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Kevin Yien
Product & Design Leader
Kevin Yien: Product Leader at Stripe, Former Head of Product at Square and Mutiny
Kevin Yien is an experienced product leader who currently serves as the Head of Product for merchant experiences at Stripe.13 Prior to Stripe, he held several key product roles at Square and Mutiny:
- Head of Product and Design at Mutiny (January 2022 - Present)1
- Head of Product at Square (January 2020 - January 2022)1
- Product Lead at Square (February 2019 - January 2020)1
- Product Manager at Square (December 2016 - January 2019)1
At Square, Yien created a new business unit and product line targeted at the Food & Beverage industry. He increased average GPV (Gross Payment Volume) per merchant from $250k to $650k (2.6x) and launched the largest set of integrations across delivery services for restaurants.1
Before Square, Yien was a founding team member at LaunchPad Central, a Lean Startup SaaS platform used by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Stanford, Berkeley, and over 5,000 teams globally.1 He also worked as a Product Manager at Grovo, a workplace learning company.1
Yien is known for his unorthodox product management wisdom, such as automating user research, using an "unsell email" technique for hiring, and keeping a decision log.2 He is a visiting lecturer at Cornell Tech, where he leads the Startup Studio program.1
Highlights
common scenario: you write a doc, share it, are told it lacks detail, you add detail, are told it's too long, you remove stuff, are told it lacks cohesion, rewrite it...
this is frustrating on the surface. but it's normal (and sometimes good)! why?...
early career PMs can often focus on “just executing”. but it’s critical to develop antibodies against specific types of poor decision making that can occur when aggressive timelines are applied to product teams.
