnerships is like there's, it's so cross-functional, right? Both internally and externally, right? Like yeah, you bring your executives, your product teams, your teams and it takes, takes really all orgs to, to engage for efforts to be successful.
Speaker 1 00:13:06 Yeah, I mean at this scale, like I wanted to ask what kind of behind the scenes work it takes to maintain the ecosystem, these relationships. I haven't been at a big company for a long time and so like do you target certain companies of certain verticals? Do you have like a pot of PMs and engineers? And I'd love to know how that, how that plays out.
Speaker 2 00:13:28 Yeah, it's a great question. And honestly one, I think that evolves over time depending on, you know, as markets changes, as company priorities changes as new yeah. Partnership opportunities arise depending on the time, new trends with, you know, things like AI coming out right now, that's definitely a hot topic of what's that next partnership ecosystem look like, right? But I think one of the things I've seen at Stripe that's been definitely a work in progress, but that's, that's worked well as we've scaled and become such a large company, is just being really mindful to not operate in silos and create duplicative work and look for those opportunities where there's like overlapping potential overlapping, um, you know, goals and and workflows that could help each other. Yeah. Both bringing partners in to, you know, accelerate or compliment our own product roadmap to work within product teams to understand, you know, we wanna build an ecosystem, you wanna build a product, like what are the ways we can help each other get there faster, reach more customers, and ultimately like at the end of the day, if there's disagreement on how we prioritize those things or collaborate, like really do bring it back to the need opportunity versus set of goals or milestones that they wanna achieve.
Speaker 2 00:14:55 Because at the end of the day, like we're all working for Stripe and Stripe wants to serve our users, one of our core principles is being users first. And so putting like our customer and partner hat on first, the stripe hat second and then team hat third, really all realizing that like we're on the same team at the end of the day even though we're on individual subteams. Right.
Speaker 1 00:15:17 Right. Has this ever materialized to the point where you have a, a, a customer who wants to build a Stripe app or has a Stripe app and you know, you see an opportunity kind of like over here since you're, you're seeing all sorts of partners and apps plugged in where you say, Hey, hey, app company maybe implement this thing that could serve unlock, you know, access to these, this customer base or whatever?
Speaker 2 00:15:43 It's a great question. Honestly, one that I think we could do a better job of, and it's top of mind for us as a partnership team right now, is we have this bird's eye view of all of the first party products that, that Stripe is building. Yeah. Uh, and solutions we're building for customers and also where we, we can't or won't be investing, but that customer still might need solutions. And so there's a really unique opportunity for partners to invest in those areas. And so we're trying to get more prescriptive at like one, identifying what those are and then sharing in a way that's actionable with partners, like themes that we're hearing, whether it's certain product roadmap things, just sharing where we're going and where there might be opportunities to come with us and, and build around those use cases or certain verticals that we're seeing, you know, certain trends. So kind of all, all of these things are, are things we're thinking about to, again, like to our point earlier on, usefulness, like anyone can build an app and there's a lot of things that Stripe can do, uh, and that customers can do with Stripe, but what are those really like high engagement, big pain points that customers have and would, you know, adopt a solution tomorrow if it existed and is common across a lot of different customers.
Speaker 1 00:16:56 That's cool. Anything
Speaker 2 00:16:58 That, going back to you'd like to, to receive that information, let us know and we'll try and uh, factor that in.
Speaker 1 00:17:03 Well, no, yeah. One of, one of the neat things about your team and, and the way you work is you mostly deliver good news, right? You mostly like, Hey, by the way, you're a featured app, or Hey by the way, you have access to this new, you know, design pattern or something. So you've already conditioned me to think I I see an email from from you or your, your teammates. I'm like, oh, this is, this is gonna be awesome. Love to hear that
Speaker 2 00:17:27 <laugh>. So way better than that. Hello <laugh>. Sorry to be in your inbox, but Right,
Speaker 1 00:17:34 Right. Let's, uh, let's have a discussion. You know, it's like okay, I'm gonna, you know, have to steal myself here. But, um, speaking of communication and, and I know that, that the way y'all are organized there evolves, you just said, but um, I mean is there a particular operating cadence or communication secret you have cuz you're coordinating across, you know, these vast different disciplines and departments?
Speaker 2 00:18:01 Yeah, it's a great question. I, I wish there was a communication special sauce. I think what I realized in my few years at Stripe is that you just need to do it often. And that's one of the biggest kinda differentiators I guess in terms of communication effectiveness. Effectiveness. It's not necessarily like style or even substance. Like I think those things are important too, but almost secondarily to the fact that you're just doing it a lot to a lot of different stakeholders to bring everyone along. Right. I actually think I'm personally really bad at this. I dunno if it's cause I've been external facing for so many years, but I feel like I start to polish up my communication and reread things and make sure it's the right way. And so I'm slower at sending out things like notes or plans, but I work with some, some product teams here who are just fantastic and they just move quick.
Speaker 2 00:18:52 Like they just write, you know, their own kinda thoughts and story tell and it might not always be like a hundred percent of the way, but it's 80% and then it invites feedback and starts all of the right conversations. And so I'm trying to to personally be better at that of like, let's just communicate more. It doesn't have to be yeah, a hundred percent ready. Uh, and you want to invite that feedback for that last, you know, that last mile. And then I think just realizing when to have those quote unquote like bigger cross-functional forums, um, whether it's across partnerships, product and eng or across product A, B and C or across Stripe and our partner and a sales team and uh, figuring out like the right patterns of when to yeah. Just to make the conversation a little bit bigger and guide that towards an effective like decision or outcome. And so being that kind of quarterback of like making sure everyone's in the loop on what the plan is really like communicating at the beginning of all those discussions so everyone stays on the same page and can effectively participate in a decision. Remembering that it's often like not necessarily the core part of their job and so you're bringing them along on your partnership journey. They've probably got, you know, hundred other things they're thinking about.
Speaker 1 00:20:12 Right, right. And this is all done still. I mean cuz you all are, are still mostly remote, right? Or partially?
Speaker 2 00:20:19 Partially. Um, we, we do have our offices, um, that are all kinda, uh, reopened now, largely optional to go back in. Um, but different teams are experimenting with different return to office styles. Some go a couple of times a week and try to all go on the same days. Some go um, one week a quarter we call those connectivity weeks, um, to just kinda work alongside your team for that week and coordinate some social stuff. Some just like, like in-person work time and then also like quarterly offsites a lot of teams or periodic offsites teams do 'em at different cadences, um, to really just get that like extended FaceTime to do things like planning kind of cross-functional fee, stuff like that. So it's been a nice blend so far, but definitely missed the FaceTime but I appreciate the flexibility as well. So trying to find that balance.
Speaker 1 00:21:12 Yeah, I hear you on that. We're all completely remote and, and I've only met one of my partners once in person and so the option to actually like, hey, let's just all go in right now would be incredible cuz I, I work out at my basement and it sounds cliche, but sometimes I go stir crazy down here. So, you know,
Speaker 2 00:21:30 Anytime you getting into
Speaker 1 00:21:31 The city
Speaker 2 00:21:31 Cool. An in-person meeting, come on up to San Francisco, we'll host you an oyster Point for the day. Got an incredible culinary team and uh, they'll feed us some delicious food, so,
Speaker 1 00:21:41 Oh, we're gonna take you up on that. We're gonna, we're gonna show up next week and be like, okay. Really didn't mean it that fast. I want to close with two questions I asked you everyone and the first one's about reading. Is there anything you've read lately that's had an effect on you?
Speaker 2 00:21:56 Yes. Um, I hope this isn't a cop out cause it's a reread, but, um, I'm a bar three instructor on the side. Um, he's a different part of my brain than partnerships. Yeah. Cool. And we, we talk a lot about mindfulness and connection between like movement and breath and with the craziness of sessions and some personal travel felt like I was definitely not practicing what I, I preach. So I re-read last week Gratitude by Oliver Sachs, really short, sweet, but meaningful and definitely recommend to, to folks who are looking for a not overly, you know, preachy for lack of a better word in terms of like, everyone should be practicing gratitude, but just like really beautifully written and uplifts you sort of naturally and remembers to just appreciate the the small things when life gets a little bit chaotic and you kinda need that reminder the most <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:22:48 Yeah, I've not heard of this. I'm gonna gonna check it out. It looks very oh, 64 pages.
Speaker 2 00:22:54 It's incredibly approachable. Yeah. And so that's like, I feel like when you need those, those moments you're like, I can't read a big old textbook on how to practice mindfulness right now. I need a quick hitter.
Speaker 1 00:23:04 Right on. That's cool. Okay. All right, last question. What's the craziest thing you wish you could do, but you probably can't?
Speaker 2 00:23:13 So many ways to take this question. I guess I'll stay on the theme of the Barking Dogs that you've heard, uh, for the last few minutes. We have one dog, we have one cat, indie and Rufio. Uh, yes, that is a reference for anyone who's
Speaker 1 00:23:27 Amazing,
Speaker 2 00:23:29 Amazing. Um, my brother has a dog that's here as well. And since having pets, like I just am definitely one of those like bleeding heart people who follow all the rescues on Instagram. And I'm constantly asking my husband if we can adopt another animal. So <laugh>, I wish I could, um, like be the, the, you know, hundred one Dalmatians movie and have like all of the pets at my house and have just like a big rescue farm of dogs and cats and animals that's like a foster adopt. Some are mine, you know, more of just like a yeah. Pet compound. Um, sadly don't think that's in the cards for me living in the Bay Area right now, but you never know.
Speaker 1 00:24:08 <laugh>, that's gotta be like the most wholesome answer I've heard yet. <laugh>. That's that's beautiful.
Speaker 2 00:24:14 Oh, uh, I just, they're just, I'm suckers for 'em. They're so cute. But I'll think of a, a real crazy answer and maybe we can append it as like a, an outtake <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:24:24 I love it. Awesome. Awesome. What's your
Speaker 2 00:24:26 Answer to this? May I, can I, uh, can I get your final two? Is that, is that kosher to
Speaker 1 00:24:30 Ask? Yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm, I'm down. All right. I haven't finished it yet, but I'm currently reading Rogue Heroes. Okay. Which is about the formation of the British SAS in World War ii. They basically started out by just jumping out of off the backs of moving trucks to train to be paratroopers. Wow. Because no one had done that before and then they just jumped out planes and literally broke their legs and their back and then just healed and kept going. And Wow. It just a bonkers story of just determination and, you know, working within and against the system you have and Wow. Yeah. It's just wild. So that one's great. Rogue hero.
Speaker 2 00:25:10 And then I'll have to add that we're on like a World War II kick right now. Actually we rewatch Band of Brothers. Well my husband Rewatched iWatch the first time and
Speaker 1 00:25:19 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:25:19 Yeah, it's, uh,
Speaker 1 00:25:21 I gotta rewatch that too. It's been about, about a decade. So good.
Speaker 2 00:25:25 So good. Um, and intense, so incredibly intense and sad, but uh, really, yeah, like you said, the determination, the just incredible resilience was Yeah. Puts, puts in perspective like the broader set of
Speaker 1 00:25:38 Oh yeah, yeah. To imagine a, a context where literally the world is on fire and everyone's fighting is just, I don't know. It's hard to imagine that, especially with all the luxuries we have now. All right. The craziest thing I wish I could do. So I'm a huge, I love music, I play guitar, I play mostly metal guitar. I love metal. Cool. And my crazy thing, my crazy Wish is to play in the studio, which is down the road from SF and, and Marin County with Metallica. So play a couple songs, get in their studio, they record all their stuff up there and you know, yeah. It's where all, all their gear is and stuff. So it's like a kinda like mecca for metal heads and yeah, it'd be fun to play a couple of my favorite songs with them.
Speaker 2 00:26:22 That would be so awesome. If that ends up getting scheduled, you let me know. I will be in the front row, rock it out with you. Um, oh yeah. Have you been, uh, heard of so far? Sounds
Speaker 1 00:26:33 No.
Speaker 2 00:26:33 So Far Sounds is, um, this organization that hosts like local amateur musicians and really, um, kind of unique pop-up venues. Um, I went to my first one Neat last night Neat. At a bookstore here in Oakland with three like local East Bay artists doing a range of Yeah. Acoustic guitar vocals. Um, super interesting concept. So maybe you, uh, start performing locally down in SoCal <laugh>, Metallica, you'll get on their radar and <laugh> they'll have you up to perform
Speaker 1 00:27:04 Be an opener, right. Yeah, exactly. <laugh> Well, they, they have tons of events around me. I'll check it out. Awesome. Well Darren, thanks for jumping on. Great to talk to you. Thanks
Speaker 2 00:27:13 For having me, Scott.
Speaker 1 00:27:14 Don't miss out on future episodes. Get alerts for new
[email protected] or follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Special thanks to turnkey for sponsoring the show. Learn how to make customers happier while boosting
[email protected]. Your support for this show has been incredible so far and let's keep the momentum going. We are all slaves to the algorithm. Ratings and reviews really do help. Please rate as five stars on your platform of choice. We'll be truly grateful. That's all for now. I'm Scott Herf and this is Ben Subscription Heroes.
