Venmo product improvement: goal, focus segment, prioritized solution and success metrics

Venmo is PayPal's peer-to-peer payments app in the US. People use it to pay friends back and split costs, and sellers and small businesses use it to get paid. As a product manager on Venmo, how would you improve it? Choose what the improvement should achieve and whom it serves, explain the problems those users have today, propose and prioritize solutions, and say how you would know the change worked. ```hint Pick a side of the network first Venmo connects people paying each other with sellers who get paid, and the two sides matter to the business in different ways. Decide which side and which outcome you are improving before you brainstorm features. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is the priority more engagement, more new users or more revenue, given that most transfers between friends cost the sender nothing? - Should the improvement serve people paying friends and splitting costs, or the sellers and small businesses that accept Venmo? - Can I assume the US market, where Venmo operates? - Can the solution reuse PayPal's existing merchant and invoicing tools, or should it stand on its own inside Venmo? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A stated goal tied to how Venmo creates value for its users and for PayPal, with a reasoned choice between the consumer side and the seller side - A segmentation of the chosen side, one focus segment, and that segment's concrete problems with paying or getting paid - Solutions mapped to those problems, prioritized by impact and effort, with a clear first version and its trade-offs - A success metric that reflects the goal, plus guardrails for the other side of the network, fraud and trust - Risks specific to moving money on a social app: scams, disputes, fees and privacy ### Follow-up Questions - Your change increases payments to sellers, but payers begin blocking or muting the sellers who use it. How do you decide whether to keep it? - Scammers already send fake payment requests on payment apps. How would your solution avoid becoming a new channel for them? - Sellers could use PayPal's own merchant products instead. Why build this inside Venmo, and how do you avoid competing with the parent company?