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Lenny's PodcastRohini Pandhi: Why founders should be the PM until it breaks
Through pioneer, town settler, and city planner PM archetypes; Mercury scaled from zero PMs to 30 by matching type to product maturity stage.
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Episode Details
EPISODE INFO
- Released
- January 12, 2025
- Duration
- 1h 19m
- Channel
- Lenny's Podcast
- Watch on YouTube
- ▶ Open ↗
EPISODE DESCRIPTION
Rohini Pandhi is a product leader at Mercury, and previously spent over seven years at Square/Block leading product work on Square payments, invoicing, and the Bitkey hardware Bitcoin wallet. She’s also the co-founder of the startup bootcamp Transparent Collective and is an active angel investor. In our conversation, we discuss:
- Key indicators that it’s time to hire PMs
- How to build your early PM team
- Why founders should initially take on the product manager role themselves
- How to attract top PM talent
- What she’s learned about going multi-product
- A case for investing in quality
- More
— Brought to you by:
- Cloudinary—The foundational technology for all images and video on the internet: http://cloudinary.com/lenny
- OneSchema—Import CSV data 10x faster: https://oneschema.co/lenny
- Airtable ProductCentral—Launch to new heights with a unified system for product development: https://www.airtable.com/lenny
Skip the Mercury Personal waitlist: https://mercurytechnologies.typeform.com/lenny Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-build-your-product-team-from-scratch-rohini-pandhi Where to find Rohini Pandhi:
Where to find Lenny:
- Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
- X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Rohini’s background (05:00) The role of product managers at Mercury (09:51) Key indicators that it’s time to hire PMs (13:18) Building the product team at Mercury (19:53) Why you should avoid hiring PMs too early (22:26) The different flavors of product management (26:15) How to attract top talent (35:59) Advocating for quality in product development (44:10) Going multi-product (46:37) Organizational structure for multi-product success (50:57) Organizational culture for multi-product success (52:07) Customer obsession and product development (57:36) More lessons from going multi-product (01:05:57) Transparent Collective: supporting underrepresented founders (01:09:54) Lightning round Referenced:
- Immad Akhund on X: https://x.com/immad
- Mercury: https://mercury.com
- Square: https://squareup.com
- Product management career ladders: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/product-management-career-ladders
- Pioneers, Settlers, Town Planners [Wardley]: https://orghacking.com/pioneers-settlers-town-planners-wardley-9dcd3709cde7
- Jason Zhang on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-zhang-5645a860
- What is ‘Dogfooding’?: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/business/dogfooding.html
- Mercury Bill Pay: https://mercury.com/bill-pay
- Zip: https://zip.co
- Jira: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira
- The art and science of pricing | Madhavan Ramanujam (Monetizing Innovation, Simon-Kucher): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-art-and-science-of-pricing-madhavan
- Gokul Rajaram on designing your product development process, when and how to hire your first PM, a playbook for hiring leaders, getting ahead in you career, how to get started angel investing, more: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/gokul-rajaram-on-designing-your-product
- Gokul Rajaram on X: https://x.com/gokulr
- Transparent Collective: https://www.transparentcollective.com
- 16 Reading Tips from Naval Ravikant: https://alexandbooks.com/archive/16-reading-tips-from-naval-ravikant
- Shrinking on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/shrinking
- Bad Sisters on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/bad-sisters
- Slow Horses on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/slow-horses
- Severance on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/severance
- Presumed Innocent on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/presumed-innocent
- Waymo: https://waymo.com
- Adam Robinson on X: https://x.com/IAmAdamRobinson
- Cyan Banister—From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ More): https://tim.blog/2024/11/28/cyan-banister
- Bobby Matson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbymatson
- Jobs at Mercury: https://mercury.com/jobs
Recommended books:
- Vectors: Aphorisms & Ten-Second Essays: https://www.amazon.com/Vectors-Aphorisms-Ten-Second-James-Richardson/dp/0967266890
- The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance: https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tennis-Classic-Performance/dp/0679778314
- Pachinko: https://www.amazon.com/Pachinko-National-Book-Award-Finalist/dp/1455563927
- Cutting for Stone: https://www.amazon.com/Cutting-Stone-Abraham-Verghese/dp/0375714367
- The Song of Achilles: https://www.amazon.com/Song-Achilles-Novel-Madeline-Miller/dp/0062060627
Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
SPEAKERS
Lenny Rachitsky
hostRohini Pandhi
guestChristina (OneSchema ad spokesperson)
guestNarrator
other
EPISODE SUMMARY
In this episode of Lenny's Podcast, featuring Lenny Rachitsky and Rohini Pandhi, Rohini Pandhi: Why founders should be the PM until it breaks explores From PM Skepticism To Multi-Product Success At Mercury And Square Lenny interviews Mercury product leader Rohini Pandey about how Mercury went from proudly having zero product managers to building a 30-person PM org, and what that transition required culturally and operationally.
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