Brex’s CPO
Archetype
Pedro distills needs into a simple one liner after meeting with great Product leaders at other companies. For their CPO, Pedro identified the following archetype: An executive that has GM experience (e.g., experience running a P&L and all the functions of a team) and also has product experience.
Initial Meetings
Pedro met with 25-30 candidates in the process. Pedro had 1 or 2 initial meetings before passing candidates to meet the broader team and to invest in a working session. During these initial meetings, Pedro goes deep into their past experiences and rarely focuses on hypotheticals. He finds that this is the best way to screen for “the ability to operate at all levels of detail” early in the process. Questions he asked during these meetings:
Background
- Go deep into personal background - where they grew up, why they made decisions, college/school
- What are your product philosophies and principles?
- Why would your X teams not have achieved outcomes without you?
- Go deep into work background - what they accomplished at each role? What did THEY do? Why?
Working Together
- How would we work together? How would our 1-1s, team meetings, product review be?
- How would you feel about me going deep into the product? Engaging with PMs?
- What is your style in running a product? Do you go deep or let teams run with their goals?
- Where are we going to clash? Simulate a disagreement and see how it goes.
- What are your product primitives?
- What do you need help with? What are your weak spots?
Operating at all levels
- Pedro walked through their Enterprise deck and they brainstormed feedback/messaging
Interview Loop & Take-Home
For finalist candidates, they set up a series of onsite interviews and working sessions.
Interview Onsite
- 60 minute Meeting with CFO
- 45 minute Meeting with Head of Sales
- 45 minute Meeting with former CPO
- 30 minute Meeting with Chief Legal Officer
- 30 minute Meeting with PM of Middle Market
- 30 minute Meeting with PM of Banking
- 30 minute meeting with PM of Platform
- 30 minute meeting with PM of Growth
- 30 minute meeting with PM of Design
- 30 minute meeting with board member #1
- 30 minute meeting with board member #2
Take home / Working Session
60 minute working session to discuss positioning of Middle Market and Website. They worked through the deck live and iterated to make improvements on it. Pedro, co-founders, Head of Engineering, Head of Sales, PM of Middle Market, and Chief Marketing Officer were all in the meeting.
References
Pedro spoke with ~15 people. After speaking with references, Pedro walked through the feedback with the candidate to deeply understand reasons for each consistent point. Sharing feedback back with candidates is critical as it helps test for humility and self awareness
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