Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career cover image

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

How to build your product team from scratch, attract top product talent, go multi-product, and more | Rohini Pandhi (Mercury, Square)

Jan 12, 2025
Rohini Pandhi is a product leader at Mercury and co-founder of Transparent Collective. In this discussion, she shares insights on recognizing when to hire product managers and the importance of founders taking on this role initially. Rohini emphasizes the need for high-quality product design, particularly in finance, and explores how to attract top talent. She also discusses the transition to multi-product strategies and the value of fostering a customer-centric culture to align offerings with user needs.
01:19:24
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Episode guests

Rohini Pandhi

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

  • Mercury's transition from relying solely on founders to hiring product managers was crucial for managing product development efficiently as the company grew.
  • The framework of categorizing product managers into pioneers, town settlers, and city planners helps companies make informed hiring decisions based on their specific needs.

Deep dives

The Evolution of Product Management at Mercury

Mercury initially operated without product managers, relying solely on its engineers and founders to handle those duties. As the company grew to about 400 employees, it became apparent that the founders could no longer manage all aspects of product development effectively. The bottlenecks emerged when nearly every decision required their attention, hindering responsiveness and slowing down processes. This forced Mercury to hire product managers to take on essential project management tasks, allowing other teams to focus on their engineering and design responsibilities.

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