Quick Answer (TL;DR)
Sarah Chen is a Senior Product Manager at Stripe in the Fintech space. With 7 years in product management, her top advice: "Learn the domain before you try to innovate in it."
The Path to Product Management
I started as a software engineer at a mid-size fintech startup. After two years of building features, I realized I was spending more time talking to customers and arguing about what to build than actually writing code. My engineering manager noticed and suggested I try a PM rotation.
That rotation turned permanent. I moved to a Series B payments company, then joined Stripe three years ago. The engineering background helps every day. When I review technical specs, I can push back on estimates and understand trade-offs that non-technical PMs might miss.
Biggest Product Win
Last year I led the redesign of Stripe's dispute resolution flow. Merchants were losing $4.2M annually to preventable chargebacks because the evidence submission process was confusing. We simplified the flow from 12 steps to 4, added auto-populated evidence fields, and built a prediction model that flagged disputes likely to succeed.
Result: dispute win rate increased 34%, saving merchants $1.4M in the first quarter. The feature became a key selling point for enterprise sales.
The Hardest Lesson
Early in my PM career, I shipped a feature that engineering loved and customers ignored. We built a beautiful API dashboard with real-time analytics. Usage data showed 3% adoption after six months.
The mistake: I validated the idea with power users who represented less than 5% of our customer base. The other 95% wanted simpler things. I now run discovery with a stratified sample, not just the loudest voices.
A Day in the Life
Morning starts with metrics review. I check the MRR dashboard and dispute resolution rates. Then a 30-minute stand-up with engineering. Mid-morning is my "maker time" for writing specs and analyzing data. Afternoons are meetings: customer calls, cross-functional syncs, and strategy reviews. I protect Friday afternoons for thinking and planning.
Tool Stack
Stripe uses a mix of internal and external tools. For PM work: Linear for project tracking, Figma for design reviews, Amplitude for analytics, Notion for specs and docs. I use IdeaPlan's RICE Calculator for quarterly prioritization and the Competitor Matrix for landscape analysis.
Prioritization Approach
I use a modified RICE framework where "Confidence" gets extra weight. In payments, getting things wrong has regulatory consequences. A high-reach, high-impact feature with low confidence goes to the research backlog, not the roadmap.
Key Metrics
Revenue per merchant, dispute win rate, API uptime (five nines minimum), time to first successful charge, and developer NPS. The first two are my north stars. Everything else is a leading indicator.
Contrarian Take
Most PMs over-index on user research and under-index on reading regulations. In fintech, reading the actual PSD2 text or CFPB guidance documents will tell you more about what to build next than 50 user interviews.
Advice for Aspiring Fintech PMs
Learn the domain before you try to innovate in it. Read the regulations. Understand settlement flows. Know what ACH, SEPA, and SWIFT actually do. The best fintech PMs I know can explain a payment authorization in their sleep.
Second: get comfortable with compliance as a feature, not a constraint. The companies that turn regulatory requirements into product advantages win.
Explore our Fintech industry playbook for frameworks and metrics specific to this industry. If you're looking to break in, check the Career Path Finder and PM Salary Guide.