Pioneer, Town Settler, City Planner PM Matching
Match the PM archetype you hire to the product's stage of maturity
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 95%
A hiring framework that classifies product managers into three archetypes based on the maturity of the product they'll own: pioneers excel at zero-to-one, town settlers excel at the growth stage, and city planners excel at driving efficiency at mature scale. Founders who 'hate PMs' often only picture the city planner when what they actually need for a new bet is a pioneer or a former founder. Diagnose the product stage first, then hire the archetype that fits.
Origin
Rohini Pandhi learned this framework at Square (Block) and applies it at Mercury.
Core principles
- 01There is no single 'product manager' — the right PM depends on company, industry, and the specific product's maturity
- 02Founders' resistance to PMs usually stems from imagining a bureaucratic 'city planner' when they need a scrappy pioneer
- 03A pioneer builds from nothing; a settler grows early infrastructure; a city planner optimizes at massive scale
- 04The resume without the receipt is just paper — interview to find which archetype the candidate has actually proven
How to run it
- 1
Diagnose the product's maturity stage
Decide whether the surface area is zero-to-one (uncharted, no infrastructure), growth (some infrastructure, still experimenting and building for the future), or mature (touches millions of customers, needs efficiency at scale).
Watch out A mature banking product like core banking demands 'measure three times, cut once' discipline — a zero-to-one PM will misfire there, and vice versa.
- 2
Name the archetype that stage requires
Pioneer for zero-to-one (creates something from nothing, reapplies natural resources to survive then grow). Town settler for growth (builds foundational elements, runs experiments, builds for the future). City planner for mature products (drives efficiencies at scale where everything touches millions immediately).
Pro tip For a new product bet, consider a former entrepreneur or founder as your pioneer rather than a process-heavy operator.
- 3
Interview for the receipts, not the resume
Drill into what kind of experience the candidate is genuinely good at and what they want next. Separate riskier-bet builders from conservative scale operators by pressing on the actual work they've done.
Pro tip Ask which situations they took riskier bets in versus were deliberately conservative — the answers reveal their true archetype.
In the wild
Mercury still runs core banking as a mature 'city planner' product requiring extreme care, while its expansion org runs pioneer-style zero-to-one bets — different PM archetypes for different surfaces within the same company.
→ Right-fit PMs matched to each product's stage rather than a one-size-fits-all hire.
Common mistakes
Judging all PMs by one bad experience
Concluding 'all PMs suck' because one PM didn't fit ignores that the mismatch was likely archetype-to-stage, not the discipline itself.
Hiring a city planner for a zero-to-one bet
A scale-optimizer placed on an uncharted new product will impose premature process and fail to create from nothing.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and heads of product deciding which kind of PM to hire for a specific product surface
Not ideal for
Very early seed companies that should have the founder as PM and not hire anyone yet
From the transcript
“We use this idea of like a pioneer, a town settler, and a city planner.”
“the pioneer is a PM that's really good at zero to one”
“a city planner is a PM that's really good at mature products”
“the resume without the receipt is just a piece of paper. You want to get the receipts.”
From the episode
How to build your product team from scratch, attract top product talent, go multi-product, and more
Rohini Pandhi (Mercury, Square)