$9 billion financial startup Stripe just hired Obama’s entrepreneur expert

stripe sarah heck

Stripe

Sarah Heck

Stripe, San Francisco’s $9 billion payments startup, has hired Sarah Heck, Director of Global Engagement at the White House, currently serving as President Obama’s lead advisor on global entrepreneurship. 

In her new role, beginning in February, Heck will be leading partnerships and external affairs for Stripe Atlas — the startup’s own program for helping people all over the world start their own internet businesses. In this job, she’ll travel the globe and work with international startups and nonprofits to get them started with Stripe.

It’s work that’s right in Heck’s wheelhouse: At the White House, it was her job to lead government outreach to entrepreneurs all over the world.

Heck claims on her LinkedIn profile that she “[gained] commitments from governments (U.S. and foreign) and the private sector to provide over $1 billion in new capital to entrepreneurs worldwide.” Plus, she says in that profile, she helped prepare for President Obama’s historic visit to Cuba by helping arrange meetings with local entrepreneurs, and afterwards, helped lead the government’s work with those entrepreneurs. 

From Stripe’s perspective, the company sees Atlas as a key growth initiative: There are lots of entrepreneurs out there who lack the technology to accept credit card payments, and therefore, their ability to run businesses online. Stripe’s goal is to reach those businesses, wherever they are, and give them what they need.

So that’s one White House figure joining a tech startup. Maybe President Obama will be next.

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