Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders S11 Bonus: Tiffany Johnson, NMI
Jul 31, 2025
Tiffany Johnson, Chief Product Officer of NMI, shares her adventure from Texas to California and an accidental career in payments. She discusses the intricacies of product development in the embedded payments space and the challenges of launching payment solutions for SaaS platforms. Tiffany highlights the importance of customer obsession and the scalability issues faced in delivering seamless solutions. Her insights touch on fostering a culture of learning and innovation, which are vital for aspiring entrepreneurs in tech.
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Tiffany's Start and NMI's Scale
- Tiffany Johnson joined NMI, a 25-year company, as Chief Product Officer excited about their vision and product.
- NMI processes over $400 billion in payment volume annually through 4,000 partners supporting about a million small businesses.
Strategic MVP Trade-offs at NMI
- To launch the embedded payments platform, NMI acquired a company for risk underwriting and merchant accounts.
- Key trade-offs included balancing integration speed, product readiness, and team focus between new and existing products.
Data-Driven Roadmap Building
- Build your roadmap by identifying key customer pain points and desired outcomes like payment volume or partner onboarding.
- Use a now, next, later framework guided by data and customer feedback to prioritize features.