This week, we're diving into the how, what, when, and why of going from single product focus to multi-product strategy, a common stumbling block for startups.
🎧 Prefer to listen? Check out the audio version of today's interview here.
From Flagship Back to Fledgling: Lessons on Going Multi-Product from an Early Stripe PM
Who is your target user?
For Tara Seshan, this is the lead-off question for her teams when she’s running product reviews, and it always makes her think of Enterprise — the car rental company.
“I’m not sure if it’s apocryphal or a real story, but I still like to tell it. Enterprise was competing with the likes of Hertz and Avis. Those guys had the airport real estate. They also had Audis and BMWs. Enterprise Rent-A-Car really had nothing. And so there was absolutely no way to compete building ‘the best service’ or ‘best product.’ What they did instead was focus on a different user — people who get into car accidents,” she says. So instead of focusing on providing fancy vehicles, Enterprise offered a unique crash pickup service.
Over time, they were able to expand. But it started by making a very, very opinionated bet on who their target user was and it allowed them to compete on dimensions that other services and tools just didn’t find relevant. It is the most important question to ask, full stop. If you cannot clearly outline to me who your target user is and, therefore, why the features follow are uniquely suited to that user, it’s dead in the water. It's got to be specific.”
In Seshan’s view, folks tend to overestimate the impact of launching specific features and building the best product, instead of focusing on building the right product for their target user. Sounds simple in theory, but tough to consistently pull off in practice, particularly as a scaling startup takes bold swings at building out its product lineup.
But she’s got an excellent track record here. Before her most recent role as Head of Product at Watershed, Seshan spent a nearly seven-year stretch at Stripe. She joined the company at the sub-200-person mark back in 2015. She was the PM on Radar, Stripe's first monetized product outside of core payments, and she helped scale Billing and Treasury from 0 to 1 as a product lead and GM.
Today on The Review, Seshan shares 9 specific lessons on going multi-product and building for your target users, drawing on examples from both Stripe and Watershed. She dives into:
- Advice on how to get the timing right and different ways to approach the problem of what to build
- The 12 questions she runs her teams through at every product review
- How to structure lean, self-sufficient teams that can navigate the uncertainties of new product development
- Tips for hiring great product thinkers and “diamonds in the rough,” including traits to look for and specific interview questions.
- What she learned from Patrick Collison and Shreyas Doshi at Stripe.
Thanks, as always, for reading and sharing!
-The Review Editors
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