Transcript: Chani Lin: How to Succeed as a Product Manager in Fintech

Eyal David: [00:01] Hey friends, this is Eyal. Today my guest was Chani Lin, who comes to us from the company Ledge. Chani is a super smart woman who never stops learning, and she'll share with us tons of practical tips about product and about the fintech industry, and what actually helps her make decisions. Tons and tons of information, worth listening to — let's get started. Chani, how's it going? All good, how are you? I'm doing great. So Chani, do you want to tell us in a few words, for those who don't know, about the fintech industry?

Chani Lin: [00:33] Sure. Fintech is basically short for Financial Technology — it's that intersection between the worlds of finance and the worlds of technology, where the goal is to use the new technologies we have to disrupt or improve financial processes across all kinds of services and industries,

Eyal David: [00:52] like banking, payments, loans, investments. Definitely, definitely, definitely. So these are tons of areas that have already been disrupted — so what actually does Ledge do?

Chani Lin: [01:01] That's a good point. First of all, I'd say they went through it and are still going through it — they went through it and are still going through it. Banking, yes; payments are still going through real disruption, we're not there yet; loans have been disrupted; investments — we're not done yet; there's a whole world that... there are more things, but Ledge specifically attacks the world of what's called the Office of the CFO. That is... uh, what does that mean? Basically all the functions that sit under the Chief Financial Officer — finance and accounting teams — really a lot of processes, financial processes that today are done manually or semi-manually, like — I'll say a few words and I swear I'm not making them up, Reconciliation, Cashflow Management, Ledgering — it sounds like I just made it up now, but these are super critical processes for most companies, and they're still done today in a very, very Old School way. And it's a shame, because we have the technology... literally, a person sitting in an office and... tons of Spreadsheets, Spreadsheets with tons of tabs, Spreadsheets that won't even open because they're so heavy. You know those? So, that kind of thing, and it's a shame — there's really no need to do it that way anymore.

Eyal David: [02:04] Amazing — always a good sign to see Spreadsheets that won't open, right? Because it's something you can disrupt. It's about time, yeah, to put money there and solve it with technology. Cool. And how long has Ledge existed? Ledge has existed about a year and a half. And how long have you been there? I've been there about four months, almost five. Cool, so lots of luck. So you just finished the stage where you do onboarding, right? Yes, yes, I finished it.

Chani Lin: [02:28] I started it together with the war — it was a challenging period, but I think I'm pretty much immersed. Is everyone there now, is everyone back from reserve duty, how does it work? Everyone's back from reserve duty, all good, back to business. We also mainly serve American companies, so from their side it was business as usual. Yes, they were very understanding, very supportive, which was very... I was thinking about your onboarding. Yeah, it was a bit challenging, it was a bit challenging — there were some functions that were on reserve duty, and some of them were also very critical to me and to my onboarding,

Eyal David: [03:01] but they came back and everything's fine, everything's fine. Cool, so you're already at several jobs — has your whole career been colored by fintech? The career's been 7-8 years now, yes. Amazing. And basically, if we look for a moment from where you are now,

Chani Lin: [03:18] what do you think are the strongest skills a PM needs in this field? First of all, I think fintech, like any other industry, or any other product company — you have the baseline of a product skill set you'd expect to see, whether it's product and strategic thinking, empathy for the user, understanding of UX, understanding of data, ability to influence, capability, good communication, beyond the baseline — there are more things, of course — beyond that baseline, I think there are maybe two things that are a bit differentiated, that are maybe worth mentioning. The first and more important is basically the world of domain knowledge and domain expertise. There are industries where you can get to know the market, get to know the competitors — that's great, that's good enough, you can do the job. Whereas in fintech there are changes in technology, in regulation, in the type of players that emerge — the changes are very frequent, and especially at the stage where you move from, sort of, first more inbound, to more of a part, more of discovery and product strategy — that part of understanding the domain, will be super critical for these worlds. In addition, you know — I don't know if this is specific only to fintech, but it mainly enters the picture, especially in startups, of how the product strategy connects to unit economics, or to profitability — so business understanding becomes very important too. That is, it crosses the line from product strategy to business strategy. It's such a thing. I think every PM should think this way.

Eyal David: [04:54] Honestly, that's really, really true — it doesn't happen in reality, there are some who do, no doubt, but it's true, that's a really good point. And when you look at the role you do, that you did for that matter in fintech, versus previous roles you did, which skills really came into play, that really — besides the expertise, of course,

Chani Lin: [05:15] what other things surfaced, in terms of skills? I think almost all the things I just said.

Eyal David: [05:22] I'll help you, I think — on the technical side, for example, is there a difference? Say, in cyber, I'd assume you have to be very, very technical.

Chani Lin: [05:30] Is it the same in fintech? I think it really, really depends on the type of product you're working on. There are products, in banking and payments, and word too — actually a lot of products, yeah, they have a technological infrastructure that's very intricate, and it also functions and evolves all the time, and you need to know it deeply, and it very much depends on the type of role you sit in, and I'll also say it very, very much depends, on the technical counterpart you work with. That is, in a dev team, the tech lead you work with, the moment there's someone there who's very collaborative, and can basically cover for your lack of technicality, it helps a lot; if you don't have that, then yeah, you have to dive much deeper, bordering on a technical PM. Interesting,

Eyal David: [06:18] you mentioned twice, actually, the aspect of, I need to stay updated all the time, and there's a ton of information to follow,

Chani Lin: [06:25] where do you actually stay updated on all this good stuff? So there are tons of podcasts, tons of newsletters — I personally, use an app called Feedly, just to keep all the media outlets that are relevant in fintech — there's payments and such, all kinds of relevant things, that update you every day on all the most important things that happened, so I use that, and the second thing is, there are a few really good newsletters that I... can I recommend a few? So for TechCrunch, there's a really good one called The Interchange, and they just changed its name, I don't remember why, but something from fintech, but if you search for TechCrunch fintech, you'll find it, it's really good, it gives a weekly summary of everything that happened. Another really good one, called This Week in Fintech, and it also gives an excellent review of everything that happened. I will say, that if you don't know the fintech world, and you read this thing, you won't understand a word. Meaning, do you suggest? I suggest first, for a moment, doing a sort of fintech 101, and understanding this whole world, and all the technologies, and the world of terms, before you go in, because it's really aimed at people who live and breathe this world, and want to stay updated, and it doesn't get down to the nitty gritty. That is, there aren't really detailed explanations there of what the heck this thing stands for. Do you think GPT can be a good copilot for such a journey? Yes, amen. Amazing? Sure. A parting gift. Okay. Are you talking here about a new startup?

Eyal David: [07:49] No, I was just thinking about how someone can actually get into this world. So you're saying, you can consume a lot of content,

Chani Lin: [07:56] there might be gaps, actually, that you can't bridge. A great shortcut, I think. But of course, like anything with GPT, there are things you need to take with a grain of salt. That's what's called, trust but validate.

Eyal David: [08:10] So that's it. Take twenty? Something like that. Do it. Okay. So I'll tell a bit about you — we really jumped into the substance quickly. Introduce me. I will, right. So Chani basically comes to us from Ledge, went through several fintech companies in her career. We've actually known each other for years, from the Fiverr days. Before that Chani was also at 888. Before that Chani was actually, she studied abroad. So I actually want us to do something I don't usually do. Let's focus specifically on your first role in fintech. That's the hat you arrived with. Do you want to tell us for a moment how you moved into that role? How was that process, actually?

Chani Lin: [08:50] Yes. So basically I got to my first role at Fundbox. Quite a few good years ago. How many employees were there at that time? Something like 60 or 70 employees. It was relatively early on. In the role before fintech I didn't work in the industry. There weren't many fintech jobs then, and there weren't many fintech PMs either. They were looking for someone with knowledge, to learn activation growth, with some financial background. I have a bachelor's degree in accounting, which I didn't do anything with, ever since I finished the degree — I got it and that's it, but I have that degree. So I think, you know, a combination of these things, and a lot of knowledge and experience, with data and UX, and a bit of B2C experience, helped me get into that role. I'll mention that Fundbox, is also a startup in the fintech world, payments and credit.

Eyal David: [09:49] They eventually grew to how many employees? Close to 400. It was a unicorn. And now, less.

Chani Lin: [09:56] Who knows. It's still pretty devalued. I think, you know, it's an entry like, a move from B2C to B2B, but it's a very comfortable move to B2B, because it's B2B where they're small businesses, and basically, their expectation at the product level is that you'll provide them the same experience they get in their consumer product world. Like, I want something of mine, like my iPhone, and my Spotify, and my TikTok — things that are really easy to use, and that's the expectation. And therefore, someone coming from the B2C worlds will have some advantage there, because that's also your baseline. So you're not building now some very heavy enterprise thing. I'll just say something — they expect it, but they also expect, because it's fintech, right, they also expect the thing to work, and heaven forbid if it doesn't work. It'd better work, better that nothing gets stuck, better that the money transfers on time — that's, at the end of the day, the bottom line. Everything else is kind of sugar around the central thing.

Eyal David: [10:55] There's one central utility here that you expect to be done right, and it's true that the other things around it, you can mess up a bit, that's true. And basically, how did you get into product at all? How did you decide you wanted to work on the product?

Chani Lin: [11:10] I think maybe I have a slightly different background — I don't have a technical background. I studied in the United States, so I really did a bachelor's in accounting, and I enrolled in a degree that was new at the time, now it's not anymore. What? It's called Master's of Science in Marketing. Okay. Basically some combination, between courses of Consumer Behavior and UX, together with the worlds of data and statistics. Wow, that sounds fun. Really, the degree is very interesting. Sounds fun. And up until that moment I didn't really, I don't know, product, but like what does it really mean — I don't know, I also didn't delve into it, wasn't interested. And in the first semester, I think, one of the books we had to read was Crossing the Chasm. And I read it a while ago. By Geoffrey Moore, a book that came out in the early 2000s. It's a sort of intro to product-market fit, like how we go through a journey of validating a product idea, from 0 to 1, from 1 to 100, from 100 to 1000. Great book. Yeah, great recommendation. And only then, like I started, okay, this is product, only then did things really start to click for me, and I understood that I wanted to do this. Even if I didn't really know, you know, how to articulate it, like I know now, I knew that I wanted to do this. A bit after the degree, I came back to Israel, and tried to get into this world. In what role? In which direction? So I aspired to product, or say, product adjacent, like things that are more, like owner or junior. Was there such a thing? Back then? Very little. It was a different time. There weren't many product roles, certainly not junior product. So from the start, the selection wasn't huge. It was, I often tell this to people who talk to me about their job search, because it was just terrible. It was terrible, it was such a long period, and I got so many rejections, like they were coming from all directions, from all kinds of companies, and I didn't know when it would end, and I was also very naive, and I came back after having emigrated here for many years, and I didn't know anyone, I had no connections. And certainly not in tech. Certainly not in tech. And I was really, really naive. I can't even explain to you how naive. And in the end, really, after a good few months, a friend of a friend passed my resume directly to a recruiting manager, at 888. And I think, I'm almost certain that if my resume had gone through HR first, I wouldn't have made it to an interview. But it got there, to the recruiting manager, and we met, and there was a good connection between us, and she believed in me, and like, no evil eye. But I tell this a lot to people, because you really need a lot of patience, and to be really goal-driven. So there were many stages where I stopped and said, wait, I'll try to get accepted to something where I have a better chance, like, you know, I have two degrees, so let's go for something with that, and I didn't want to, and I'm glad I didn't, but it really requires a lot of patience. Yeah, and everyone who comes here,

Eyal David: [14:12] that's mainly what I hear. My story too, that's what I hear. Honestly, sometimes I hear about some miracle like, I came out of a tech unit,

Chani Lin: [14:19] and they took me straight to this — but I think that's the exception. Most of the stories I know are really stories of a kind of struggle,

Eyal David: [14:26] one way or another. Yeah, yeah, and in the end you do it. So really, if we go back for a moment, really to the first role in product, so do you want to tell a bit about, just — I met you at Fiverr, it was a relatively big company, and suddenly you actually arrived at Fundbox, a smaller startup. How many people were there — I keep going around here about people, the number of people as a metric throughout our conversation, because you really moved from big companies, to small companies, today very small companies, yeah, so it really interests me, so just, how many people were at that company at the time? At Fundbox at the time there were something like 60 or 70 people. All in Israel? How was it?

Chani Lin: [15:06] No, some were in Israel, meaning, the R&D, data, like, were in Israel. Where did product sit? In Israel. Actually there was one product person who sat in the United States. That changed pretty quickly, eventually all of product moved to Israel, but there was a period when we were split. Most of the functions that were in the United States, were like, Sales, Marketing and Executives. All the Executives. And you know, the company had some general onboarding program, for new people who arrive, but there wasn't someone to really show me the ropes,

Eyal David: [15:36] and my manager... ah, doesn't sound familiar, okay. Happened to all of us apparently. No, it just happened to you now. Yeah, right, it's happened to me several times in my career.

Chani Lin: [15:45] I'm really not fazed by it anymore. I was a bit excited about it, with the manager who hired me — he was a CPO, and over time he becomes the CEO, he's still the company's CEO, and he joined a bit before her. I was his first hire, and there really was a very good connection between us, and I felt he believed in me, but he sits in San Francisco, and we'd talk an hour or two a week. And so most of the time, there wasn't really someone to show me the ropes, and I had some Learning Curve, into this world of FinTech, that okay, I had a bit of background, but not really, and it was learning about a lot of new technologies, and a lot of new services, so I absorbed a challenging Learning Curve there.

Eyal David: [16:25] So how did you manage without GPT during that learning period? How crazy is it that this once didn't exist. Really, really. I think that,

Chani Lin: [16:33] a) I picked people's brains, within reason, and b) I just read a lot. I read a lot — I think today there are a thousand times more resources, but even then there were. And there's no shortcut,

Eyal David: [16:46] you just have to do the Legwork. That really connects — it's also your job search that was like that, and also basically your entry into product, like, you don't give up. You don't give up. Amazing. And what are the most significant things you remember learning,

Chani Lin: [17:00] on this journey, inside Fundbox, on the way in for that matter? I think, first of all I was at Fundbox for many years. How many years? I was there six years, and I really got to build tons of products there, and do a lot of things, at some level for me, it was really a product school. I think I learned, first of all, the CPO, during the period he managed me, I learned a lot from him, also in the worlds of, you know, strategic product thinking, and prioritization, and how you build a feature or product now, almost from scratch, to an MVP, and what goes into this iteration, and what will wait for the next iteration, how you really make these decisions — that's great, things I learned from him, that I think about to this day, and apply to this day, are more in the worlds of soft skills, more around, storytelling, and articulation, and how you rally other functions, to what you want to do, without authority, how you say, how you tell them no, a thousand times a week, and still maintain those relationships with them.

Eyal David: [18:05] And that's surely super hard, when they're fintech experts — I just, I mean the stakeholders around you, they're experts, and you suddenly enter an organization, some of them experts, some of them like know about what you know,

Chani Lin: [18:19] some know less, there really is in the fintech world, a function that maybe doesn't exist in other product companies, of a domain expert, who come from all kinds of areas in the finance worlds, and they represent the business side. And can you argue with them? You can, and it's even advisable. Okay, okay. But to be able to argue with them, you have to earn it. You have to know how to get to a relationship,

Eyal David: [18:51] that's mutually beneficial. What, did you really work on this? You and the CPO — what was his name? Prashant. Where did he come from? From which, sorry, I'm cutting in to sort out my ear?

Chani Lin: [19:02] His background — he was a product director at Facebook,

Eyal David: [19:08] at Google. So he didn't actually come from fintech? No, and who is he. And he really worked with you on your soft skills?

Chani Lin: [19:17] Yes, there are a few things I remember from him to this day, and I try to apply them. One of the first things I noticed he does, in communication with functions, is that when they have something that's, it's a suggestion that's not a priority, it's not in the prioritization, he never — rarely would he tell them no. He never used to say the word no. He had very constructive ways of phrasing things. He'd say, look, the way I look at this is, or the way I think about this is, or here's another way to think about it. And at first it seemed trivial to me, like okay, like, phrase it differently. But I realized that the moment I try to do it, the moment you don't say the no — you know, there's something in the 'no' that immediately, even if it comes with a very good rationale, in front of you immediately becomes some kind of anti, and it would neutralize it and lower that wall, and then the chance that you meet the person at some middle ground and maintain the relationship is much higher. I noticed that and I really loved it, and I also really adopted it. This way worked more, that way worked less. Another thing I really, really loved that he did, that's a bit sneakier. Many times I'd explain a rationale for something to him, he'd listen to me, I'd finish, and then he'd say I just want to understand that I just want to make sure I understood you correctly, and then he'd repeat what I said but in a much, much more sophisticated and well-articulated way, like really something on another level, and he'd kind of insert a bit of his agenda into it, he'd pull it more toward his agenda, and then he'd finish talking and you have to agree with him the whole time — he just repeated what you said, just to make you sound really smart, and you tell him like yeah, yeah, of course, of course, that's what I meant. So like, that was in my eyes an amazing thing,

Eyal David: [21:00] it took me a long time to catch that it's him doing it, and then I just adopted it. Can I adopt it at home? Will you do it at home? But they might catch on yeah, no, I'm dealing with a six-year-old and a nine-year-old, but they're very sharp. Okay, okay, what actually do you feel that, for that matter the company grew, as I keep coming back to it, it grew and suddenly everyone if I understand, most people abroad that you need to communicate the things you do to, you need to give them this, and this art of storytelling that you describe, actually remotely — how did that work? In general, how were your experiences between a big company and a small company and back to a small company, and what do you prefer more, of course? Really good question, what do I prefer more

Chani Lin: [21:44] there are so many pluses and minuses to each of them. Look, no doubt in the small company, I as a baseline when we say small company let's say fewer than fifty people, like a company where you're say the only PM or at most you have a couple more PMs probably managing with you; a bigger company, let's say 200 people and up. Okay, okay, because we're not going to talk now about companies of 10,000 people, that's also not my experience. A small company a small boat is much easier to navigate, and you can make a 180 change of direction really easily, and you can deliver in one release what in the bigger company you'd deliver in maybe three releases. You can move fast, you can build products from scratch and deal with much less bureaucracy, there's no red tape, like. That said. There's something else here, there's something else on a big ship you usually also have a compass or radar; a small boat, your fishing boat, you have nothing exactly, exactly. So there's something in the big company, that — leave aside for a moment that you have tons of resources, anything you need will probably have someone there for you, you'll have someone to do your go-to-market, and you'll have a data scientist or, you know, an analyst attached to you, like all the functions to support you, but you'll probably also have more product functions you can learn from, and if you're relatively early in your career and you arrive at a small startup, it's not at all certain you'll have someone to learn from, and that's definitely a problem — like at some point you'll be thirsty. That's it, that maybe already depends on the type of person you are, how much of an autodidact you are for that matter, and it also probably depends on the founders, because maybe they're amazing product people and then maybe you can learn from them, but it really depends. On the other hand, if you're a person who really is an autodidact and really loves driving things and processes and is more of an entrepreneurial mindset, then actually that might be the right place. Yes, I'll say that also if you're an autodidact I do recommend taking, you know, having that external someone who'll be your sounding board, so you get some reflection back. There's another thing I really loved about this position, which is that it forces you to be immersed in the product at a level that in a big company you probably won't reach. I mean, the point is, in a bigger company you have someone who writes, does product marketing and writes the content for you, and here probably not, you'll have to change the content and suddenly you're sitting in front of Figma or whatever — ah, there's GPT, that'll improve a bit. No, no, you don't want to — it's some product skill, it's like, you know, it's part of the storytelling of the product. No, definitely, but we as Israelis, I don't know, at least for me this refinement of the copy, you know what I want refinement, yes, I usually start with my baseline and then let it, turn it into something healthy, I'll say another thing I got to do in my previous role at Fluidlite, also a fintech startup, is that I really got to do a kind of pitch for the product, bordering on selling it, like in a way that's, you know, really to customers, to potential customers, like also at conferences and also over Zoom, and that's something I didn't get to do much, and at first it really, you know, made me sweat in a way I hadn't known before but afterward it really made me improve and refine that storytelling ability of the product in a way that... I think, right, in a big company I wouldn't have reached that point so quickly.

Eyal David: [25:06] Amazing. So Chani, let's go back for a moment, in a small company — suddenly I think, in a small company I don't have data at all, how do we make decisions when you don't have data and you rely purely on intuition, certainly in the world of fintech, how does that happen? That's a

Chani Lin: [25:24] really good question. Tell me, I have a way to deal with it, I have a way to deal with it, and by the way like, it's some methodology that's maybe right not just for really small companies, but also for companies, meaning something I used also at Fundbox, and it worked well, and I also sharpened it — a methodology called Strong Opinions, Loosely Held. Strong Opinions, Loosely Held. Broadly, a methodology for decision-making that's intended mainly for situations where we don't have enough data to make a decision. As product managers, we make tons and tons of decisions every day, small, big, and surely our opinions are based on a few things: on our experience, on understanding of the market, on understanding of competitors, on the product and business vision, on, you know, our product sense, on product intuition, and if we're lucky, then also on data and on feedback we got either from customers or from prospects who can become customers, or just an idea that came up from the board and suddenly reached you, right? Okay. And let's say you don't have those last two things — you don't have data and you don't have customer feedback, or you have very, very limited customer feedback, very anecdotal. How do you really make a decision that's an opinion-based decision? Like at the end of the day someone has to make it, and that's probably you. So how does the framework work? So it has two parts, it has the part of the strong opinion, which we just talked about — meaning, there are these components of how I form an opinion that's also anchored in the product and business vision and also in my experience and also in my understanding, and it requires experience. I, you know where? You can't just tomorrow morning and do it, and from there we move to the part of the loosely held, yeah? which is a bit trickier, because we basically need to challenge ourselves. We need to challenge ourselves both within ourselves and also to surround ourselves with people who can kind of poke holes in our theory, and hold up some kind of mirror to us. And the goal it really requires putting the ego aside, and a kind of maturity, and focus on the big picture. The goal is that the moment you have some signal or indication, yeah? for a change to that opinion, yeah? to make a commit, yeah? to set aside for a moment your original opinion and strive to validate this theory as fast as possible, even if the result will be that we were wrong. Excellent. That would be a really good result. Let's check, let's move fast, if needed we'll do an iteration, we'll fix it, but let's not get stuck in some analysis paralysis. I do have one caveat to this: everyone has opinions, yeah. So that's that sentence. Especially in Israel, yeah. Which sentence? Jeff Lebowski, there's the Dude's line, where he says like, I don't remember who he says it to, he says like, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man. Your opinion, man. Like, I can't say it as well as he says it, he's flawless, that's really it — like, we have an opinion, others have an opinion, you have to know how to identify when behind an opinion there's real substance and when it's just noise. So in practice, it's totally

Eyal David: [28:33] true, for life in general too, but in practice you basically go and produce some theory, focus it a lot, and then seat a few people in a room or go and talk, and basically, or so, with smart people who understand the matter and who for that matter start to actually push back on it, you could say, so that you can take your story and sharpen it and hone it so you can ship it and basically

Chani Lin: [28:57] see if it sticks. Push back is a hard word but let's think about it let's say just in some use case that you do, say a kickoff for some new feature, and it's not based on a lot of data because it's new but you have some hypothesis, and here's what this hypothesis is anchored in, and come see what I thought and come see why I thought this, and why I think it'll behave this way, and why I think this will be the impact, and what the things are that we'll want to measure

Eyal David: [29:23] and then to stop and then let everyone start to see what about this, and what about this, and what about this and what about this, and I want to say, okay, good point.

Chani Lin: [29:30] Just grooming on... yeah, yeah, let's write down all these things. Crazy grooming. Let's understand what's critical and what's not critical, and let's move forward, let's not get stuck now at a discussion table for a whole week — I think I can do it, but it requires some kind of product maturity like that. Yeah,

Eyal David: [29:45] you have to put the ego aside, and really listen, and answer honestly, and from a good place, yeah? Yeah, look at the big picture. Cool, so we'll add a link, I'm sure you'll provide us one, and we'll add a link. Fun. And we can also talk about it next time you want to be here. How fun. Let's also head toward wrapping up, so do you have a few recommendations, or a recommendation? For content. Yeah, anything you feel like. So we talked

Chani Lin: [30:07] earlier about Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey Moore — for anyone interested in product-market fit, it also touches on the worlds of distribution and marketing, so I really recommend it, great book. Another book I really recommend, actually, if you ask me what's the book that had the biggest impact on my career, it's this book, it's Lean In, by Sheryl Sandberg. Okay. And it's not necessarily a product book, and I do recommend it to every female product manager, and also male product managers, but mainly every female product manager — for me it's really what helped in my career. Okay. And another recommendation that's more baseline, materials by Marty Cagan, like Inspired etc., for those starting out, it's excellent, and Lenny's podcast and Lenny's newsletter — there's tons of content there that I had in my time, when I was trying to get into the product world. Yeah, that was very lacking, that's true. Great, great tips, I agree, everyone — I have to say, I know them all,

Eyal David: [31:04] and let's just close, if you can, with a suggestion for a young product manager, or someone who wants to get into product,

Chani Lin: [31:11] mainly to the field of fintech, it's hard. I'll say generally, it's based on blood, sweat and tears, it's important that we have, just as we have a product strategy that's dynamic and changing, then a strategy for entering a role and first roles, for example, for a first role, two main ways, right — either you enter as a junior somewhere, less likely, or you, you know, in your company, or in the company you're joining, you enter in some role that's product adjacent, okay? So roles like customer success, or UX, or product marketing, or things like that, where you build product knowledge and knowledge about the user at a high level — they turn you into an asset, for the product team, they advance you a lot toward actually entering this role. That's a really great tip,

Eyal David: [31:58] that's a really great tip, and it also really paves your way in the specific company you chose. Definitely, you become someone with value, really, I've seen it happen, so I know it's true,

Chani Lin: [32:06] you become someone with value, and in the stage after that, keep sharpening the strategy, meaning, learn about other domains, beyond the company you're in, what interests you, why you want to get in, aspire toward there. Wow, you're wonderful, so let's wrap on this

Eyal David: [32:20] that you also do mentorship, so let's dedicate a moment to that. Right, I also do mentorship on a platform called

Chani Lin: [32:28] Growth Mentor. I should note, it's a platform not just for product, there's mentorship there in the worlds of marketing, and sales, and a thousand and one other things, I mainly do sessions that focus on helping young product people, or people trying to make the transition to the profession, and also people trying to validate ideas, meaning, trying to do some validation and find product-market fit, the worlds of product-market fit — many times it's like going over the plan they have, many times it's simply sharpening them, which is... at some level, it's mainly — there are all kinds of other things too, but a great platform, for anyone who wants... And how do people find you? Just there, or do they want more? You can also find me on LinkedIn, I'll get back wherever I can for a chat. So we'll add that too. Alright Chani, thank you very much, I had fun. Me too, really. Alright, see you in the next episode. Bye bye.