Unconventional product lessons from Binance, N26, Google, more

Mayur Kamat, Chief Product Officer at N26 and former Global Head of Product at Binance, VP of Product at Agoda, and early PM at Google, discusses his career and operating philosophy. The conversation covers Binance's unusual high-speed, flat-structure culture, lessons from Google's Hangouts, advice on career growth and choosing roles, why experimentation beats strategy for most PMs, and how to find and work on high-leverage problems.

01Key learnings

• Join fast-growing companies, since learning compounds much faster when you ship and learn daily rather than over multi-year cycles.
• Identify your genuine strengths, through structured assessments or peer feedback, and seek roles where success depends on using them.
• Early in your career, don't optimize for compensation; most earnings tend to come later, so prioritize learning and fit.
• Decide early whether you aspire to C-level roles, since that path demands sacrifices that are only sustainable if you find the work genuinely energizing.
• For most PMs, treat strategy as a fast loop from hypothesis to data; build experimentation so decisions become scientific rather than opinion-driven.
• Focus on the few problems with 10x positive or negative impact and keep open calendar space to work on them, even going into details personally.
• Be wary of long-term projects of six months or more, since external macro conditions can invalidate them; prefer small, quick validation.
• Consider building early careers in high-talent-density hubs like the US West Coast, while recognizing that moving abroad can affect compensation and create career ceilings.

02Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.