Stripe Sydney Community meetup: Stripe in the wild — how Sydney teams really use Stripe

What is it?

Demos are polished. Real life is messier — and more interesting.

​For our first Sydney meetup, we're getting actual builders in the room to talk about how they really use Stripe: what they've shipped, what they've learned, and what they're thinking about next. No vendor pitches, no theory — just short, honest lightning talks from the people doing the work.

​Expect a handful of 5-minute talks, plenty of time to swap notes, and the kind of hallway conversations that are usually the best part anyway. Whether you're running payments at scale or just wiring up your first checkout, come find your people.

Who will you hear from?

Trent McLaren from Vinyl AI

Trent is the Co-founder of AI startup Vinyl. Vinyl is an AI meeting assistant for accounting and bookkeeping firms. He also leads a go-to-market agency called Journey, which operates out of Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, and the Middle East.

Thomas Wilson from Kudosity

Thomas is the Principal Engineer at Kudosity. Kudosity is an Australian-owned messaging technology company, enabling businesses to communicate at scale across more than 114 countries.

Specialising in SMS, MMS, RCS, WhatsApp, and Conversational AI, Kudosity provides secure, developer-first APIs and robust integrations for software teams, marketers, and enterprises of any size.

Andy Judson from Qwilr

Andy is the Head of Finance for Qwilr - Qwilr lets you effortlessly create compelling, interactive proposals that captivate buyers and close deals. Send proposals, generate quotes, and secure sign-off and payment. All in one place.

Kieran O'Neill from Tidal Ventures

Kieran O’Neill is a Principal at Tidal Ventures, where he invests in early-stage B2B and Vertical AI startups. Before joining VC, he co-founded and scaled a venture-backed proptech business called Hometime, leading go-to-market, finance, and strategy. He brings a mix of financial acumen and operational experience to help founders build enduring, defensible software companies.

Shawn Durrani Partner Solutions Architect from Stripe

Shawn Durrani is a Partner Solutions Architect at Stripe, working with partners across AUNZ on payments, billing and agentic commerce. He supports technical pre-sales engagements across marketplaces, SaaS platforms and digital-native businesses — helping partners design and scale architectures built on Stripe.More recently, Shawn has been exploring how AI systems can discover products, interact with AI protocols and execute transactions on modern payments infrastructure. He has built practical demonstrations integrating LLMs with Stripe to test what autonomous, payments-aware agents look like in real workflows — and is particularly interested in how payments infrastructure must evolve as AI becomes an active participant in commerce.

Register now - capacity is limited

​Drinks, snacks, and good company provided. See you there.