Brandon Chu is VP of Product at Shopify, where he leads the app platform ecosystem, new initiatives group, and M&A investments. Brandon helped scale Shopify’s PM team from five to hundreds, and worked his way up from an IC Senior PM. Prior to Shopify, he was a Director of PM at FreshBooks and, before that, a founder. Brandon might be best known for his writing on the art and science of product management as part of a collection on Medium he calls “The Black Box of Product Management.”—Thank you to our sponsors for making this episode possible:• Stytch: https://stytch.com/• Persona: https://withpersona.com/lenny• PostHog: https://posthog.com/lenny—In this episode, we cover:1) Brandon’s path to VP of Product at Shopify.2) What has Brandon found to be the most important skill set for super-successful PMs?3) What is it like to build product at Shopify?4) How did Shopify adjust after the shock to e-commerce during Covid?5) How did Shopify build a one-click team offsite flight/hotel/activity booking platform?6) How did Brandon motivate himself to start, and keep, writing?7) As a PM, why is writing one of the highest-ROI uses of your time?8) What’s Brandon’s favorite piece of writing?9) What are the biggest surprises, pros, and cons about being a platform PM?—Where to find Brandon:• Twitter: https://twitter.com/brandonmchu• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonmchu/• Brandon’s writing: https://blackboxofpm.com/• Making Good Decisions as a Product Manager: https://blackboxofpm.com/making-good-decisions-as-a-product-manager-c66ddacc9e2b Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Brandon Chu, former VP of Product at Shopify, shares insights on high-conviction decision making for product managers. They discuss the value of the Minimum Viable Product mindset, mental models for product success, explaining new products, survivorship bias, the role of language models, and the potential of AI in streamlining document work and improving internal decision making.