Scaling People is a practical and empathetic guide to company building and scaling the most important resource a company has: its people. Drawing on nearly two decades of experience as a Google and Stripe executive, Claire Hughes Johnson offers actionable insights and tactical guidance on everything from crafting foundational documents to hiring and team development to feedback and performance mechanisms. The book includes over 100 pages of worksheets, templates, exercises, and example documents to help founders, leaders, and company builders create scalable operating systems and lightweight processes that really work. With Scaling People, Hughes Johnson shares a detailed roadmap for building a sustainable, scalable company—one that’s set up for generational success.
Claire Hughes Johnson is a corporate officer and adviser at Stripe. Previously, she was chief operating officer at Stripe from 2014 to 2021, helping the company grow from fewer than 200 employees to more than 7,000. Prior to Stripe, she spent 10 years at Google leading business teams, including overseeing aspects of Gmail, Google Apps, and consumer operations, as well as serving as a vice president for AdWords, Google Offers, and Google’s self-driving car project. She serves on the boards of Ameresco, The Atlantic, Aurora Innovation, and HubSpot. She lives outside of Boston with her husband, two children, and two neurotic dachshunds.
Whether you are a new manager or a CEO, there are going to be moments when you feel alone and need help. Odds are, the advice you need is in Scaling People. You are going to pull this book off your shelf over and over!
Kim Scott
author of Radical Candor and Just Work
There’s a lot of reinventing the wheel in a startup environment. Scaling People offers strong frameworks, sound advice, and tried-and-true processes that any company can use to build stronger foundations and sustainable success.
Reid Hoffman
cofounder of LinkedIn, partner at Greylock, host of Masters of Scale
Scaling People is approachable, entertaining, and exceptionally useful, with lots of heart and humor. Claire leverages her years of experience to provide a deeply helpful resource to read and revisit again and again.
Aileen Lee
founder and managing partner of Cowboy Ventures
Everything you need to know about building and scaling a company, being an exceptional leader and manager, and getting the best out of your people in one empathetic and enjoyable package—with easy-to-use worksheets and templates to boot.
Frances Frei
author of Uncommon Service and Unleashed, professor at Harvard Business School
Claire Hughes Johnson is the ultimate operator. Scaling People proves that it’s possible to operate in a high-growth environment while simultaneously focusing on and caring about developing people—and that doing so also leads to a fundamentally stronger business.
Mallun Yen
founder of Operator Collective
I was excited to learn that Claire Hughes Johnson has taken her many years of operating excellence from Stripe and Google and distilled it into a new book. Scaling People is a key book to be added to the shelf of any people leader and manager.
Elad Gil
entrepreneur, investor, and author of High Growth Handbook
The world expects founders to succeed and thrive as their company grows. Yet no one takes the time to give them the skills and processes necessary to achieve great leadership. Now someone has—hats off to Claire Johnson for writing Scaling People.
Bill Gurley
general partner at Benchmark
If you want to scale your business from 10 people to 10,000 without losing the things that make it special, Scaling People is the handbook you need.
Ravi Gupta
former CFO and COO of Instacart, general partner at Sequoia Capital
Claire has demystified how you run a large, high-performance organization, with clear concepts and practical templates that you can start implementing today.
Jason Citron
founder and CEO of Discord