Lauren Ipsen

To reach senior product leadership, PMs should optimize for breadth of experience across different product types and business units.

"I think breadth is incredibly important. It's so critical, especially if someone has an end goal of wanting to step into a product leadership role to have been able to have touched lots of different c..."

Balance the need for tenure and impact with the necessity of moving on when a company's growth plateaus.

"Logo collecting is never something that you want to be known for... but there's also something to be said about staying somewhere too long though. And I will say that. I think sometimes you find peopl..."

Career satisfaction should be driven by growth and impact rather than chasing external validation like titles or valuations.

"Work backwards from a goal for sure, but don't allow titles or valuation bubbles or other things to derail something that feels good. If you're in a role and you feel like you're making an impact and..."

Define the specific 'spikes' or core competencies required for the role rather than looking for a generalist who does everything.

"I think it's trying to determine where this person should major and minor, where they should spike. Is this someone that's going to really lean into the design efforts? Is it someone that actually kin..."

Early-stage startups should use 'Head of' titles to maintain flexibility and avoid the need for future demotions as the company scales.

"A lot of startups at this point are almost allergic to C titles or VP titles or are just more title agnostic than I've seen in the past, so you see a lot more of these head ofs... start as a head of p..."

Continuous market benchmarking is essential to understand what high-quality talent looks like before you actually need to hire.

"Regardless of whether or not you're hiring, you should always be keeping a pulse on the market. That is the most important thing. And I think that should be the case for both candidates and folks that..."

Avoid the 'shiny object' trap of hiring big-name executives who may be too far removed from the tactical work required at an early-stage company.

"I think especially for founders that haven't hired for this caliber of talent in the past, it's really easy to be distracted by shiny objects and look at huge names. You want to find the CPOs of Googl..."

Hire for the specific needs and stage of your company rather than chasing the objectively 'best' talent in the market.

"I would say the general advice is who is going to be best for this specific role at this specific time, not necessarily who is the best talent in the world or in the market. Those are two very, very d..."

Effective reference checks require probing beyond surface-level praise to find genuine weaknesses and behavioral red flags.

"It is important to dig pretty deep and ask the hard questions. ... Why would I not hire this person? What are their biggest weaknesses? And then if they give you the typical, 'Oh, if they work too har..."

Back-channel references are more reliable than provided references because they reveal the candidate's uncurated professional reputation.

"Back channel references I think will always provide a greater source of truth than provided. It's similar to an Instagram Reel as opposed to the photos you're tagged in. That's the way I think of it...."

A concrete 90-day plan is essential for defining immediate success and long-term trajectory for senior hires.

"The 90 day plan is something that's overused but so necessary, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. So that component and then, okay, a year from now, what should this person be doing? Two years fr..."