Rohini Pandhi (Mercury, Square)12 January 2025

How to build your product team from scratch, attract top product talent, go multi-product, and more

6Frameworks

15Insights

Episode overview

Mercury product leader Rohini Pandhi explains why founders should initially act as their own product managers, then hire PMs when decision bottlenecks, organizational complexity, and adjacent customer segments outgrow them. She describes defining Mercury’s PM discipline through a career ladder and aligned interviews, matching pioneer, settler, or city-planner PMs to a product’s maturity, and attracting talent with appropriately challenging scope and strong peers. The conversation also covers quality as a compounding competitive advantage and Mercury’s approach to incubating multiple products in protected, cross-functional seed teams. Pandhi closes with lessons on customer research, adjacent-product selection, pricing, Transparent Collective, and personal recommendations.

Key ideas

Founders should remain their company’s first product managers until work stalls without them, other disciplines absorb PM duties, or new customer segments require dedicated product leadership.
A scalable product organization needs explicit role expectations, a career ladder, and an interview process testing the same valued skills, including product sense, customer obsession, analysis, and systems thinking.
The pioneer, town settler, and city planner framework matches PM profiles to zero-to-one, growth-stage, and mature products rather than treating all PMs as interchangeable.
Great senior candidates are attracted by a next challenge suited to their position on the ambiguity-and-scale S-curve, talented peers, and candid communication about the role.
Small, intentional product details may not move a single KPI but can compound into trust, customer affection, talent attraction, and a durable quality moat.
New product seedlings need dedicated cross-functional teams and organizational separation from mature products whose urgent work would otherwise consume their resources.
Mercury selects adjacent products by looking for validated customer behavior, a distribution advantage, sufficient market opportunity, and a plausible path to product-market fit.
Customer obsession requires neutral observation and triangulation across conversations, behavior, prototypes, betas, quantitative evidence, and business viability.

Transcript available · source text is retained privately and is not published

Frameworks in this episode

Innovation4 steps

Customer Research as a Documentarian

Observe like a non-judgmental documentarian, find the pattern, then validate the truth with data

Read →

Leadership3 steps

Pioneer, Town Settler, City Planner PM Matching

Match the PM archetype you hire to the product's stage of maturity

Read →

Leadership4 steps

Standing Up a Product Discipline From Scratch

Turn an implicit PM function into a real one by writing the ladder first, then wiring hiring to it

Read →

Leadership4 steps

The Career S-Curve for Attracting Talent

Map where a candidate sits on the ambiguity-vs-scale S-curve, then sell them their next step

Read →

Innovation5 steps

The Seedling Model for Going Multi-Product

Incubate new product lines as separate 'seed companies' with dedicated teams and adjacency-based selection

Read →

Leadership4 steps

When to Hire Your First PM

Stay founder-as-PM until bottlenecks, hijacked eng/design, or new customer segments force the hire

Read →

People & resources mentioned

Attributed to the moment in the episode. Timestamps are approximate.

People · 12

Rohini PandhiMentionsRohini is currently a product leader at Mercury, where she leads the product expansion team, which incubates and scales new product lines within Mercury.
“Today, my guest is Rohini Pondi.”
▶ Watch at ~1:00approx.
Gil GrossmanMentionsGil Grossman, engineering team lead at Fiverr
“Gil Grossman, engineering team lead at Fiverr, says that our users share billions of images, video, and audio files.”
▶ Watch at ~3:00approx.
Christina GilbertCoinedI'm excited to chat with Christina Gilbert, the founder of OneSchema
“I'm excited to chat with Christina Gilbert, the founder of One Schema”
▶ Watch at ~3:30approx.
Lenny RachitskyMentionstoday we've got another very special compilation episode something I've been pulling on more and more with the podcast and the newsletter
“Thank you, Lenny. I'm excited to be here.”
▶ Watch at ~5:00approx.
ImmadMentionsI think Immad even says this, on the surface, it's completely irrational to invest in quality.
“what was the sign to Immad and the leadership team that it was time to hire product managers?”
▶ Watch at ~9:30approx.
Jason ZhengMentionsthe CEO of Mercury, Jason Zheng
“one of the questions that I loved came from the CEO of Mercury, Jason Zheng”
▶ Watch at ~26:00approx.
Madhavan RamanujamMentionsmadhavan is the author of monetizing innovation the most widely read book on pricing strategy he's also senior partner at Simon Kutcher and partners
“when we were doing pricing, I used a lot of insights from your podcast with Madhavan.”
▶ Watch at ~55:00approx.
Naval RavikantMentionseventually I met folks like Naval ravikot and Sam Altman and Brian Armstrong and they recommended me around
“If you haven't heard Naval's advice on this, just like don't worry about finishing a book.”
▶ Watch at ~1:11:30approx.
Bruce LeeMentionsmentioned
“I think I use a Bruce Lee quote pretty often”
▶ Watch at ~1:14:00approx.
Cyan BanisterMentionsmentioned
“Makes me think about Cyan Banister was just on the Tim Ferriss podcast.”
▶ Watch at ~1:15:00approx.
Tim FerrissCoinedCited for his fear-setting framework and as an influence on Paul Millerd's five-episode podcast experiment.
“Makes me think about Cyan Banister was just on the Tim Ferriss podcast.”
▶ Watch at ~1:15:00approx.
Bobby MatsonCoinedBobby Matson he was the CEO and co-founder of founder of Pay It Off
“Bobby Matson he was the CEO and co-founder of founder of Pay It Off”
▶ Watch at ~1:16:00approx.

Resources · 40

Square PaymentsMentionsproduct · Square
“leading product work on Square payments, invoicing, and the Bitkey hardware Bitcoin wallet.”
▶ Watch at ~1:30approx.
SquareMentionscompany · Block, Inc.
“Previously, she spent over seven years at Square, also known as Block”
▶ Watch at ~1:30approx.
BitkeyMentionsproduct · Block
“leading product work on Square payments, invoicing, and the Bitkey hardware Bitcoin wallet.”
▶ Watch at ~1:30approx.
BlockMentionscompany
“Previously, she spent over seven years at Square, also known as Block”
▶ Watch at ~1:30approx.
CloudinaryMentionscompany
“This episode is brought to you by Cloudinary, the foundational technology for all images and video on the internet.”
▶ Watch at ~2:30approx.
FiverrUsescompany
“Gil Grossman, engineering team lead at Fiverr, says that our users share billions of images, video, and audio files.”
▶ Watch at ~3:00approx.
Scale AIUsescompany · Alex Wang and Lucy Guo
“you now work with some of my favorite companies like Ramp, Vanta, Scale, and Watershed.”
▶ Watch at ~3:30approx.
OneSchema File FeedsCoinedproduct · OneSchema
“we just launched OneSchema file feeds, which allows you to build an integration with any system in 15 minutes”
▶ Watch at ~3:30approx.
RampUsescompany · Eric Glyman and Karim Atiyeh
“you now work with some of my favorite companies like Ramp, Vanta, Scale, and Watershed.”
▶ Watch at ~3:30approx.
VantaUsessoftware · Christina Cacioppo
“you now work with some of my favorite companies like Ramp, Vanta, Scale, and Watershed.”
▶ Watch at ~3:30approx.
WatershedUsescompany
“you now work with some of my favorite companies like Ramp, Vanta, Scale, and Watershed.”
▶ Watch at ~3:30approx.
OneSchemaUsessoftware · Christina Gilbert
“how nice would it be to be able to take this off my road map and instead use something like OneSchema”
▶ Watch at ~4:00approx.
MercuryUsescompany · Mercury
“Prior to 2 years ago, there were no PMs at the company.”
▶ Watch at ~6:00approx.
SnapchatMentionssoftware · Snap Inc.
“Snapchat actually is a good example of that where they brought in their first PM when they wanted to go deep on ads”
▶ Watch at ~21:30approx.
Square InvoicesUsesproduct · Square
“That's honestly where when I knew we had product market fit but we just needed to make it better.”
▶ Watch at ~33:00approx.
Mercury Bill PayCoinedproduct · Mercury
“we launched a product called Bill Pay.”
▶ Watch at ~37:30approx.
LinearMentionssoftware · Linear
“Like Linear is a great example, Mercury is a great example.”
▶ Watch at ~40:00approx.
ZipMentionscompany · Rujul Zaparde and Lu Cheng
“another example this company that I'm invested in is called Zip, which is procurement”
▶ Watch at ~42:00approx.
JiraMentionssoftware · Atlassian
“there's maybe features, just like we have the most features, like Jira.”
▶ Watch at ~43:00approx.
AirtableMentionssoftware · Airtable
“This episode is brought to you by Airtable Product Central, the unified system that brings your entire product org together in one place.”
▶ Watch at ~43:00approx.
Airtable Product CentralCoinedsoftware · Airtable
“That's why Airtable built Product Central after decades of working with world-class product companies.”
▶ Watch at ~43:30approx.
Mercury Personal BankingCoinedproduct · Mercury
“We launched Mercury personal banking in April which has been a wild success”
▶ Watch at ~45:00approx.
SlackUsessoftware · Slack Technologies
“we get those messages in a Slack channel.”
▶ Watch at ~53:00approx.
Transparent CollectiveCoinedcompany · Rohini Pandhi and an unnamed co-founder
“You started this organization called the Transparent Collective.”
▶ Watch at ~1:06:00approx.
The Song of AchillesRecommendsbook
“Pachinko, Cutting for Stone, Song of Achilles, all great ones that I've read recently”
▶ Watch at ~1:10:30approx.
Cutting for StoneRecommendsbook
“Pachinko, Cutting for Stone, Song of Achilles, all great ones that I've read recently”
▶ Watch at ~1:10:30approx.
PachinkoRecommendsbook · Min Jin Lee
“Pachinko, Cutting for Stone, Song of Achilles, all great ones that I've read recently”
▶ Watch at ~1:10:30approx.
ShrinkingRecommendstv show
“like Shrinking or Bad Sisters, Slow Horses was great.”
▶ Watch at ~1:12:00approx.
Bad SistersRecommendstv show
“like Shrinking or Bad Sisters, Slow Horses was great.”
▶ Watch at ~1:12:00approx.
Slow HorsesRecommendstv show · Will Smith
“like Shrinking or Bad Sisters, Slow Horses was great.”
▶ Watch at ~1:12:00approx.
SeveranceRecommendstv show · Dan Erickson
“I think Severance is coming up in its new season.”
▶ Watch at ~1:12:00approx.
Apple TV+Recommendsproduct · Apple
“I've really I got to admit Apple TV's got some bangers”
▶ Watch at ~1:12:00approx.
WaymoRecommendscompany · Alphabet
“I still love the Waymo experience as a product.”
▶ Watch at ~1:12:30approx.
The Tim Ferriss ShowRecommendspodcast · Tim Ferriss
“Cyan Banister was just on the Tim Ferriss podcast. I don't know if you heard that one”
▶ Watch at ~1:15:00approx.
PayitoffMentionscompany · Bobby Matson and co-founder
“Bobby Matson he was the CEO and co-founder of founder of Pay It Off, a student loans.”
▶ Watch at ~1:16:00approx.
XUseswebsite · X Corp.
“I'm on X, aka Twitter, at Rohini P.”
▶ Watch at ~1:17:00approx.
LinkedInUseswebsite · LinkedIn
“I'm also on LinkedIn.”
▶ Watch at ~1:17:00approx.
Apple PodcastsRecommendssoftware · Apple Inc.
“you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.”
▶ Watch at ~1:19:00approx.
Lenny's PodcastCoinedpodcast · Lenny Rachitsky
“You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com.”
▶ Watch at ~1:19:00approx.
SpotifyRecommendssoftware · Spotify
“you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.”
▶ Watch at ~1:19:00approx.

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Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Hot Take· 5

Hot Take08:00

Founders Are the Original PMs — Don't Hire Too Early

Rohini's default advice to seed-stage founders asking when to hire a PM is: not yet. Until you literally can't do the job anymore, the founder should be the product manager, staying as close to the customer and the solution as possible. Companies like Mercury and Square succeeded for years without PMs because the founders and early engineers already carried the product obsession.

Until you can no longer do the job yourself, the founder(s) should be the PM
Being close to the customer and to how the product gets built matters more than a PM title
Hiring a PM too early feels like handing over the reins and the company's personality to someone else
Companies that 'hate PMs' often already do the product work implicitly through autonomous teams

“Absolutely not. Until you cannot do the job anymore, you yourself should be the PM.”
Rohini Pandhi · 08:00

“The one piece of advice I always have is like don't hire PMs too early. It's not worth it.”
Rohini Pandhi · 20:00

#product management#hiring#founders#startups

Hot Take12:30

If You Think PMs Suck, You Just Haven't Worked With a Great One

The common founder complaint that PMs make teams worse usually reflects exposure to a bad PM, not the role. A great PM raises the product philosophy and quality 10x, makes everyone's life easier, and frees people to do more of the work they actually want to do.

A great PM can make the product philosophy and quality 10x better
The 'PMs suck' reaction usually comes from never having worked with a great one
Great PMs make teammates' lives easier and give them more joy

“when you hire a really good PM they can make that the product philosophy the quality just 10x better.”
Rohini Pandhi · 12:30

“you just haven't worked with a great PM.”
13:00

#product management#hiring#team culture

Hot Take35:00

Candidates Are Interviewing You — So Dogfood Your Own Process

Senior candidates judge a company by the quality of the questions it asks them. Rohini revamped Mercury's interview process based on her own experience of being interviewed there — a form of dogfooding — because a good senior lead can tell whether the company understands what it's even asking for.

Senior candidates evaluate a company by its interview questions
Poor or mismatched interview prompts signal the company doesn't understand the role
Rohini overhauled Mercury's process based on her own experience going through it
Treat the interview as a product you dogfood and improve

“the candidates are um testing you as much as you're testing them.”
Rohini Pandhi · 35:00

“I would judge a company based on the interview questions that they would ask me.”
Rohini Pandhi · 35:00

#hiring#interviews#candidate experience

Hot Take42:00

Boring Industries Are Full of Ugly Billion-Dollar Products You Can Beat on Experience

Many huge, unsexy B2B markets are dominated by ugly, hard-to-use products, which is exactly the opening. Nobody wants a bad experience just because the category is 'boring' like procurement or banking — everyone wants a nice experience for work they do every day. Rohini argues experience is one of the few remaining ways to differentiate, citing Linear, Mercury, and Zip.

Many billion-dollar incumbents in boring categories are ugly and unpleasant to use
Users still want a good experience even in unsexy work like procurement
The next generation of B2B products must be both simple AND powerful, not just simplified
Experience is one of the few durable differentiators when features and price compete away

“there's all these boring-ass companies that were just are like billions of dollars and just so ugly.”
Rohini Pandhi · 42:00

#differentiation#b2b#product strategy#user experience

Hot Take1:04:00

Build Products People Love — Revenue Is Just a Byproduct

A recurring lesson from Block and Mercury leadership (via Gokul, learned from Jack) is that the founders are never hyper-focused on a revenue number. They keep telling teams to build products people love, trusting that revenue follows as a byproduct. Get that first step right and the second step largely takes care of itself.

Mercury and Block leaders don't fixate on a revenue number to drive
The directive to teams is to build products people love
Revenue is treated as a byproduct of a genuinely loved product
Nail the 'love' step and the monetization step tends to follow

“build the products that people love and the revenue will just be a byproduct of that.”
Rohini Pandhi · 1:04:30

#product philosophy#revenue#leadership#culture

Explainer· 4

Explainer16:00

How Mercury Interviews PMs: Writing and a 'Talk About Anything' Presentation

Mercury derived its PM interview from the same career-ladder skills it values, testing product sense, customer/quality obsession, analytical and systems thinking. Rohini wants to add a written component because quality writing signals the ability to go deep and align people with a crisp two-pager. Their existing presentation exercise uses a deliberately generic prompt to reveal a candidate's attention to detail, craft, and passion.

Interview signals map directly onto the career ladder: product sense, customer/quality obsession, analytical and systems thinking
A written essay component is planned because writing demonstrates depth and alignment
The presentation prompt is intentionally generic — 'talk about something you're interested in'
It tests attention to detail, craft, care, and depth (one PM went deep on airplane bolt selection)

“I really do think quality in writing demonstrates this ability to go in in depth with something and to really put your thoughts on paper.”
Rohini Pandhi · 16:00

“And what we're really testing for there is attention to detail, the craft and care, the uh desire to go deep into a specific area…”
Rohini Pandhi · 18:30

#hiring#interviews#product management#writing

Explainer36:30

Investing in Quality Looks Irrational — Until It Compounds Into a Moat

On the surface, investing in quality is irrational for a KPI-driven company because polish rarely moves a single metric. But in a 'boring' industry like fintech, precise, intentional details build the trust customers need to move their money with you. Small intentional improvements — like Bill Pay auto-zooming to the right part of an uploaded invoice — compound over time into a competitive moat.

Investing in quality won't move any single metric or completion rate
In fintech, precise details breed the trust needed to hold and move customers' money
Bill Pay's OCR that zooms into the relevant part of an invoice delights users without moving a KPI
Compounding intentional improvements become a moat and competitive advantage
Quality also has second-order effects: attracting great talent and endearing customers

“on the surface, it's completely irrational to invest in quality.”
Rohini Pandhi · 36:30

“it all together it starts becoming a moat. It becomes this competitive advantage for you.”
Rohini Pandhi · 38:30

#quality#product design#fintech#differentiation

Explainer46:30

New Products Need Org Separation or the Core Will Swallow Them

Mercury learned that placing new 'seedling' products too close to mature core banking in the org structure suffocated them — mature products' prioritization and maintenance work always trumped the new roadmaps via a gravitational pull. So Mercury created an entirely separate expansion org to give new bets the air they need to grow.

New products placed near mature ones get their roadmaps constantly deprioritized
Mature products exert a 'gravitational force' pulling in resources and attention
Mercury created a separate expansion org specifically to protect new bets
A small fire needs air to become a flame — org structure provides that space

“made it hard for that new product to even grow because they were always being pulled in, sucked in, the gravitational force of like a…”
Rohini Pandhi · 47:00

“when you have this small little uh fire, you want to give it air in order for it to truly blossom to a flame.”
Rohini Pandhi · 47:30

#multi-product#org design#product strategy#mercury

Explainer53:30

Be a Documentarian: What Customers Say Isn't What They Want

Many companies claim to be customer-obsessed but still build bad products because customers are polite — on the phone they'll say nice things and blame themselves for UX failures. Rohini's fix is to enter conversations without bias and act like a non-judgmental researcher or documentarian, observing what customers actually do, finding patterns, then validating with prototypes and betas. Customer obsession must also be anchored to what works for the business.

Customers are polite and will excuse your bad UX by blaming themselves
Enter research without bias — be a researcher/documentarian, not seeking validation
Find a pattern you hear repeatedly, then validate it with prototypes and betas
Anchor customer obsession to business viability — customers would take everything free

“there's a little bit of like what a customer says versus what they want going to be two different things”
Rohini Pandhi · 53:30

“You want to be a researcher. You want to be like this third-party non-judgmental kind of like you're being brought into the jungle and just…”
Rohini Pandhi · 54:00

#customer research#product discovery#user experience

Story· 1

Story11:00

Mercury's 'Business Leads' Quietly Became Its PMs

Before Mercury had any PM titles, generalists called 'business leads' picked up the cross-functional coordination and project-management duties, and were eventually rebranded as PMs about two years ago. The problem: they'd never been trained as PMs, so core skills like strategic planning, roadmapping, prioritization and deep customer research were weak. In hindsight, Mercury should have made the official transition sooner.

The PM function broke as a bottleneck well before the 100-employee mark
'Business leads' handled cross-functional coordination and got renamed PMs ~2 years ago
Rebranded business leads lacked trained PM fundamentals: strategy, roadmapping, prioritization, customer research
The formal transition to a real PM discipline should have happened earlier

“The problem with that became they weren't PMs, they didn't have experience in the PM role”
Rohini Pandhi · 11:30

“in hindsight we should probably done the official transition to the PM role a lot sooner but you know, hindsight's always 20/20.”
Rohini Pandhi · 12:00

#product management#org design#scaling#mercury

Takeaway· 5

Takeaway26:00

A Resume Without the Receipt Is Just a Piece of Paper

When hiring senior PMs, don't take the resume at face value — drill into what kind of work the person is actually good at and what they want next. The interview should surface the receipts: the concrete work they've done, so you can match their real strengths to the role you're filling.

Interview to discover what a candidate is actually good at, not just what the resume claims
Ask what they want in their next role, not only what they've done
Demand the 'receipts' — evidence of the actual work behind the resume line

“the resume without the receipt is just a piece of paper. You want to get the receipts.”
Rohini Pandhi · 26:00

#hiring#interviews#product management

Takeaway30:00

Attract Great PMs by Letting Them 'Play Tennis' With Better People

Beyond a meaty problem, senior candidates care about who they'll work with — people want to be challenged by peers slightly better than them, like playing tennis. Rohini also sells the role with radical transparency, telling candidates the good, the bad, and the ugly rather than over-promising while still conveying genuine excitement.

Great people want to work alongside people a bit better than them
A functional org structure lets PMs learn from a real product peer group
Be transparent with candidates — share the challenges as well as the opportunities
Don't over-promise, but do sell the dream of why you're excited

“You want to challenge yourself with people that are a little bit better than you and you know, bounce that ball back and forth and…”
Rohini Pandhi · 30:00

“I tell them when I have conversations with candidates, the good, the bad, the ugly.”
Rohini Pandhi · 30:30

#hiring#talent#transparency#culture

Takeaway47:30

Run New Product Lines Like Seed-Stage Angel Investments

Mercury treats each new product line like a small seed-stage company, reviewing every quarter or half-year whether to keep investing. There's no forced end date to fold them back into mature products; teams get dedicated cross-functional squads and continued headcount as long as the business line shows a path to success. Like angel investing, pivots are expected and learnings matter as much as hitting a number.

Each new product line is reviewed for continued investment every quarter or half-year
No fixed end date — teams stay independent until they become their own 'Series C'
Full cross-functional squads (eng, design, product, data science) with shared central teams
Goals and financial projections exist, but pivots and learnings are expected like an angel bet

“we're thinking of these company like these are small seed stage companies and every quarter every half year we look at them as like do…”
Rohini Pandhi · 47:30

“It's just like an angel investment. There's going to be pivots we realize that.”
Rohini Pandhi · 48:30

#multi-product#resource allocation#product strategy

Takeaway58:00

Pick Your Next Product by De-Risking and Distribution Advantage

When choosing what to build next, Mercury looks for adjacencies just beyond the core that serve a deeper need for a known customer segment. Invoicing was de-risked because an existing 'payment requests' feature already had traction, proving demand, and Mercury had a distribution advantage: it could reach existing users without a full go-to-market push, lowering the friction to reach escape velocity.

Target adjacent product lines, not just new features, for a known customer segment
De-risk by validating demand through an existing lightweight feature (payment requests → invoicing)
A distribution advantage means reaching existing users without a full go-to-market effort
Existing traction plus distribution means less friction to hit escape velocity

“We also knew that we had a distribution advantage cuz we if we already had people that were using this, we could probably get more…”
Rohini Pandhi · 59:00

#multi-product#product strategy#distribution#de-risking

Takeaway1:00:30

Give the Second Product Away Free Before You Ever Paywall It

After launching a new product, don't immediately try to optimize revenue. Mercury gives the second and third products away for free to drive usage, engagement, and retention and prove there's real value in the workflow. Only once customers hit genuine complexity — needing to pay vendors or receive payments well — does the pricing conversation happen, targeting the customers who truly need the extra heft.

Don't jump from launch straight to revenue optimization or efficiency
Give new products away free first to drive usage, engagement, and retention
Core banking and money movement stay free; complexity is what gets priced
Have the pricing conversation only when customers reach real complexity, not on day one

“what we really want is to give away that the second product, the third product for free, encourage as much usage and engagement and retention…”
Rohini Pandhi · 1:00:30

“it's not like you you put this paywall in and then automatically just launch a product and say, "Now you have to pay us."”
Rohini Pandhi · 1:01:00

#pricing#product-led growth#multi-product#monetization

Key ideas

Frameworks in this episode

Customer Research as a Documentarian

Pioneer, Town Settler, City Planner PM Matching

Standing Up a Product Discipline From Scratch

The Career S-Curve for Attracting Talent

The Seedling Model for Going Multi-Product

When to Hire Your First PM

People & resources mentioned

People · 12

Resources · 40

Insights & moments

◆Hot Take· 5

Founders Are the Original PMs — Don't Hire Too Early

If You Think PMs Suck, You Just Haven't Worked With a Great One

Candidates Are Interviewing You — So Dogfood Your Own Process

Boring Industries Are Full of Ugly Billion-Dollar Products You Can Beat on Experience

Build Products People Love — Revenue Is Just a Byproduct

✶Explainer· 4

How Mercury Interviews PMs: Writing and a 'Talk About Anything' Presentation

Investing in Quality Looks Irrational — Until It Compounds Into a Moat

New Products Need Org Separation or the Core Will Swallow Them

Be a Documentarian: What Customers Say Isn't What They Want

❝Story· 1

Mercury's 'Business Leads' Quietly Became Its PMs

▲Takeaway· 5

A Resume Without the Receipt Is Just a Piece of Paper

Attract Great PMs by Letting Them 'Play Tennis' With Better People

Run New Product Lines Like Seed-Stage Angel Investments

Pick Your Next Product by De-Risking and Distribution Advantage

Give the Second Product Away Free Before You Ever Paywall It

Hot Take· 5

Explainer· 4

Story· 1

Takeaway· 5