Stripe: choosing the next financial offering to build for SMB merchants

You are a product manager at Stripe, the payments company. Stripe wants the next financial product it builds to do more for small and mid-sized businesses. How would you decide what that product should be? Walk through your approach and end with a recommendation. ```hint Follow the money Trace a small business's money through a typical month, from getting paid to paying bills and taxes, and look for the step where Stripe's place in that flow gives it an advantage a bank or a standalone startup would lack. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - What should the product achieve for Stripe: keeping existing small-business users longer and processing more of their volume, attracting businesses that do not use Stripe yet, or opening a new revenue stream? - How are small and mid-sized businesses defined here, and does the scope include businesses that reach Stripe through software platforms built on it, not only those that sign up directly? - Does "financial product" include lending, which carries credit risk and licensing needs, or only services such as accounts, outgoing payments, tax and risk protection? - Which geography should the first version target? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A stated objective and a segmentation of small and mid-sized businesses by size, business model and how they reach Stripe - A map of these businesses' financial jobs and pain points, with candidate products checked against what Stripe already offers - Explicit decision criteria, such as size of the pain, reach, Stripe's right to win, economics, regulatory and credit risk, and time to market, applied consistently to the candidates - A clear recommendation, plus the evidence that would confirm or overturn it before a full build - Success metrics and guardrails for the chosen product ### Follow-up Questions - If two candidates scored about the same, what single piece of evidence would you collect to break the tie? - How would your recommendation change if most target businesses used Stripe through a software platform that wants to offer its own financial services? - What would make you shut the product down a year after launch?