Unconventional product lessons from Binance, N26, Google, more | Mayur Kamat (CPO at N26, ex-Binance Head of Product)

Overview

This episode features Mayur Kamat, Chief Product Officer at N26, as he shares unconventional lessons from his career at companies like Binance, Google, and Agoda. The conversation dives into career strategies for product managers, the unique challenges of fintech, the importance of experimentation, and how to focus on high-leverage problems.

Notable Quotes

- Come to me with data. If you come to me with ideas, we'll go with mine. – Mayur Kamat, on the importance of data-driven decision-making.

- There’s no right or wrong decision, just slow and fast decisions. – Mayur Kamat, on the value of speed in product management.

- Optimize for strengths, not weaknesses. Find jobs where success is determined by how much of your superpowers you get to use. – Mayur Kamat, on career growth.

🚀 Working at Binance: A Culture of Extreme Ownership

- Binance’s rapid growth (from zero to $400 billion valuation in five years) was driven by a flat organizational structure and extreme decision-making speed.

- Mayur described how leadership met daily, even on weekends, to ensure no decision was delayed for more than 24 hours.

- The company’s culture emphasized extreme ownership, where individuals were empowered to solve massive problems, such as obtaining 15 financial licenses in 15 countries within three months.

- Challenges included balancing this high-pressure environment with team sustainability and avoiding randomization of priorities.

💡 Career Advice for Product Managers

- Work at high-growth companies: These environments accelerate learning and provide unparalleled opportunities to solve complex problems.

- Optimize for strengths: Focus on roles that align with your natural abilities rather than trying to fix weaknesses.

- Don’t optimize for compensation early: Most career earnings are backloaded, so prioritize learning and growth over salary in the first 15 years.

- Decide if you want the C-suite path: Understand whether you’re driven by the process and sacrifices required to reach executive roles, or if you’d prefer to excel in a specialized or balanced career.

📊 Experimentation as a Product Philosophy

- Mayur emphasized that strategy is often overrated and should be replaced by rapid experimentation: Your strategy should be how fast you can go from hypothesis to data.

- At N26, experimentation tools like StatSig are used to test hypotheses quickly, enabling data-driven decisions.

- Building a culture of experimentation empowers product managers by making their work more scientific and defensible against subjective opinions.

🌍 Fintech’s Unique Challenges and Opportunities

- Fintech product managers must balance two customers: users and regulators. This dual focus creates high-stakes trade-offs that sharpen PM skills.

- Companies like N26 and Revolut produce exceptional PMs because they tackle first-of-their-kind problems, such as navigating global compliance while scaling.

- Fintech products are 100% products, with massive addressable markets and natural hedges against economic cycles (e.g., earning from deposits during high-interest periods and lending during low-interest periods).

🛠️ High-Leverage Decision-Making

- Focus on problems with a 10x impact, whether positive or negative. For fintech, these are often growth or compliance challenges.

- Mayur shared a story of a CEO who physically moved his desk to the department with the highest-leverage problem, embodying the principle of founder-level focus.

- Keeping a free calendar is essential for executives to dive deep into high-leverage areas without being bogged down by recurring meetings.