Unconventional product lessons from Binance, N26, Google, more | Mayur Kamat (CPO at N26, ex-Binance Head of Product)

May 22, 2025 1h 37m 15 insights Episode Page ↗
Mayur Komet, CPO at N26, shares insights from his career at Google, Binance, and Agoda. He discusses unique work cultures, career acceleration strategies, the importance of experimentation in product management, and navigating global career paths.
Actionable Insights

1. Prioritize Fast-Growing Companies

Work at companies experiencing rapid growth to compound your learning much faster, as this provides more opportunities to see problems at scale and accelerate your career.

2. Leverage Your Superpowers

Identify your true strengths and seek jobs where success is determined by how much you get to use those superpowers, rather than focusing on improving weaknesses.

3. Optimize for Future Compensation

Do not optimize for compensation early in your career (first 15 years), as most of your financial wealth will be backloaded to the last five years; instead, prioritize learning and growth.

4. Calibrate C-Level Ambition Early

Determine early in your career if you truly want to be a C-level executive, as this path requires deep enjoyment of work, where challenges feel fulfilling rather than sacrifices.

5. Embrace Experimentation Culture

Build an experimentation-driven product culture to make product management scientific, allowing PMs to validate hypotheses quickly with data and democratize performance.

6. Focus on High-Leverage Problems

Prioritize working on problems that have a 10x positive or negative impact on the company, such as growth or compliance issues, rather than less impactful tasks.

7. Maintain an Open Calendar

Keep your calendar free of excessive recurring meetings and one-on-ones to create space for working on high-leverage problems and deep, focused work.

8. Be Detail-Oriented (Even as a Leader)

Be willing to dive deep into the details of critical problems, irrespective of your title, to ensure effective execution and set an example for your team.

9. Seek Talent-Dense Locations Early

Start your career in intensely talent-dense areas like the West Coast of the US (or specific hubs for certain industries) to build strong networks and gain valuable experience.

10. Run Urgent Projects via Daily Meetings

For super urgent initiatives, appoint an owner who leads daily all-hands meetings to ensure rapid decision-making, unblocked progress, and daily updates to leadership.

11. Focus on Customer Inclusion

Prioritize extreme customer focus, ensuring no user is left behind, even if their individual impact on conversion rates seems low, as every person matters.

12. Avoid Long-Term Projects

Don’t take on projects that are six months to a year long, as you generally lack control over macro factors that can derail them, favoring faster validation of hypotheses.

13. Build Products with Macro Hedges

Design a product portfolio where different offerings naturally complement each other and hedge against macroeconomic shifts, like how banking products balance deposits and lending based on interest rates.

14. Consider International Experience

Work in different countries to gain a global perspective on product development, understand diverse user constraints firsthand, and appreciate varying legal/compliance landscapes.

15. Use AI for Developer Productivity, Support, Fraud

Implement AI tools for coding assistance (18-25% productivity boost), customer support deflection (60-70% of basic questions), and fraud detection by analyzing patterns.