Kassen Qian

6. Always Be Grooming New Leaders: Articulate the mission early in candidate interviews. Hire listeners that display intellectual curiosity. Offer high-performing PMs opportunities to onboard others.

You’re a hammer: You live and you die based on your ability to convince other people to do what you need them to do for the good of the product. A hammer swings and builds -- push your team to ship.

The biggest risk is building the wrong product - a product that doesn’t delight our users, or doesn’t improve success metrics such as user acquisition, user retention, etc. We call this “product risk". The 4-stage model helps us drive down risk and get products out the door quickly.

Ownership: I can give you a problem statement, but you’re the one who determines what your job is. You don’t get driven around by the team; you figure out what the team needs, and you deliver that.

At Stripe, we talk about product “shaping,” ... the process of creating a rough solution to a concrete user problem — it fills the space between the broad strategy and the detailed product specification, or the PRD.

Vision & Strategy: You own the vision, strategy, and roadmap. You know the market, our users, the product, and the competition. You drive alignment: If I ask 5 different people what you’re building and why, I’ll get one answer.