 Hey, hey, this is Carlos. I'm the founder and CEO at products code today I'm here with a fellow product leader Meryon Colbechi CPO at checkout. Welcome Meryon Thank you very much. Great to be here. It's good to have you on the show I was taking a look at your LinkedIn profile And I've seen you've done quite a if I've caught it right in the fintech space as a product leader Maybe we can start from the beginning and tell us a little more about how you actually broke into product Yeah, it's a it's an interesting question. Maybe maybe not necessarily the most travel path so early years I was I spent some time in the military service. I'm originally from Israel. So spend some time there and As part of my job, I Was starting to work on a computer system that you know, we were trying to to we were using I was using and I started giving Advice suggestions questions to our developers around, you know, how can this system improve? How can it become better? We were calling it product management at the time. I don't think I'm aging myself a little bit I don't know that it was actually there was a job called product management, but it was kind of what we were doing And over time it became something that I really really liked defining explaining creating a roadmap and And then as I was going through university studying computer science and history I really didn't know what I wanted to be when I grow up Someone that I knew reached out and said hey you did this in the military It's kind of the same thing here in this tech company. Why don't you come in and help us out with? with product management And that's how I got into it And over the year it's become Sort of my my path through my career you said that it started computer science and History that's an interesting hearing Tell me more about that You know, it goes back to like on the one hand not really knowing what you want to do when you grow up And the other hand sort of trying to find a balance between something that I thought at the time was Practical and could maybe help me get a job in the future And on the other hand being very interested in sort of history Something for the soul if you will so trying to find that balance and trying to Enrich my knowledge in parallel to doing something. That's a little bit more practical in day-to-day And you well, where was your first product manager a job? So my first product management job was at a company called nice systems so I'm curious to know about that moment because it's a lot of people who also didn't have a straight straight path into product But you're coming from the military. It's really really interesting And it's sometimes hard to explain in the civilian world what you've been doing before So how do you position yourself or in order to get a shot at getting a product an official product manager job? Yeah, I Would say I don't I don't know that I have like a ton of great advice there This was a personal connection someone who kind of knew what I was doing during the military and was like Are you interested in doing something similar? And of course I interviewed and etc. Etc. But there was a there was a network aspect and I think Many times I would say for for folks that are trying to break in to product manager or think that they want to break into product management A lot of times I've seen people move from one role in the company to into product management meaning they did something they were Successful at it. They started picking up some product management Tasks and and then someone on the product team said hmm. That's interesting That's a that's a good skill to have maybe this person can really become a product management and move over but Yeah, not the necessarily the a scalable way or a replicable way to to to break in if you will So you know in product We always say that it's very important to not fall in love with the solution but to fall in love with the problem and I'm looking at your Your a trajectory you work in incredible financial technology companies such as people so far and most recently Check out. So what are those big big problems? You're passionate about? Yeah, so I think that over the years what I've become very passionate about is The problem space of financial inclusion You skipped one of the companies that I was at in the middle, which was the company now called meta And there it was also around I was working on the Blockchain project on the stablecoin project that did not succeed but we We were also thinking about financial inclusion as one of the the key Aspects that we were trying in and financial inclusion to me what it means is How do we make? the Financial system the economic system more accessible to more people to more companies to Help them People that are generally underserved whether it's you know people in developing markets People you know in the US that don't have access to to banking You know at so far it was the problem of people with student debt And how can we help them repay that that quicker and for for cheaper? And how can we help them become more financially empowered? And here a checkout similarly As a as a payments company as a financial services company. How do we enable businesses to? gain access to Payments into e-commerce and and navigate their way through the digital economy So it's been a theme in different industries different problem sets, but the the core of the problem is is what really? coming back to And I always like to ask that question because we talk a lot about Building a product that fits the market right a product market fit but I think even before that it's very important to as a as a human to find a problem that fits you and Believe in it enough so then you can go out there and be part of that solution For people who might not be aware of what checkout.com is in the US Can you just quickly tell us any more about the how big the company is and what it's all about? Yeah, so generally speaking checkouts Mission is to enable businesses and communities to thrive in the digital economy We're a our core sort of roots When the company was founded over a little over 10 years ago is in an acquiring so accepting Cards and other forms of payments online, that's our Our core capability set and then over the years we've been we've developed a suite of other products that complement Acquiring, you know, we recently launched issuing so the ability to put cards in the hands of people we Have have capabilities around risk management we facilitate payouts where companies and fintechs want to pay out to different parties so a robust set of tools that enable fintechs e-commerce websites and other sort of Verticals Navigate their way in the the digital economy and you're very humble Because you didn't mention the valuation of your company. It's a huge company Obviously way beyond the the unicorn status and I think because usually can consider B2B platform that a lot of end users don't see they might not be super aware But it's definitely powering a lot of people's transactions behind the scenes. Yes. I mean look I think that First of all valuations at the end of the day You know valuations go up go down different. I don't think that this is This is not how I Personally like measure like the scale and impact. I this is not like how our founder does like we we're We think about the customers that we serve We think about how we solve problems for them Obviously, you know, we do sir. We do process hundreds of billions of dollars of volume You know, we serve some of the biggest enterprises around the world our core sort of capability is around enterprise And and how we can facilitate payments for them give them the best performance Create an acceptance rate that is the highest for them But yeah valuation Yeah, well, that's what you might say. Maybe your investors also keep that in mind. So it's always good to mention just to give a Context, you know, because it's a huge huge enterprise and I also want to learn more about your own product team as the chief product officer How big is your team and how are you thinking about the structure need depending on the different products that that you're building? Yeah, so our so check out currently is around Somewhere around 1800 folks We have a product team like pure product management Somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred folks We also, you know, my team also supports design and we have PMO that that all sits within the the product organization And obviously partnering very very closely with with my partner the the CTO Which has engineering in IT and other things in terms of structuring You know, I think that are Essentially, we've developed a number of different Products we part of the journey that we've undergone in the last two to three years is to move from a single product Product company into a multi-product company So as I was mentioning from the core acquiring into the to to the issuing into the integrated platforms into Risk management and so on and so forth. So our product are Organized around these product things and we have a few infrastructure groups that support those product verticals So you have product teams sitting on top leveraging infrastructure groups that sit Beneath them that's more or less how we're structured. I've started to see That structure more and more especially in multi product organizations They tend to have a platform product and support in the rest of the product lines as you think about Integrating the different roadmaps or initiatives that you have across the board It's you want to learn more about that right? I just see PO You're ultimately the product manager of the product manager like what is it like? So, I mean, I think that one of the challenges That I think any company that scales To a certain beyond a certain size has is this interdependencies between teams, right and Trying to create on the one hand Teams that are autonomous as much as possible But on the other hand, you know not creating replication or duplication of work across the board and I Think that this is one of them if anyone has a Like out-of-the-box silver ball bullet solution to this, please tell me because you know, I haven't seen it yet But but I think that this is this is part of the challenge is like how like what are Trying to decide what are Core infrastructures what are verticals that sit on top? Where is the line drawn between them? How do those team collaborate? How do the how does a vertical team if they really have a need that the infrastructure team hasn't provided or is not there yet? How do you give them the ability to contribute code to the infrastructure? Those are some of the questions and dilemmas The other thing that you know, we sometimes like or sometimes don't like to mention is like process like you need to find A light enough process. I'm not a huge process guy I don't love I don't think that we we need to overburden teams too much with process, but How do you find a light enough process that allows teams to collaborate to understand what the needs are? Align on Align the roadmaps to some degree and then probably most important It's like surface and escalate when there's conflicts in priority And I think that sometimes that's where a lot of teams that are scaling fall down escalation sometimes Feels like a bad thing, right? It feels like something that you don't want to do Because it's it's a problem, but no actually An escalation comes because there's a conflict in the ok ours there's a confidence in priorities and someone needs to settle it and so that's that's where I think a lot of times My role when when it becomes important enough like when my role comes in to help teams prioritize to help teams sort of settle These these conflicts and unblock them so that they can execute as quickly as possible So since you mentioned, okay arson, I'm curious to know more about how you define those At the maximum level as well as at the different product level to make sure that there is some consistency Yeah, I mean the we run a process at the company currently which is I think relatively robust we start with At the executive team level, you know the all of the different functional leads together with the founder and CEO And we start this relatively early. We start we are actually starting now going into next year And we spend like a decent amount of time over like a number of sessions to like really think a What is our long-term strategy? Do we need to change anything in the three five year? And then what does it mean for for 2024 for the next year for the coming year? from that we kind of Nailed down a set a small set of ok ours, which are the company ok ours Now as a product company as a technology company a lot of these ok ours are oriented around Product deliverables product KPIs that we want to ship. Of course, there are financial and revenue targets and so on and so forth that are included as well and then usually what My partner and I do is take those ok ours and translate them to what does it mean for product and tech? What does it mean for us? And there are some things that we take on that we take on ourselves that are You know unique to our teams Then we partner with our leadership team and say alright are these things reasonable? What are we missing? How are we thinking? Are we thinking about all of the right things? What did we? What did we miss? Take a few rounds of feedback and then lock sort of the product and tech ok ours and then essentially cascade them down and then each Subpillar or sub team takes those and determines. What does it mean for them? And they cast get it down and cast get it down good. So I think Every single team from the bottom of the orb all the way up can sort of see how the work that they're doing Contributes to a company level ok ours You know it's structural, but it gives people insight on how what they're doing is connected to an overall company goal and then part of the part of the work is working with my with my team on Alright, are you thinking about this goal aggressively enough? Can we aspire for more? How do we are we Covering what are the likelihood to success? Is this a stretch goal or is it not that's part of the work that we do amongst us but I think the the tie-in between a very bottom level to the top is is is Is really important and how accountable is is your team for? Providing financial or business results in addition to product and tech Yeah We partner around these things with with the commercial team with the marketing team Primarily You know we are at the end of the day. We're a we're a SaaS company We're a B2B company and you know we have a sales cycle It's not a consumer play and so the commercial team at the end of the day is the one that is able to drive The revenue in the cross sale and the in the new sale. It's not something that's completely in the hands of the product team But of course we need to give them the tools in order to be able to to sell them. So it's a joint accountability You know, you know, will we eventually be at a place where a product team can own a P&L? potentially down the line But it's it's not something that's the that's the focus right and that's a trend that I'm I'm seeing across the board More product leaders are either owning P&L or at least partnering with a business leader to Join co-pilot P&L is ultimately especially now. It's more important never for for to show business value in addition to to that user value So it's good to hear that and the other thing that I'm very curious about Maron is How you scale yourself how you structure your time, right? We always say in product is important to do things that don't scale especially when you are startup But I've seen that also happen in larger companies like for you as a human with limited time with family with other things going on How do you structure your day to day? It's it's a good question and Again, you know this I go through through cycles where you know, you feel like you've got something going It's it's working well for you and then like three six nine twelve months later You like throw it out and need to like I think that so I guess my point for this is is that I don't think that it's a static thing And I think that it's something that you occasionally you always need to revisit your calendar and what you're spending your time on because Meetings that you've set up cadences that you've set up They go stale they become they become less relevant over time and in you really need to rethink about How you're spending your time on every like three six nine months to like throw everything out and try something new That's that's that's how I sort of have tried to do it over the last a few years once So, you know, I think that what where I spend my time is You know at a very very high level. I try to spend a percentage of my time with with my peers sort of with with my sort of stakeholders in the organization with with my founder with the CEO with You know my tech partner, etc. That's part of my time part of my time Obviously spending every week and very very critical with with my directs with my team whether it's in a group meeting Or one-on-ones to help them sort of unblock Understand what the issue is how how I can help them how I can support them Try to dedicate a good amount of time during the week to do product reviews with the team This is something that is being in the details is very very important for me and trying to understand Where the teams are how they're thinking, etc. Is is part of my day today Same with the design team And then, you know, there's a lot of ad hoc meetings and firefighting that happened throughout the day So sometimes you need to put your firefighter suit on and And go and extinguish some fires What about recruiting? Obviously, I mean, you know These times these days obviously companies are growing less Than it were we we are definitely much more Cognizant about growing the team and are very sort of frugal In in how we do it, but obviously spending time on recruiting and growing the team I would say that I spend, you know, now that the leader like after joining and setting up my leadership team and that's being stable And you know, of course, obviously you sometimes support your partners Where I've tried to spend more time is on Our recruiting process or the the values that we try to look for or the skills that we try to look for In the in the recruiting process to build something that is scalable because talk about things that don't scale, you know interviewing You know when you're trying to recruit 20 30 40 people that that doesn't scale you can't hire so it's What is important is that you have a process that you can trust where a Product manager that answers the organization You know that they've passed a certain bar a certain threshold of capabilities of knowledge of Ability to self-problem of collaboration and so setting up a process where on the one hand that the certain things are Checked and evaluated on the other hand that you've removed bias like how do you set up a hiring process where a Committee could sort of can make a decision together and who's the two a tiebreaker and so on and so forth That's where I've tried to spend most of my time I agree. I think scaling yourself a productizing yourself is definitely a challenge And maybe we can spend a lot of time on the on the actual career ladder Let's say definitely it's important to to acquire talent as well as retain talent And they saw enough information around like how to break into product And then we always be highlight chief product officer There's a big big gap in between and each company defines their own competition model So curious to know how you guys think about that career path for product leaders Um, I think you know generally speaking There's the As Essentially we see two paths for product managers You know, we have a Leadership path where a product manager becomes You know a group product man as a senior product manager group product manager director Etc where you know, they they build out teams underneath them and so on and so forth and then we have an individual contributor path where Which is completely parallel by the way to leadership, I think that a lot of times people think about Moving up in your career. The only way to do it is through managing people But actually you really need like senior Thinkers In to solve really really hard problems. And so what we've tried to do is create a ladder where people Can move up by the complexity of the problem that they solve and not necessarily by the size of the team or the Domain or the group and so we have those two paths we in terms of some of the things that we've we've tried to do in terms of enriching and and supporting the The build-up of the product craft within the team is different mentoring programs between Folks both peer mentorship and sort of leadership mentorship We have this thing that one of the PM's on my team set up, which is awesome It's just product jam, which is you know every week or every couple weeks someone comes in and gives a speech or a lecture about you know, maybe testing or How do you pull a product strategy deck together or or something? And so other product managers can learn from that and and ask questions and so on and so forth And we also have a sort of another PM it came up with the initiative of like having a product circle where Folks are doing essentially It's a support group like for lack of editor like this is a problem I'm facing how have you dealt with this? Etc. And it's a small intimate safe group very very important that like leadership is not there I'm not there etc. So they can talk about everything and so that's how some of the ways that we've tried to Upscale the other thing I would say and I know that this is a long-winded answer The other the other thing that I would say is that I think that every sort of meeting and every product review design review strategy review, etc. Is a learning opportunity and you know the feedback that the leadership team that the The other folks are giving to the product manager that is presenting is not just a Feedback on that particular topic that that person is trying it's trying to present. It's a It should be taken as a with as broad a learning as possible Which is why we publish all of the product reviews We publish all the takeaways all of the feedback so that other folks can read it and can hopefully learn from it From from when they come around What about you? What are you curious about learning these days and how do you make time for it? Well, I think that if I wouldn't say AI these days it would probably be I Don't know. I'll probably be out of touch with the world And so I think that this is obviously been a super fascinating topic that has come through I mean, we've been thinking about AI and over over years and years and years, but you know in the the growth of like LLMs and generative or ISP and just fascinating how I make time for it is a challenge So my one sort of extracurricular activity that I try to insist on is running and And so I try to listen to like books and podcasts While I run Not on my heart runs, but on the on the long slow ones And in trying to learn about this fascinating world While running are there any interesting AI Applications that you are either considering or already Implementing at your current company. I think I mean look I think that this is going to be Revolutionary and in a lot of work like it for for from, you know, just efficiency of your day-to-day From data extraction, you know, just knowledge Understanding like how we search currently is is ridiculous, right? Like you're trying to find an email and trying to remember a keyword in the email to decide like you can just ask The question and it'll give you the answer. I think that to me One area that I'm pretty confident will be revolutionized by AI is is customer support And and I think that's applicable to many industries is definitely Relevant for us. So, you know, how do we leverage AI to provide answers to customers in the problem that they're trying to solve So that's definitely an area. I think risk management is another area that we're thinking about from from a our perspective and I think that another interesting piece is how do you translate sort of? Code into documentation into external documentation. That's another world that We're also considering and thinking about And there are many more I know it's fascinating and bullish as well And if I ask you this question six months from now, I I know there will be even more and more use cases Just to wrap things up. I I always like to ask this question around okay looking backwards like if you were to Repeat your path and hopefully get to where you are a little faster What are what are the things that you you think you would have done differently? Hmm Have done differently. I would I think that I'll answer this by In the moments in my in the career in my career where I've done the biggest steps forward have been moments of focus in moments of where I wasn't distracted by you know, how How like positioning and you know other things but like really try to solve a hard problem That was that mattered for the company that mattered to the organization and Put a little bit of blinders on and and and really try to Do everything that I can and do whatever it takes by the way In order to to solve the problem and by do whatever it takes meaning, you know, if you need to do quality or testing or you need to help like sit down with the designer for hours and really refine the problem or Set up the AB test like what that that's what I mean by Whatever it takes and those have been the moments that Really helped me accelerate And I think that if I had known that earlier I think that I would have done that more Earlier stage And and frankly like there are times where you just want to go back to that and do that Again and again because like those are the times that are also like really really satisfying and fun But thank you so much for your time around I really learned learn and enjoy With you. It's fascinating to see that even at a CPO level Restill curious about learning new things puns on doing whatever it takes as you said to make your team and and your company successful Thank you. I really appreciate your time. Thank you