Building for People, Not Wallets: Lessons on Usability from Henri Stern of Privy

By Victor Zhou of Namefi — October 2025

Introduction

When you talk to Henri Stern, CEO of Privy (now part of Stripe), it’s clear that his approach to building in crypto is guided not by hype, but by human need.

In our conversation, we explored how usability became the core problem Privy chose to solve, what it means to “only build what customers ask for,” and how speed, a sense of urgency, and constant iteration have shaped his company’s journey.

The Shift from Privacy to Usability

When Henri Stern started Privy, the company’s mission was to help developers build privacy into their products. But as he quickly discovered, privacy wasn’t the most urgent problem then — usability was. Developers weren’t ignoring privacy out of apathy; they simply couldn’t implement it without breaking their own products.

That realization became a turning point. Instead of focusing on encryption or infrastructure alone, Henri and his team shifted toward usability — building crypto tools that felt invisible to the user. It wasn’t about solving for blockchains or wallets anymore; it was about solving for people.

That shift eventually made Privy the foundation for products like friend.tech, where the focus was not on teaching users crypto, but on abstracting complexity away from crypto.

Mapping the Usability Frontier

Henri views the evolution of crypto usability as a phased journey. The early years were dominated by technical barriers: private keys, gas fees, and fragmented wallet connectors.

By 2025, he believes those issues have largely been addressed — or at least tamed. Gas fees are manageable. Wallet creation and recovery are smoother. The remaining bottleneck, in his eyes, is on-ramps — the process of helping everyday users actually get into crypto safely and intuitively.

Once users can easily enter the ecosystem, the next step is to empower them with useful financial tools: yield-bearing wallets, seamless payments, and stablecoin-based applications that blend Web2 familiarity with Web3 capability.

For Henri, the mission now isn’t just reducing friction — it’s turning crypto into infrastructure people use without even noticing.

Customer-Led Product Building

If there’s a single principle that defines Privy’s approach, it’s that they never build in isolation. Every product decision is grounded in customer demand.

Henri’s framework for deciding what to build is simple but rigorous:

1. Talk to customers constantly.
2. Identify where they’re stuck.
3. Estimate the difficulty of solving that problem.
4. Prioritize the ideas that are easiest to build but create the biggest improvement.

This pragmatic approach allows Privy to move fast without losing focus. It’s also what made them indispensable to their clients — startups building real consumer products that wouldn’t make sense without crypto under the hood.

Finding the Right Users

In the early days, Privy didn’t wait for inbound interest. The team reached out directly to builders — anyone creating consumer-facing crypto products. They messaged founders on Twitter, contacted VCs for introductions, and offered to prototype integrations for free if it meant a team would actually use the product.

That hands-on, experimental outreach revealed an important insight: Privy’s best customers weren’t “crypto companies” in the traditional sense. They were consumer apps that needed crypto to exist — social, financial, or creative products where Web3 wasn’t a feature, but a foundation.

This approach turned Privy into a quiet layer of infrastructure powering a new generation of crypto-native experiences.

From Researcher to Builder

Henri’s background is in cryptography and academic research — a world where precision and correctness dominate. But running Privy forced him to embrace a new identity: product builder and communicator.

He often jokes that he’s no longer allowed to write code, but that technical intuition still guides his leadership. It allows him to understand complexity, assess trade-offs, and lead a team that builds securely without over-engineering.

That balance — between deep technical understanding and product empathy — is one of Privy’s biggest strengths.

Momentum Over Perfection

Privy’s fundraising journey reflects the same philosophy as its product development: move fast when the momentum is real. With strong early backers like Sequoia, Henri’s team learned to raise capital not based on projections, but on progress.

They built when the energy was high, iterated quickly, and stayed close to their users. The confidence came not from predicting markets, but from being in constant motion — listening, building, and adjusting faster than anyone else.

The Power of Impatience

Looking back, Henri admits that the path was grueling. Building in crypto means operating through volatility — both in markets and morale. But one of his biggest lessons is that impatience, when channeled properly, can be a superpower.

Many founders are told to be patient, to wait for the market to mature. Henri took the opposite approach. He pushed forward even when the timing seemed off — building for a future that wasn’t guaranteed yet.

That urgency paid off. When the market caught up, Privy was already there, with infrastructure ready for mainstream adoption.

What Founders Can Learn

Henri’s story is a masterclass in focus and adaptability. The main takeaways are universal, even beyond crypto:

• Start with the user, not the technology. Technical brilliance means little if people can’t use it.
• Let customers lead your roadmap. Every feature should solve a real, expressed need.
• Move fast, but with purpose. Momentum compounds; hesitation kills innovation.
• Control what you can. You can’t control the market, but you can control your product, your team, and your pace.

Privy’s success wasn’t about predicting trends — it was about building with conviction through uncertainty.

Conclusion

In the end, Henri’s philosophy boils down to a single truth:

Crypto becomes real when it becomes invisible — when people use it not because it’s crypto, but because it works.