The Stripe Mafia
Happy New Year to everyone! We hope 2023 will be spectacular for you all. We're back and ready to kick off the year with a fresh round of finance goodness in our weekly Tech Mafia series.
If you missed our previous posts, make sure to check the Twitter Mafia and Lyft Mafia articles. This week we dive into 22 phenomenal startups that have come out from the Stripe Mafia.
The formation of Tech Mafias is fascinating because brilliant minds and ideas exist in every company, so the opportunity to invest in the next big unicorn is likely closer to you than you think (and not exclusive to venture capital firms only).
Investing in fellow coworkers' startups, especially as a community or alumni group, is one of the best ways to get in on the best deals as well as support the ideas and ventures of people you love and admire. Who knows what's around the corner in your own network and community!
Companies Covered:
- Mosey
- Assembled
- Anthropic
- Blair
- Cocoon
- OpenAI
- SmartPay
- AgentSync
- Render
- GrowTherapy
- Watershed
- Kula
- Height
- Rainbow
- Reap
- Tazapay
- Coa
- Quill
- Kopperfield
- Siteline
- Oven
- Wanderlog
Mosey
Founder: Alex Kehayias
Stripe Role: Engineering Manager
Investors: Canaan Partners
Capital Raised: $20M
Stage: Series A
Alex worked at Stripe as an Engineering Manager and he built and led Stripe Atlas, which is now used by 1 in 4 startups in the US. In 2021 he founded Mosey, a compliance platform helping HR teams and companies to scale remote work.
Assembled
Founder: Brian Sze
Stripe Role: Head of Business Operations
Investors: Felicis Ventures
Capital Raised: $70M
Stage: Series B
Assembled, a workforce management platform, came to life in 2018 and it has over 11 investors and 75 employees. Brian Sze created the platform to help teams forecast support volume, schedule, build, and manage team schedules to improve operations.
Anthropic
Founder: Daniela Amodei
Stripe Role: Lead Technical Recruiter, Risk Manager
Investors: James McClave, Jaan Tallinn
Capital Raised: $704M
Stage: Series B
Daniela Amodei worked at Stripe for 5 years, first as a Lead Technical Recruiter and then as a Risk Manager. She then moved on to work at OpenAI as VP of Safety and Policy before co-founding Anthropic in 2020. Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that’s working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.
Blair
Founder: Mike Mahlkow
Stripe Role: Growth
Investors: Tiger Global, Y Combinator
Capital Raised: $107M
Stage: Seed Round
After a short stint at Stripe, Mike Mahlkow co-founded Blair, a platform that helps students get access to higher education by allowing schools to finance students through Income-Share Agreements.
Cocoon
Founder: Lauren Dai
Stripe Role: Growth, Business Development
Investors: Index Ventures, First Round Capital
Capital Raised: $25M
Stage: Series A
Lauren Dai worked for 4 years at Stripe, and in 2020 she co-founded Cocoon, which has seen a lot of success since its launch. Cocoon is a leave management platform that simplifies the complexities of compliance, claims, and payroll for a more empathetic employee leave experience.
OpenAI
Founder: Greg Brockman
Stripe Role: CTO
Investors: Bedrock Capital, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global
Capital Raised: $1B
Stage: Series C
We’ve probably all heard of OpenAI by now, especially since the launch of the little devil we all love - ChatGPT. Interestingly enough, the co-founder of OpenAI, Greg Brockman, was the CTO of Stripe for 5 years before starting OpenAI. So, you never know which colleague might be working on that next billion-dollar idea!
AgentSync
Founder: Jenn Knight
Stripe Role: Head of Internal Systems
Investors: Tiger Global
Capital Raised: $111M
Stage: Series B
Jenn Knight worked for some of the biggest names before AgentSync came to life, including; LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Stripe. Since its launch in 2018, AgentSync has raised money from some of the top VCs. The company provides modern insurance infrastructure to connect carriers, agencies, MGAs, and producers.
Render
Founder: Anurag Goel
Stripe Role: Head of Risk
Investors: General Catalyst
Capital Raised: $27M
Stage: Series A
Render is a unified cloud to build and run apps and websites with free TSL certificates, a global CDN, DDoS protection, private networks, and auto deploy from Git. Anurag founded Render is 2018, after working at Stripe as Head of Risk for 4 years.
Grow Therapy
Founder: Alan Ni
Stripe Role: Product Manager
Investors: TCV
Capital Raised: $140M
Stage: Series B
Grow Therapy was founded by Alan Ni in 2020, and is backed by the top investors. Grow Therapy empowers independent therapists to launch and grow in-network private practices by enabling them to tap into large scale credentialing, referrals, administrative and community support.
Watershed
Founder: Taylor Francis
Stripe Role: Growth
Investors: Sequoia Capital
Capital Raised: $70M
Stage: Series B
With two headquarters in San Francisco and London, and over 200 employees, Watershed is one of the fastest growing companies since its launch in 2019. Watershed helps companies like Stripe, Spotify, Klarna, and Airbnb measure, reduce, and report their carbon emissions with real-time, audit-grade emissions data to power business value creation, regulatory compliance, and global climate impact.
Kula
Founder: Achuthanand Ravi
Stripe Role: Leadership Recruiter
Investors: Sequoia Capital
Capital Raised: $14M
Stage: Seed
Ravi worked at Stripe as a Leadership Recruiter before starting his own recruitment automation platform - Kula.
Height
Founder: Michael Villar
Stripe Role: Engineer & Designer
Investors: Redpoint
Capital Raised: $18M
Stage: Series A
Michael Villar is the founder of Height, a project management software designed to manage projects across agencies and marketing.
Rainbow
Founder: Christian Baroni
Stripe Role: Product Designer
Investors: DCG
Capital Raised: $19.5M
Stage: Series A
Rainbow is a mobile app of Ethereum wallet for managing your assets, founded by Baroni in 2019. The company is located in New York and has raised almost $20 million since its inception.
Reap
Founder: Daren Guo
Stripe Role: Growth
Investors: Global Founders Capital
Capital Raised: $46M
Stage: Series A
Reap, founded by ex-Stripe employee Daren Guo, delivers corporate payment solutions to improve the way small businesses operate. Its online payments platform enables small businesses to pay expenses and collect revenue from anywhere and entirely via credit card.
Quill
Founder: Ludwig Pettersson
Stripe Role: Creative Director
Investors: Index Ventures
Capital Raised: $14.5M
Stage: Series A
Quill is a computer software company that provides a messaging software built for productivity, not engagement. Pettersson worked both at Stripe and OpenAI before launching Quill.
Siteline
Founder: Gloria Lin
Stripe Role: Product
Investors: Menlo Ventures
Capital Raised: $18M
Stage: Series A
Gloria was part of Stripe's first product management hire and worked on a variety of products including Stripe Checkout, Stripe Dashboard, and internal Risk/Identity systems. In 2019, she co-founded Siteline which is focused on construction finance to help contractors get paid and grow their business.
Rising Stars
SmartPay
Founder: Pieterjan Vandaele
Stripe Role: Product
Investors: Global Founders Capital
Capital Raised: $4M
Stage: Seed
After working at Stripe, Pieterjan founded SmartPay, which is Japan's first all-in-one payment experience and completely cost-free BNPL solution, intended to to deliver responsible affordability and improve merchant conversion rates.
Tazapay
Founder: Rahul Shinghal
Stripe Role: Head of APAC
Investors: Surge
Capital Raised: $28M
Stage: Series A
Rahul was in charge of Stripe’s revenue and growth in APAC as well as overseeing regulatory matters for the APAC business. In 2020, he co-founded Tazapay, a cross-border payment platform offering both an integrated checkout solution for merchants and marketplaces, as well as payment links for negotiated, larger value deals.
Accord
Founder: Ross Rich
Stripe Role: Sales, Partnerships Lead
Investors: Y Combinator
Capital Raised: $7M
Stage: Seed
Ross Rich was part of Stripe before starting Accord in 2020. The platform evaluates and integrates sales processes, delivers insights based on real-time customer interactions, and improves lead onboarding and training with full deal cycles.
Coa
Founder: Alexa Meyer
Stripe Role: Marketing Consultant
Investors: Red Sea Ventures
Capital Raised: $4M
Stage: Seed
Alexa advised and supported Stripe's founders, Head of Product Marketing, and product marketing team with key product launches and initiatives, including launch strategy, positioning, and naming. In 2019, she launched Coa, an online emotional fitness studio which bolsters the mental health of its users. Some of the company’s customers include NBC, Skillshare, and Salesforce.
Kopperfield
Founder: Mark Wong
Stripe Role: Head of Product for Stripe Connect, Applied ML, Payment Experiences
Investors: General Catalyst
Capital Raised: $5M
Stage: Seed
Kopperfield offers software and services to accelerate home electrification. Before starting Kopperfield, Wong worked as Head of Product for Stripe Connect, Applied ML, and Payment Experiences.
Oven
Founder: Jarred Sumner
Stripe Role: Frontend Engineer
Investors: Y Combinator
Capital Raised: $7M
Stage: Seed
Oven is an up and coming star to watch out for, backed by some of the top VCs, the company provides backend integration services for java developers.
Wanderlog
Founder: Peter Xu
Stripe Role: Software Engineer
Investors: General Catalyst, Y Combinator
Capital Raised: $1.7M
Stage: Seed
Wanderlog allows users to choose, organize, and map places in a Google Doc built just for travel planning. Peter Xu worked as a Software Engineer at Stripe between 2017 and 2018, where he was part of the Leverage team and built tools to help Stripe scale its customer support to more users, geographies, languages, and agents.
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