Kassen Qian

We ensure that our products go from being great at launch to becoming amazing, by relentlessly tweaking after launch.

Users constitute an essential source of information, up to and including their interactions with prototypes and as paying customers.

Stripe values quick-thinking, quick-acting people with "taste": if you spend the time and you put a lot of thought into appreciating something, teasing apart what makes it great, and building a thoughtful, opinionated perspective, that’s taste.

Features work as a management control because they manifest in the final product, and their relationship to programmer-hours is about as close to linear as you’re going to get.

You’re an engineer: companies want PMs who can roll with engineers, speak the same language, grasp the technical concepts (and problems and opportunities) quickly, and by so doing gain the respect and trust of the people actually moving bits around. The best PMs are culturally engineers

Your team dynamic is something you can always affect, even if you have no meaningful influence over the major strategic decisions of an organization.

In particular, not all software is a Web app ... We discount the volume of, for instance, embedded systems and one-off infrastructure.

You’re a super user: Eat your own dog food and talk to people who do too.