Episode Details

Albert Strasheim, CTO & SVP of Engineering @ Rippling, joins us to share the riveting story of how Rippling’s leadership navigated the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. He reveals what was at stake for his company & the hundreds of millions of dollars at stake for customers & their employees, how Rippling’s core values influenced their critical decision-making, tips for communicating with clarity both internally & externally, and tactics that allowed the team to respond with precision during crisis. Additionally, Albert shares the pre-crisis strategies, habits & systems he is most thankful for that helped Rippling leadership respond successfully throughout this critical period.

ABOUT ALBERT STRASHEIM

Albert Strasheim is Rippling's CTO and SVP, Engineering. Albert leads the global engineering team as it continues to expand the capabilities of Rippling’s products and the platform itself. Prior to Rippling, Albert served as VP of Engineering at Segment, where he spent more than five years building and leading the infrastructure and product teams responsible for creating Segment’s market-leading Customer Data Platform product. He was born and raised in South Africa and earned a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Engineering from Stellenbosch University. Albert lives in the Bay Area and is an avid skier and surfer.

"I think we had about $130 million on the way to employees of our clients. This was more than 50,000 people. They are not like rich Silicon Valley tech workers. It's everyday Americans making less than $55,000 a year. Some of them are living paycheck to paycheck and so missing a paycheck can have devastating consequences. We had to move really quickly to make sure these folks got paid. Basically, no matter what happened with SVB, those were the stakes. It's like people that critically needed money just wouldn't get it otherwise.”

- Albert Strasheim   

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SHOW NOTES:

• How Albert’s team @ Rippling responded to the Silicon Valley Bank collapse (2:56)
• Rippling’s SVB story & how payroll was impacted by its collapse (6:24)
• Identifying who was needed to coordinate Rippling’s response / decision making (9:49)
• Albert discusses the millions of dollars of payroll at stake on Thursday (11:47)
• How the SVB issue progressed into Thursday / Friday (13:07)
• Communicating with customers during crisis & how Rippling ultimately made the payments (15:47)
• Tactics that allow eng teams to respond with precision during crisis (19:57)
• How leadership determined the right step in the right order to achieve the inten