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

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

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

Daily war rooms, flat-org speed, and career-compounding lessons from ex-Binance Head of Product and N26 CPO Mayur Kamat

Lenny Rachitsky

May 22, 2025

Transcript

Listen now:
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Mayur Kamat is the chief product officer at N26—a $9 billion neobank serving over 7 million customers in 25 countries—where he leads product, design, data, and research. Prior to N26, Mayur was Head of Product at Binance, growing the crypto exchange to a peak $400 billion valuation. Earlier in his career, he built and scaled products at Google (Gmail Mobile, Hangouts), Microsoft, and travel unicorn Agoda.

Learn:

How to find and focus on the highest-leverage problems
Why you shouldn’t optimize for compensation early in your career
Why you should optimize for strengths, not weaknesses
Why you need to decide if you truly want the C-suite path
Why working at a fintech company creates exceptional PMs
Strategy = hypothesis × experimentation velocity
Small, fast wins compound faster than big, slow bets

Some takeaways:

Binance’s leadership met every single day (often at 11 p.m.) so no decision waited more than 24 hours. Tight feedback loops beat elaborate planning.
Founder CZ kept about 55 direct reports so individual contributors were never more than one level away from the CEO. This forced leaders to live in the details and empowered ICs to “own the whole cell.”
Mayur literally moved his desk to whichever team had the biggest 10x upside—or downside—at that moment. Apply the same lens: growth and compliance issues usually move the needle fastest in fintech.
Treat “strategy” as a hypothesis pipeline: ship small, measure fast, double down on what the data proves. Tools like Statsig, Gemini summaries, and cohort dashboards make this possible at scale.
Work at companies that compound learning. High-growth environments (Google in the early mobile era, Agoda’s A/B culture, Binance’s hyperscale, N26’s pan-EU banking) give you daily reps and a powerful alumni network—worth far more than early salary bumps.
Optimize for your superpowers, not your gaps. Identify what energizes you—via StrengthsFinder-style assessments or honest reflection—and choose roles where those strengths decide success. Early in your career, ignore compensation differentials that don’t accelerate this fit.
Fast, reversible decisions beat “perfect” ones. In most product calls there’s no right vs. wrong—only slow vs. fast. Move quickly, learn, and pivot; reserve heavyweight processes for bets that could kill the company or the user.
Fintech creates exceptional PMs. Banking/financial products involve existential tradeoffs daily, requiring exceptional stakeholder management and decision-making skills.

Where to find Mayur Kamat:

• X: https://x.com/5degreez

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mayur/

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction and Mayur’s background

(04:49) Working at Binance: An inside look

(18:18) Career advice for product managers

(27:00) PM career paths

(33:58) Understanding fintech customers

(36:00) Understanding your strengths

(44:46) Creating a culture of experimentation

(51:14) Hiring and developing top talent