Brandon Chu on building product at Shopify, how writing changed the trajectory of his career, the habits that make you a great PM, pros and cons of being a platform PM, how Shopify got through Covid
Brandon Chu, VP of Product at Shopify, discusses Shopify's strong product culture, remote work strategies like "bursts," and the profound impact of writing on his career. He offers actionable advice for PMs, emphasizing founder skills, strategic decision-making, and the unique challenges of platform product management.
Deep Dive Analysis
10 Topic Outline
Brandon Chu's Journey to VP of Product at Shopify
Essential Skills for High-Trajectory Product Managers
Defining Characteristics of Shopify's Product Culture
Shopify's Approach to Large-Scale Decision Making
Adapting to Change: Shopify's COVID-19 Response
Lessons Learned from Shopify's Remote-First Model
The Impact and Value of Writing for Product Managers
Brandon Chu's Decision-Making Framework for PMs
The Unique Challenges and Mindset of a Platform PM
Advice for PMs: Side Hustles and Technical Demystification
6 Key Concepts
Founder Skills for PMs
Beyond foundational hard skills, these encompass abilities like storytelling, motivating teams, making high-conviction decisions, leading by example, and accountability, which are crucial for product managers aiming for high-trajectory careers.
Shopify PM Role
Product Managers at Shopify are defined by their responsibility to 'help teams ship the right thing at the right time in the right way.' This involves servant leadership, enabling product thinking across all functions, and being accountable for the right outcome rather than dictating.
No Sunk Cost Fallacy (Shopify)
Shopify's culture prioritizes the ability to discard ongoing projects or plans if market conditions or priorities change. This ensures teams always focus on the most impactful initiatives, even if it means abandoning previous investments to adapt quickly.
Shopify Bursts
These are scheduled in-person gatherings, typically held once a quarter, where remote teams come together for high-velocity creative work and social bonding. Shopify facilitates these with in-house web and mobile apps for one-click travel and logistics booking.
Decision-Making Framework for PMs (Brandon Chu)
This framework emphasizes first assessing the importance of a decision based on factors like reversibility and user impact. For the few critical decisions, PMs should invest significant time, while for the majority of less important ones, they should rely on gut instinct or delegation to maintain team velocity.
Platform Principles
These are foundational values or priorities that guide all policy and design choices when building a platform or ecosystem. They dictate which constituents (e.g., consumers, merchants, developers) are prioritized when making trade-offs, shaping the platform's long-term direction and impact.
9 Questions Answered
Beyond foundational hard skills like organization and analysis, super-successful PMs lean into 'founder skills' such as storytelling, motivating teams, making high-conviction decisions, leading by example, and accountability.
Shopify's culture is highly technical, expects everyone (not just PMs) to engage in product thinking, and fosters an ambitious, founder-mentality environment with 30-40% of PMs being ex-founders.
Shopify uses an annual 'investment plan' cycle to set broad, directional visions for large organizational segments, followed by a period of 'chaos' where teams iterate and make bets, with a strong cultural emphasis on discarding plans if conditions change (no sunk cost fallacy).
Shopify threw out all roadmaps, focusing entirely on helping merchants survive by rapidly shipping features like buy online/pick up at curb and gift cards, and quickly transitioned to a 'digital by default' remote-first company.
Shopify learned that in-person interaction still matters, leading them to institute 'bursts' (team gatherings facilitated by in-house booking apps) and a policy allowing employees to work from any country for 90 days a year.
Writing helps PMs crystallize their thoughts, pre-onboards new team members by sharing their thinking, influences internal strategy, builds trust with leadership, attracts talent, and can significantly accelerate career progression.
PMs should first determine the importance of a decision (e.g., reversibility, user impact). They should dedicate significant time to the few critical decisions and, for the majority of less important ones, rely on gut instinct or delegation to maintain team velocity.
Platform PMs experience significantly longer cycles (5-10x) for validation, design a 'canvas' for developers rather than direct end-user experiences, and must define clear platform principles to navigate complex multi-constituent trade-offs.
Engage in a legitimate side hustle or found a company to gain experience in sales, support, and shipping, and actively work to demystify technology by building simple projects themselves.
25 Actionable Insights
1. Cultivate Founder Skills for Leadership
To achieve high-level leadership in product management, develop “founder skills” such as storytelling, motivating teams, making high-conviction decisions, leading by example, and taking accountability for choices.
2. Start a Side Hustle/Company
To level up your career, engage in a legitimate side hustle or start a company to gain firsthand experience in selling, supporting, and shipping a product, which builds humility and a comprehensive understanding of software development.
3. Prioritize Decisions by Importance
Before making any decision, first assess its importance (e.g., reversibility, user impact) to prioritize your limited time and focus on the few truly critical choices.
4. Use Writing to Solidify Thinking
Engage in the writing process to clarify and solidify mental models and frameworks, as the act of writing helps disambiguate complex thoughts and deepen understanding.
5. Avoid Sunk Cost Fallacy
Be prepared to discard existing plans or projects if external circumstances change, prioritizing what is currently most important rather than continuing due to past investment.
6. Implement “Bursts” for Remote Teams
Organize regular in-person “bursts” for remote teams (e.g., once a quarter) to foster high-velocity creative work, social connection, and team cohesion, leveraging dedicated infrastructure to handle logistics.
7. Define Core Platform Principles Early
Before technical or design execution, clearly define the guiding principles and the prioritized hierarchy of constituents (e.g., merchants vs. developers vs. buyers) for your platform to inform policy and design decisions.
8. Prioritize Customer Survival in Crisis
During a crisis, discard existing roadmaps and rapidly pivot to build features that directly address customers’ immediate survival needs, such as enabling online ordering for brick-and-mortar stores or gift card purchases.
9. Leverage External Writing for Internal Influence
Use external writing (e.g., blog posts) to gain external recognition and momentum, which can then be used to influence internal discussions and build trust within your company.
10. Dedicate Significant Time to Writing
Allocate substantial time (e.g., 40 hours per post), including weekends, for writing, drafting, extensive editing, and incorporating feedback to produce high-quality content.
11. Seek Early, Objective Feedback on Writing
Share raw, early drafts of your writing with objective readers to gain insights into how your narrative is perceived and improve clarity and impact.
12. Write for Clarity, Even Privately
Practice writing regularly, even if not for public sharing, to improve your ability to articulate thoughts clearly, which is crucial for effective communication with teams and stakeholders in a digital and remote world.
13. Demystify Technology by Building
For non-technical PMs, break through technical barriers by learning to build something simple (e.g., a Twitter clone via tutorial) to demystify technology and gain momentum in understanding its practical application.
14. Adjust Psychology for Platform Work
If working as a Platform PM, be prepared for significantly longer development cycles and proactively find ways to celebrate smaller milestones (e.g., API alpha release) to maintain team morale and personal validation.
15. Gain Both Platform & User-Facing Experience
Aim to gain experience in both platform and user-facing product management, as oscillating between these roles offers diverse learning opportunities and balances long-cycle platform work with faster user-feedback loops.
16. Delegate or Gut-Check Minor Decisions
For less important decisions, rely on your gut instinct or delegate them quickly to maintain team velocity and reserve significant time and effort for truly critical decisions.
17. Continuously Re-evaluate Priorities
Regularly ask if the current work is the most important thing to be doing, especially when the world changes, to ensure focus on high-impact initiatives.
18. Encourage Deep Product Involvement
Foster a culture where everyone, regardless of their function (e.g., engineers, support, sales), is encouraged to have deep involvement and responsibility for product thinking.
19. Embrace Servant Leadership as a PM
As a PM, focus on servant leadership by helping teams ship the right product at the right time in the right way, rather than acting as a dictator or sole decision-maker.
20. Offer Flexible Global Work Options
Allow employees to work from any country for a set period (e.g., 90 days a year) to leverage the benefits of a remote-only infrastructure and enhance work-life flexibility.
21. Plan for Long-Term Goals Early
Start saving and investing a consistent amount (e.g., $2,000/year) early in life to achieve significant long-term financial goals, such as a half-million-dollar target by a specific age.
22. Seek Brandon Chu as Angel Investor
If you are a founder seeking an angel investor, consider reaching out to Brandon Chu, who is an active angel investor with investments in over 60 companies.
23. Follow Brandon Chu on Twitter
Follow Brandon M. Chu on Twitter for insights, as he is a VP of Product at Shopify and an active angel investor.
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6 Key Quotes
I figured out everything in those posts at the exact moment I wrote them. It was the writing process itself that actually allowed me to solidify those mental models and those frameworks in my mind.
Brandon Chu
Your job is to help teams ship the right thing at the right time in the right way.
Brandon Chu
We're pretty good at never falling in a sunk cost fallacy. So we'll throw it all away anytime if the world changes.
Brandon Chu
It accelerated my career probably a decade.
Brandon Chu
I don't know what I think until I've written it down.
Lenny Rachitsky
Do a legitimate side hustle, found a company on the side and learn everything else.
Brandon Chu
1 Protocols
Shopify Team Burst Protocol
Brandon Chu- Initiate an event called a 'burst,' choosing the type of activity (pure work or work with social aspects).
- Select from available locations, which vary based on the number of people attending.
- Utilize the in-house booking system to automatically book flights, hotels, and arrange food, eliminating the need for individual expense management.
- For lower-key meetings in major cities, access retrofitted old Shopify offices that now serve as community spaces.
- Check into the chosen locations using the dedicated app.
- Provide a rating for the burst experience afterward to help improve future events.
- Shopify's internal system uses burst data to identify teams that haven't met in a long time and prompts leads to consider a burst if team energy is low.