Building product at Stripe: craft, metrics, and customer obsession | Jeff Weinstein (Product lead)

Jeff Weinstein is a product lead at Stripe, where he helped grow their payment APIs to hundreds of billions in volume and transformed the way founders start companies into a few simple clicks with Atlas. Prior to Stripe, Jeff led several startups and sold companies to Groupon and Box. He’s known for his customer obsession, craft, quality, and building beloved products businesses rely on. In our conversation, we discuss:
• The power of customer obsession and how to operationalize it in the product development process
• How to pick the right metrics and use them to drive impact
• Techniques for getting things done at big companies
• A group practice Jeff started to uplevel product craft, called Study Group
• The story behind Stripe Atlas and its mission to increase entrepreneurship globally
• Lessons from working with the founders of Stripe
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Find the transcript and references at: www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/bu...
Where to find Jeff Weinstein:
• X: x.com/jeff_weinstein
• LinkedIn: / jeffwweinstein
• Email: [e-mail]
Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: www.lennysnewsletter.com
• X: / lennysan
• LinkedIn: / lennyrachitsky
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Jeff’s background
(10:16) The “go, go, go ASAP + optimistic, long-term compounding” approach
(15:38) The importance of craft and quality
(24:15) Effective customer communication strategies
(28:57) The importance of speed in customer interactions
(33:19) Narrowing your focus
(36:53) Why you should pay attention only to paying-customer feedback
(40:24) Practicing silence when communicating
(45:33) The role of metrics in product success
(54:08) Empowering teams with a single metric
(58:23) Picking the right metric for your audience
(01:05:10) The importance of metric hygiene
(01:11:33) How Stripe uses “study groups” for product improvement
(01:37:20) Stripe’s Atlas: simplifying company formation
(01:50:38) Automation and operational efficiency
(01:55:13) Diversity and team building
(02:03:09) Building new products within a large company
(02:21:10) Lightning round
Production and marketing by penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [e-mail].
Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

[@NielsVynckier]

This episode made me love my job again. Really, really good!

[@npc9710]

i wonder what are his developers think of him, and how did they really react when he left the room after bringing them the news that they will work on those "brilliant ideas". I'm not saying he has bad ideas, but i don't know how good they are in the context. and knowing developer's average day to day i just assume that devs have a lot to say about most of his ideas. it could be cool to ask them

[@zsteinkamp]

Having worked with him in two jobs as an engineer, Jeff is universally loved. Engineers who think their jobs stop at code and don't want to be bothered with customer problems will not be hired into his teams. Those with passion for building great products for real customers will thrive.

[@A_Shreef]

I don’t know Jeff, but back when I was an Engineer, I would have loved to be on his team. A lot of engineers enjoy being treated as problem solvers and not just coders

[@shereensamuel7752]

This is definitely a 1.0x speed podcast. I tired 1.5x and was back at 1.0 in less than 5 minutes. 😂😅
Love your work Lenny!! Great insights

[@zsteinkamp]

Jeff sets the bar with unparalleled skill and enthusiasm. Listen carefully and learn!

[@BatistLeman]

We just hired our first Product Manager, this is very inspiring, forwarding this now! Thanks Jeff & Lenny!

[@lcominghome]

What are you building?

[@JonathanLaRiviere]

Legit favorite episode by far. I would love to watch another episode with him. As a budding PM, this is gold.

[@adriannoes]

Amazing insights. Thanks for sharing, Lenny and Jeff!

[@NielsVynckier]

This episode made me love my job again. Really, really good

[@1Rabih]

great podcast full of insight and useful anecdotes :)

[@Alex_Cevi]

Stripe is amazing. They setup a whole engineering and product call just to talk about my bizarre use case for custom checkouts which were are beta. Super personal very nice people and they even sent a thank you gift card which is a gesture that goes a long way.

[@arpit_entertainment896]

bro loves snacks

[@_ped_]

love to see Raycast getting a shoutout!

[@SudoRyan]

Amazing content! On the who to listen to bit.. I feel I naturally do the same thing, selecting for ppl who are willing to put in the effort to go deep, but I wonder about the downsides of that, because I know personally I get annoyed when I have issues with a piece of software and my succinct email doesn't seem to be getting through to anyone / inspiring any response. Like will this send us down the over-optimize for power users path which leads to a complicated product?

[@WesGarnett]

Fantastic video! Thanks for making this happen. Is that a Badger on your mic?

[@GSJThescientist]

Wonderful

[@nmax-tech]

longest intro i listened ever, podcast starts 2:45