The folks I work most closely with at cash on the engineering side were in Melbourne, San Francisco and Waterloo. It always kind of stuck in my mind that this one day feedback cycle it's like I think I've read for like GitLab and other companies like this. You need to have really really good documentation as early as possible because almost all documentation gets out of date really fast. Still synchronous communication really really matters so I would love if somebody could figure out I actually haven't figured out how to do really good asynchronous communication well.
Our second episode is with Ayo Omojola, VP of Product at Carbon Health. Previously, he was the founding product manager on the banking team for Cash App at Square, where he co-created the Cash Card and helped build out Square’s technical banking infrastructure. He’s also a former founder of a Y Combinator-backed startup and an active angel investor, which gives him a unique lens into finding and evaluating startup ideas.
Tapping into Ayo’s experience working in the heavily regulated spaces of healthcare and financial services, we dive into how he untangles regulations to find “the opportunities where it’s easy to stop” and goes “unreasonably deep” when building early products. Ayo thinks a lot about problem selection and makes the case for putting more effort into choosing what to work on. It’s a must-listen for anyone who’s thinking about starting a company someday, or a product leader who hopes to help a new product take shape.
But even if those aren’t goals of yours, there’s still tons to learn. Ayo shares the individuals he learned the most from during his time at Square and the frameworks he picked up from them, such as on how to get better at process, setting context, and “optimizing for the outstanding.” Last but not least, we get into his management and hiring philosophy, including why he loves to hire former founders.
You can follow Ayo on Twitter at @ay_o. For reference, the leaders he gave a shout out to in the episode include Robert Andersen (the founding designer at Square), Dhanji Prasanna (who led engineering for Cash App), Jim Esposito (Operations Lead for Cash App) and Emily Chiu (who led strategic development efforts for Cash App).
You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/firstround and twitter.com/brettberson