5 Building Lessons From Jeff Weinstein - Product Lead at Stripe

The best of what Jeff Weinstein, Product Lead at Stripe, has already figured out

Jul 28, 2024

Lesson 1: Go Go Go ASAP + Optimistic, long-term compounding approach

Go Go Go ASAP: We have opportunities to take action. What do we want to do tomorrow? Can we do it today? Why wait?

Long-term compounding: Coupling the “Go Go Go ASAP” mentality with having a longer-term strategic mindset where some of the things you want to accomplish can’t be solved in an afternoon. It will require layers of infrastructure, applications, services, UI, partnerships etc.

Key takeaway: Pair the mindset of wanting to get things done ASAP with a longer-term view of where you want to go, what needs to be true over time, and where your product's investment opportunities are.

Lesson 2: Obsess over the core problem

“Does the thing you’re building solve a real problem in the world and are people clamouring for your solution?”

The Sean Ellis or 40% test can be a useful tool to measure this whereby the main question of this survey and its possible options are the following:

How would you feel if you could no longer use [your product]?

- Very disappointed
- Somewhat disappointed
- Not disappointed
- I no longer use this product

The option “very disappointed” indicates that the product is a must-have for the customer. Once the product team gets 40% of the interviewed customers to vote for “very disappointed,” then there is a good chance that the product is on its way towards sustainable and scalable growth. The magic number of 40% was taken after the comparison of results from hundreds of startups who run this test. Startups that received at least 40% of their customer responses as “very disappointed” managed to build high-growth business models. Whereas, startups that got their results below 40% had issues with sustainability

Key takeaway: Find problems that people will spend valuable parts of their day trying to solve. Focus on problems where they’ll leap at the opportunity to have a solution.

Lesson 3: Your business = Your customers

If someone takes the time to raise issues and concerns, even though they don’t have to and could stop using your product, take the time to speak to them and make contact, even if it’s just an email back. Ask them for more details. As part of the process, those with the greatest pain will naturally self-select and weed out those who don’t feel as passionate about the problem.

Key takeaway: Take the time to bridge the gap between you and your customers through two-worlds thinking. Instead of guessing what the customer wants, speak to them directly.

Lesson 4: Metrics are vital to product building and decision-making

Metrics can be seen as a numerical representation of the value we’re providing to customers. Carefully thought-out metrics will guide discussions around trade-offs and decisions for how to build the product.

Example metrics tracked by Stripe:

% of customers with zero support: Only 15% of customers were getting through Atlas without a support ticket. By focusing on this one metric, alongside other support metrics, they increased this to 85% which naturally improved CX.
Bad-day chart: Plot customer negative experience reasons by frequency. You want to visualise detractors of a 5* experience to add them as product focus areas.

Key takeaway: Measure from the perspective of “Has the customer accomplished what they wanted to do?”

Lesson 5: Take the time to build customer empathy

Jeff mentioned two techniques used in Stripe aimed at building empathy for their customers 1) Friction logs and 2) Internal study groups

Friction logs

An individual will pretend to be a customer and will go through the product experience end-to-end and write down their experience. This can result in a critique of the product and company but ultimately this will help the customer. The frequency depends on your product and how often it changes.

Internal study groups

A random group of people in the company come together to tackle a scenario that relates to your customer’s jobs-to-be-done or a scenario they might face.

There are two rules:

You no longer work at your company - you must embody your customer by avoiding leveraging common company knowledge & workarounds
You’re not there to solve problems, you’re there to practice empathy

Key takeaway: You must seek the truth for what your user’s experience is in their world, not in yours.

And that’s everything for this week.

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