Lizzy Masotta

Lizzy Masotta

Senior Product Lead, Shopify
About
Currently leading product teams at Shopify building and evolving the best converting checkout on the planet. Previously Salesforce (0 --> 1 new products for small business and B2C use cases), Google (Cloud Platform early days pre-product GA), Nest......more

Content

Lizzy Masotta
Lizzy Masotta
Shopify Senior Product LeadMarch 30
There are 2 exercises I use to evaluate bringing differentiation into the products I'm building. 1. What sucks? 2. User value mapping Where they originated I came up with these frameworks in collaboration with Paul Pedrazzi (SVP, Salesforce) while we were working on a 0 → 1 product for small......Read More
804 Views
Lizzy Masotta
Lizzy Masotta
Shopify Senior Product LeadJuly 27
There are 2 main types of interviews for Product Management roles: 1. Product case interviews 2. Behavioral interviews (by cross functional partners like UX or Engineering, or by the hiring manager) With either interview type, the surest path to failure is when a candidate shows up and wa......Read More
783 Views
Lizzy Masotta
Lizzy Masotta
Shopify Senior Product LeadNovember 18
I don’t believe in a universal end-to-end product development process. I believe there are key rituals and elements that should be present on every team to ensure great outcomes, but each team needs to tailor the development process to their unique situation. My must-have product development e......Read More
777 Views
Lizzy Masotta
Lizzy Masotta
Shopify Senior Product LeadMarch 30
I love this question. Through my work at both Salesforce and Shopify this is something that comes up regularly because of our platform and healthy partner ecosystem.  1. Do the majority of my users need this? 2. Are there problems with the partner meeting the needs of users today? 3. Do we ha......Read More
752 Views
Lizzy Masotta
Lizzy Masotta
Shopify Senior Product LeadNovember 18
Engineers are part of your squad. They should be in the room for Problem Shaping, Live Prototyping, and Fresh Eyes. You should review your problem backlog regularly with your engineers and get their input and feedback. —Influence is the curiosity to get to the best solution— and engineers will......Read More
732 Views
Lizzy Masotta
Lizzy Masotta
Shopify Senior Product LeadJuly 27
1. They teach you something in the interview I once interviewed a woman who had extensive experience working for a telecommunications company. I have zero experience in telco – aside from being a customer of Verizon Wireless. I walked out of that interview having learned so much about telco com......Read More
728 Views
Lizzy Masotta
Lizzy Masotta
Shopify Senior Product LeadNovember 18
Work in the open. Create a culture on your team that encourages sharing unfinished work and working live together. This will drive the highest quality bar for your team. If you wait until the end of development to QA too many problems will be compounded. Some rituals I use to encourage a high ......Read More
671 Views
Lizzy Masotta
Lizzy Masotta
Shopify Senior Product LeadMarch 30
The most common mistake is to not think about it at all. It can be so challenging to get a product built and shipped at your company that Product Managers naturally become very internally focused. They have dependencies to manage across other teams, they have timeline pressure from leadership,......Read More
662 Views
Lizzy Masotta
Lizzy Masotta
Shopify Senior Product LeadNovember 18
“Agile Research” This is a term I coined to describe the act of always conducting user interviews. The problem with well-designed research projects is that they take too long and tend to deliver the insights after you’ve started building the thing. Advocate for a “rolling recruit” of your key pe......Read More
646 Views
Lizzy Masotta
Lizzy Masotta
Shopify Senior Product LeadNovember 18
It is the Product Manager’s job to identify, prioritize and shape the problems the team is tackling. We’ll break this into two parts 1) finding problems 2) shaping problems. Finding Problems You need to have ongoing sources that you’re plugged into to find problems. Common sources are 1) cu......Read More
633 Views
Credentials & Highlights
Senior Product Lead at Shopify
Formerly Salesforce, Google, Nest, Cisco Systems
Top Product Management Mentor List
Studied at University of Michigan
Lives In San Francisco, California, United States
Knows About Building 0-1 Products, Product Development Process, Product Differentiation, Product ......more