By Shreyas Doshi · shreyasdoshi.substack.com · @shreyas on X · LinkedIn
Shreyas Doshi describes a counterintuitive lesson he picked up from observing a manager at Stripe: the most persuasive way to win people over is often to stop selling and instead be genuinely candid about tradeoffs, limitations, and what you don't know. The piece argues that this 'genuine anti-sell' builds more trust and buy-in than polished advocacy, which tends to trigger skepticism. Because influence is central to product work, the idea is relevant to PMs who must align engineers, designers, executives, and customers around decisions. The source text provided here is only a single opening line, so the detailed argument could not be verified and this metadata reflects only the framing given in the title and introduction.
01Key takeaways
- Persuasion can work better when you stop trying to sell and openly share tradeoffs.
- Acknowledging limitations and uncertainty can build more trust than polished advocacy.
- Observing strong leaders in action can reveal influence tactics that are hard to learn from theory alone.
02Key sections
- The counterintuitive observation
- The author frames the essay around a lesson learned late in his career by watching a manager at Stripe. The insight runs against common intuitions about persuasion.
03From the post
“Something counterintuitive I learned late in my career (by observing a manager of mine at Stripe):”
Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.