Stripe’s 1st employee @darraghbuckley on how it held its high agency culture longer than Facebook, Google, or Microsoft: "I enjoy working in high-empowerment cultures, and with people who do too. High empowerment means the ability to wander and make the change you need to build the product. There are prerequisites. You have to hire well. And you have to trust the people you hire. And trust that they trust you to go effect that change. It also means you can't silo too strictly. You let a compliance person wander into engineering, and an engineering person into compliance. More than allow it, you expect it. Stripe was very good at this for many years. Stripe maintained it to a higher headcount than Facebook did. Facebook maintained it higher than Google. Google higher than Microsoft. I'd hope at Increase we can maintain it to an even larger headcount."