David Singleton. Image: Elaine Burke
He will be replaced by deputy technology chief Rahul Patil, who has been with Stripe for four years and previously worked for Oracle, AWS and Microsoft.
David Singleton has stepped down from his role as chief technology officer at Stripe to start his own business.
Singleton, who led the establishment of Stripe’s engineering hub in Dublin, will be replaced as Stripe CTO by Rahul Patil, who has been with the company for four years. Patil has previously held executive positions at leading software companies, including Oracle, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft.
“He brings business sense, technical expertise, a deep understanding of our users, and has driven huge progress in engineering excellence,” Singleton said of Patil in an announcement on LinkedIn yesterday (28 August).
“If you’re wondering about me: after seven extraordinary years, I’ve decided it’s time to try something new and am leaving Stripe to start my own company soon. When I first reached out to Patrick Collison [Stripe co-founder] and Claire Hughes Johnson [Stripe corporate officer and adviser] in 2017, it was not about the possibility of joining Stripe, but rather to ask for advice about a company I was planning to start then.”
Singleton explained that while Collison and Johnson gave him “great advice”, he was more excited to join Stripe at the time. “Now, it’s time for me to pick up my start-up dreams again and start something new on my own.”
‘Small teams work more effectively’
Before he was CTO at Stripe, Singleton spent more than 11 years in engineering at Google, and served as vice-president of engineering from 2015 to 2017. He has a degree in computer science from the University of Cambridge.
On an episode of For Tech’s Sake last year, Singleton talked about the importance of maintaining certain elements of start-up culture while rapidly scaling up to become a tech giant.
“Small teams work much more effectively together than large teams, mostly because of how many lines of communication you have to have between people,” he said.
“It actually grows with the square of the number of people so as you add one person to your team, you don’t just add one incremental unit of it being more difficult to collaborate together, you add many more lines of communication.”
Reports earlier this week indicated that Stripe plans to buy back shares held by its employees in a new tender offer as speculation continues around when the payments giant may file for an initial public offering. People with knowledge of its financial performance told The Information that Stripe had a free cash flow of $615m in the quarter ended June, a significant improvement in its financial health since the pandemic.
Just last month, the company founded by Limerick brothers Patrick and John Collison was valued at around $70bn after Sequoia Capital offered to buy shares from its investors.
“Stripe is better set up to deliver on its mission than ever before,” Singleton said in his post, adding that he will be with the team until October to help with the transition.
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