Listen now on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.

Brought to you by:

• Cloudinary—The foundational technology for all images and video on the internet
• OneSchema—Import CSV data 10x faster
• Airtable ProductCentral—Launch to new heights with a unified system for product development

—

Rohini Pandhi is a product leader at Mercury, and previously spent over seven years at Square/Block leading product work on Square payments, invoicing, and the Bitkey hardware Bitcoin wallet. She’s also the co-founder of the startup bootcamp Transparent Collective and is an active angel investor. In our conversation, we discuss:

• Key indicators that it’s time to hire PMs

• How to build your early PM team

• Why founders should initially take on the product manager role themselves

• How to attract top PM talent

• What she’s learned about going multi-product

• A case for investing in quality

• More

Skip the Mercury Personal waitlist: https://mercurytechnologies.typeform.com/lenny

Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-build-your-product-team-from-scratch-rohini-pandhi

Some takeaways:

1. In the early days, founders need to take on the product manager role themselves. They should be directly involved in understanding the customer and the solution. Don’t hire a PM until the founder can't do the job anymore.

2. Signs it’s time to hire PMs:

   1. Bottlenecks in decision-making

   2. Engineers or designers are often confused or overwhelmed

   3. You're expanding into new product areas

3. The type of PM you need depends on your product's stage:

   1. Pioneers: This type of PM excels in the zero-to-one phase. They thrive in environments where there’s no existing infrastructure, and they need to build it from the ground up, using existing resources creatively to establish a foundation for growth.

   2. Town settlers: Operate in the growth stage of a product. At this point, there is some level of infrastructure (e.g. a basic bank, post office, or school in the metaphorical town), but the focus is on further building and experimenting.

   3. City planners: Ideal for mature products. They are skilled at driving efficiency at scale, with everything they do affecting a large number of customers. This type of PM is critical when the product has reached a level where every decision impacts hundreds, thousands, or even millions of customers.

4. When hiring senior product managers, know exactly where they are on the S curve of their career. Understand whether they need a challenge with more ambiguity (a complex, undefined problem) or more scale (a bigger impact on a mature project). Frame your job offers around what will push them to their next career inflection point. Be upfront about the challenges they’ll face and the potential for growth—don’t oversell, but definitely sell the dream of working on problems that will test and grow them as a PM.

5. Keys to successful multi-product expansion

   1. Create separate organizational structures for new products to avoid gravitational pull back to core business

   2. Treat new product teams like seed-stage companies with dedicated resources

   3. Evaluate progress quarterly but allow for pivots and learning

   4. Look for de-risked opportunities where you already see user demand

   5. Leverage distribution advantages from existing products

   6. Don't try too many new things at once - focus resources on fewer bets

6. When evaluating opportunities for new products:

   1. Look for adjacent spaces just beyond your core offering

   2. Validate through existing feature usage and customer behavior

   3. Consider distribution advantages and go-to-market approach

   4. Assess total addressable market and revenue potential

   5. Start with minimal viable products and iterate based on feedback

   6. Focus on building products customers love vs optimizing for revenue immediately

Where to find Rohini Pandhi:

• X: https://x.com/rohinip

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rohinipandhi

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Rohini’s background

(05:00) The role of product managers at Mercury

(09:51) Key indicators that it’s time to hire PMs

(13:18) Building the product team at Mercury

(19:53) Why you should avoid hiring PMs too early

(22:26) The different flavors of product management

(26:15) How to attract top talent

(35:59) Advocating for quality in product development

(44:10) Going multi-product

(46:37) Organizational structure for multi-product success

(50:57) Organizational culture for multi-product success

(52:07) Customer obsession and product development

(57:36) More lessons from going multi-product

(01:05:57) Transparent Collective: supporting underrepresented founders

(01:09:54) Lightning round

Referenced:

• Immad Akhund on X: https://x.com/immad

• Mercury: https://mercury.com

• Square: https://squareup.com

• Pioneers, Settlers, Town Planners [Wardley]: https://orghacking.com/pioneers-settlers-town-planners-wardley-9dcd3709cde7

• Jason Zhang on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-zhang-5645a860

• What is ‘Dogfooding’?: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/business/dogfooding.html

• Mercury Bill Pay: https://mercury.com/bill-pay

• Zip: https://zip.co

• Jira: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira

• The art and science of pricing | Madhavan Ramanujam (Monetizing Innovation, Simon-Kucher): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-art-and-science-of-pricing-madhavan

• Gokul Rajaram on designing your product development process, when and how to hire your first PM, a playbook for hiring leaders, getting ahead in you career, how to get started angel investing, more: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/gokul-rajaram-on-designing-your-product

• Gokul Rajaram on X: https://x.com/gokulr

• Transparent Collective: https://www.transparentcollective.com

• 16 Reading Tips from Naval Ravikant: https://alexandbooks.com/archive/16-reading-tips-from-naval-ravikant

• Shrinking on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/shrinking

• Bad Sisters on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/bad-sisters

• Slow Horses on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/slow-horses

• Severance on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/severance

• Presumed Innocent on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/presumed-innocent

• Waymo: https://waymo.com

• Adam Robinson on X: https://x.com/IAmAdamRobinson

• Cyan Banister—From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More): https://tim.blog/2024/11/28/cyan-banister

• Bobby Matson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbymatson

• Jobs at Mercury: https://mercury.com/jobs

Recommended books:

• Vectors: Aphorisms & Ten-Second Essays: https://www.amazon.com/Vectors-Aphorisms-Ten-Second-James-Richardson/dp/0967266890

• The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance: https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tennis-Classic-Performance/dp/0679778314

• Pachinko: https://www.amazon.com/Pachinko-National-Book-Award-Finalist/dp/1455563927

• Cutting for Stone: https://www.amazon.com/Cutting-Stone-Abraham-Verghese/dp/0375714367

• The Song of Achilles: https://www.amazon.com/Song-Achilles-Novel-Madeline-Miller/dp/0062060627

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.