I led physical design for Stripe Terminal as an army of one. I personally designed all our point of sale hardware and accessories while overseeing execution with our engineering subsidiary and manufacturing partners in Asia. John Collison, in a company all-hands, said my work “is pretty dope.”

Stripe is a software company and ran hardware very lean: only 2 people at Stripe develop hardware at a company of over 10,000. I was responsible for all physical product design, ID/ME/MFG, in partnership with an EE / system hardware lead. As both IC and manager I personally developed ID concepts and built all 3D master models while simultaneously managing teams spread across Hong Kong, Taipei, and Southern China.

I led 3 products into production during my 15 months at Stripe, opening up new product lines and driving a refactoring of the overall design language for Stripe hardware. Nevertheless I decided to move on when it became clear that the Terminal group did not share my enthusiasm for innovation and craft. I like to work with bold, nimble teams and after we shipped a few solid products it was time to seek grander adventures.