Most people still think about partnerships as a sales channel. Stripe’s Erika Wool doesn’t. She leads product and strategic partnerships and defines her job as helping Stripe build businesses that wouldn’t exist without partners.
In this episode, Erika walks through how she moved from consulting and Edelman into Google and Stripe, how product partnerships evolved as Stripe scaled from “easiest way to accept card payments online” to a multi-product platform, and how she explains the value of these bets to executives and the board.
Chapters
00:00 – Coming back from break and introducing Erika
00:38 – Erika’s path: think tank, consulting, Edelman, Google, Stripe
09:30 – What product partnerships mean at Stripe today
15:25 – How to articulate the value of product partnerships to executives
21:25 – Keeping integrations alive: SLAs, joint roadmaps, and care after launch
31:30 – How Stripe structures its partnerships org (pillars, partner engineering, strat/ops)
37:05 – Reporting lines, product ownership, and prototyping with partners
43:20 – Building bridges with sales, channel, and customer-facing teams
48:40 – Why Erika chose partnerships and what keeps her in the role
52:00 – Looking beyond tech: Costco, airlines, Walmart, and how AI changes everything
Key Takeaways
1. Product partnerships should build businesses, not just integrations: Erika frames her team’s role as helping Stripe build businesses that literally wouldn’t exist without partners, especially in regulated fintech where Stripe is not the bank, card network, or payment method.