Scaling Secrets from the COO Who Grew Stripe 35x | Claire Hughes Johnson

At Coral Capital’s Tokyo HQ, former Stripe COO and Scaling People author Claire Hughes Johnson joins Coral Capital Founding Partner James Riney for a wide-ranging conversation on what it really takes to scale a company—without losing your speed, culture, or mind.

Drawing from her experience helping Stripe grow from 200 to over 7,000 employees, Claire shares a rare, tactical look at how great companies build lasting operational muscle.

They discuss how to structure teams, when to hire a COO, and what most founders get backwards when it comes to leadership, process, and scale.

Key takeaways:
• The hidden cost of title inflation—and how Stripe avoided landmines that cripple most startups
• How Stripe localized in Japan without compromising its DNA
• The myth of operational saviors—and what founders should really expect from a COO
• The difference between defensive and offensive processes
• How to part ways with early employees who can’t scale, without compromising on company culture
• What most remote and hybrid teams get wrong—and how to fix it with rituals that actually work
• Why self-awareness is a founder’s most underrated competitive edge

If you're working on something ambitious, we’d love to hear from you at Coral Capital!

Get in touch with us here: https://bit.ly/contactcoral

Claire's Book: https://www.amazon.co.jp/Scaling-Peop...

Connect with Claire:
X: https://x.com/chughesjohnson
LinkedIn:   / claire-hughes-johnson-7058  

Connect with James:
X: https://x.com/james_riney
LinkedIn:   / jamesriney  

0:00:00 Introduction
0:00:17 Didn’t want to write a book
0:02:26 Self-awareness
0:05:43 Before Loom
0:08:01 Hiring believers with no titles
0:12:08 Non-title titles
0:15:47 Supercharged COO
0:20:00 Trust and collaboration
0:24:02 Onboarding and a bunch of challenges
0:27:29 Organizing people, getting results
0:30:10 Defensive processes
0:34:16 Say the thing you can't say
0:37:29 Cultural differences
0:42:48 Managing out
0:49:21 What would you change about the book?
0:52:17 Q&A
1:05:42 Outro

Mentioned in this episode: OpenAI ChatGPT, Google, Loom, Stripe, Sheryl Sandberg, Patrick Collision, Airbnb, Geert Hofstede, Harvard Business School, Meta/Facebook