It has been over a year since American Noah Pepper relocated to Singapore from San Francisco in February 2020 with his wife and two kids under five. Yet, he still vividly recalls what the experience of moving at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic was like for all in the family. "It was a little crazy," remarked Noah, APAC Business Lead at Stripe, a company that builds economic infrastructure for the internet.
The family was still settling in during the Circuit Breaker period between March and June 2020 in Singapore. As global supply chain services slowed to a halt, securing deliveries for daily necessities became a challenge. Noah shares, "We'd moved here with very few physical possessions as we were planning to prioritise experiences and travel over things. Then we ended up in an almost empty apartment with two kids under five."
"With delivery services slowing down worldwide, simple tasks like ordering a bed to be delivered became much more complicated to coordinate. Even getting a grocery delivery slot wasn't easy."
That said, Noah notes that overall, the moving process has been relatively smooth for the family. On a broader level, the Peppers' shift to Singapore also marked the start of Noah's next chapter in his career at Stripe's APAC office.
Springboarding From Singapore to Accelerate APAC Success
Noah shares that his move to relocate coincided with Stripe's larger push to deepen its roots in the APAC region's burgeoning fintech sector. Singapore's clear and robust regulatory environment, advanced digital infrastructure, and skilled talent pool make for an ideal launchpad for tech companies looking to establish or gain a stronger foothold in Asia. The government's strong support initiatives have also helped create an environment where tech giants and budding start-ups can thrive.
He explains, "APAC is especially exciting for Stripe because there's so much growth and innovation happening. At the same time, there's also a huge amount of change and a wide diversity of payment methods and ways consumers interact with businesses."
Being in the APAC region would also enable the company to accelerate growth in key priority — building up its Global Payments and Treasury Network (GPTN). Noah notes, "We're building the capability for an engineer, sitting anywhere in the world, to build products that pick up, move, store, and pay out money from and to any number of points on the globe."
Stripe's GPTN forms the financial and technology infrastructure for online businesses to move money throughout the world in a fast, simple and seamless way; ultimately growing what the company refers to as “the GDP of the Internet.” Noah believes that such versatile tools empower entrepreneurs and established enterprises to effectively optimize their business’ financials, so they can spend more time and energy focusing on their core activity - whether that’s selling a product or service, building new business models, or reaching a global customer base. Ultimately, this sets off a domino effect where everyone who participates in the internet economy can potentially reap benefits, too, he explains.
Noah's strong sense of optimism is rooted in his propensity for positive-sum thinking — a notion that is popular in the areas of economics and mathematics. He muses, "Having a positive-sum mindset means believing that we, as people, can create more resources, happiness, and wealth. And the amount of prosperity we create is capped only by our ingenuity." Another area of opportunity that Singapore offers companies like Stripe would be access to talent, which Noah believes is what empowers growth in the tech sector. Before joining Stripe, Noah spent almost four years at Twitter in various management roles across product and engineering. Earlier in his career, he also cut his teeth as a collaborative researcher working at Apple.
His professional experiences have taught Noah that the best tech talent is global. He explains, "When I moved to San Francisco (Silicon Valley), it hit me how many places around the world people were coming from and what an amazing talent magnet that little sliver of California had become. Singapore has an opportunity to become a similar magnet."
Striking Work-Life Balance as A Business Leader
