Why saying no to customers builds better products – Patrick Ndjientcheu (CPTO, Irembo)

Sep 17, 2025

Patrick Ndjientcheu, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Irembo, dives into the transition from project-based services to scalable product solutions. He shares how his team navigated the complexities of rebranding and developing standalone products like payments and identity verification. Patrick emphasizes the importance of setting boundaries with customer demands, restructuring teams for product-oriented development, and the crucial role of sales enablement in driving adoption. His insights on evolving Irembo into a super app reveal key strategies for innovating in response to market needs.

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INSIGHT

Features Can Reveal New Products

Building internal capabilities exposed broader market opportunities beyond the original government project.
Payments and identity began as embedded features and became standalone products as demand scaled.

ADVICE

Formalize Product Identity Early

Formalize product identity, principles, and strategy once recurring demand appears.
Use that structure to decide what to say no to and keep the product sustainable.

ADVICE

Reorganize Teams Around Capabilities

Restructure teams around capabilities rather than firing people when shifting from projects to products.
Keep a dedicated platform product team while a separate project team implements and onboards services.

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In this episode of The Product Experience, Patrick Ndjientcheu, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Irembo, shares how his team transitioned from delivering projects for government to building a portfolio of scalable products.

Patrick talks about shifting mindsets from execution to strategy, spinning out payments and identity into independent products, and the challenges of balancing internal bias with customer needs.

He also reveals how Irembo is evolving into a super app, why sales enablement is crucial in a B2B context, and the lessons he has learned guiding teams through the move from project to product to product portfolio.

Six things we learned from Patrick

Project to product mindset: Repeat customer demand signals value, turn ad-hoc projects into structured products with identity, principles, and strategy.

Team restructuring without turnover: Shifting from project delivery to product development requires reorganising teams around capabilities.

Spinouts emerge from features: Payments and identity started as embedded features, but with scale and external demand, became standalone products.

Bias is real: Teams naturally over-index on the dominant revenue product. Separation, customer interviews, and rebranding are critical to balance focus.

Sales enablement matters: Without educating sales and customers on new platform capabilities, adoption stalls and value is under-communicated.

Leadership lesson: Product leaders must bring the whole organisation on the journey—marketing, sales, finance, and operations—not just product teams.

Featured Links: Follow Patrick on LinkedIn | Irembo | Inspire Africa

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.