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

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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