00:28:09 · Miguel Armaza
[00:28:09] S1: And Kamran, when it comes to company building, you were obviously a great compliment to Peter and to all the other CEOs that you work with. What do you say made you special? What was kind of your secret weapon?
00:28:25 · Kamran Zaki
[00:28:25] S0: It's a good question. And as I said, I think sometimes it comes down to how are you complementary as a team to each other. And so, obviously, it wasn't just Peter and I. There were a lot of great people there. Right? Ingo, who is now the co CEO, was the CFO at that point. Roelant is the chief commercial officer. Both of them were there at Adyen even longer than I was. It's definitely a team environment. But, you know, what I try and do, as I said, is be very pragmatic and take emotion out of it. And back to some of our examples of, hey. What's the problem we're trying to solve? How do we sort of prioritize the two or three tough things at a time, not 10, but keep this running list going? And then how do I make sure we're successful in these two or three? Because I think, you know, in Silicon Valley and many successful companies, there's this excitement about the shiny new object, and everyone wants to work on the next cool thing. But you usually have promised existing customers that you worked on something today. And if you sort of say, well, I launched it and move on, that doesn't add value to anyone. Right? So as part of my role as CEO, one of the things I was responsible for was product. And one of the things we talked about is to become a great product manager, you ideally have gone through every part of the life cycle. So you've launched some cool new thing, right? And you get it live after a few weeks, months, year, but then you have to get customers on it. And of course there'll be feedback and how do you iterate? And then, you you go on and then scale it. And then at some point, unfortunately, but I think a great product leader has sunset upon us because you also have to recognize if you adding new things and you never sunset anything, you're creating a lot of complexity and a lot of clutter. Right? Or analogy Peter used was if you keep putting things in your fridge and you never clean it, what do you think is gonna happen? Right? And so I don't think it's it's often fun to sunset a product. Right? To some customers on it, it's painful, you know, migrations, etcetera. But, you know, having somebody who's done every part of the spectrum is invaluable. And, that's what I would often try to do. Some parts of the job were less fun than others, but you always learn in doing it.
00:30:27 · Kamran Zaki, Miguel Armaza
And ultimately, it should be about adding value to your end customers. And, of course, having fun while you're doing it, where there's some more fun parts and there's some more must do parts. [00:30:37] S1: Yeah. On on the front of prioritization, an exercise that I I think is very good is you you get a team together and you ask everyone to write down their top 10 priorities and then ask them to kill the bottom five and then ask them to kill the next three and then ask them to kill the the remain... One of the remaining two and they're left with just one. And it's like, that's what you need to focus on because if you have temporaries, you have no priority.
00:30:37 · Miguel Armaza, Kamran Zaki
[00:30:37] S1: Yeah. On on the front of prioritization, an exercise that I I think is very good is you you get a team together and you ask everyone to write down their top 10 priorities and then ask them to kill the bottom five and then ask them to kill the next three and then ask them to kill the the remain... One of the remaining two and they're left with just one. And it's like, that's what you need to focus on because if you have temporaries, you have no priority. [00:31:05] S0: No. I I I fully agree. And I think that's one of the challenges of of scaling, Miguel. Right? So I think to your point, when you're a small team, I'm making this up a tenet, you go through that exercise and it's a lot faster and you have more discipline in sticking to it because you're all sitting in one room where you know each other well. And if you don't stick to it, you call each other out really quickly. When you become thousands of people across multiple geographies and products and industry verticals, even though you do what you said and you share it with the whole company, it just gets harder to enforce on a day to day basis, right? Because it isn't one. You've added a whole spectrum, as I said, of countries and products and features, and you have to keep supporting those and growing those, let alone the new things. And I think that's the other common thing I found. All successful companies as they scale, the sheer size and order of magnitude does just make it more complex even though at its heart is that it is as simple as you said.
00:31:05 · Kamran Zaki, Miguel Armaza
[00:31:05] S0: No. I I I fully agree. And I think that's one of the challenges of of scaling, Miguel. Right? So I think to your point, when you're a small team, I'm making this up a tenet, you go through that exercise and it's a lot faster and you have more discipline in sticking to it because you're all sitting in one room where you know each other well. And if you don't stick to it, you call each other out really quickly. When you become thousands of people across multiple geographies and products and industry verticals, even though you do what you said and you share it with the whole company, it just gets harder to enforce on a day to day basis, right? Because it isn't one. You've added a whole spectrum, as I said, of countries and products and features, and you have to keep supporting those and growing those, let alone the new things. And I think that's the other common thing I found. All successful companies as they scale, the sheer size and order of magnitude does just make it more complex even though at its heart is that it is as simple as you said. [00:32:03] S1: Kamran, before we go, is there a book that you find yourself either rereading often or recommending? Doesn't have to be a business book, could be fiction, could be business, what... Whatever whatever want.
00:32:03 · Miguel Armaza, Kamran Zaki
[00:32:03] S1: Kamran, before we go, is there a book that you find yourself either rereading often or recommending? Doesn't have to be a business book, could be fiction, could be business, what... Whatever whatever want. [00:32:18] S0: Not really. So I'll be honest. I used to be an avid reader, and unfortunately, I found over time that my attention span shrank. Maybe it's the nature of today in social media and stuff. So I've been reading mainly fiction, but less often going back to existing things. Two, I've honestly also found that I learn a lot more better through talking with really smart people than reading books. So that is one of the things I do try and do of make sure I'm talking to as many people out there as possible. Right? Getting to know new people and learn from them. And and also, I think something that maybe we're struggling with as a country and as as the globe is often seeking people who have different opinions. Right? And trying to learn from them and their perspective and not thinking we're the smartest people in the room. So that is something that I do spend a fair amount of time trying to take the blockchain example. There's a lot of people out there who know a lot more about stablecoin and blockchain than I do, and so definitely trying to learn from them and and trying to make sure I'm talking to people who are very bullish and people who are the naysayers, and and how do I then form my own opinion based on that amalgamation. [00:33:27] S1: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's why I do the podcast because I get to talk to a lot of interesting people like you.