Learnings from our Product Leaders Workshop with Stripe

At SquareOne, one of our core values is being there for our portfolio companies from day one, acting as a hands-on supporter and partner on equal footing. Recently, we hosted a Product Leaders Workshop for our portfolio companies at our Berlin office, together with Ruhi Dang, Product Lead Europe at Stripe. Seeing how helpful these sessions were was amazing, so I wanted to share my experience.

This article is for you if you’re

• a VC looking for ways to engage your portfolio while creating tangible value for everyone
• a founder looking for more exchange, network, and expertise

Creating tangible value for everyone

One question we get asked fairly often is how we define hands-on support for our portfolio companies and whether there’s such a thing as being too hands-on. For us, the answer is no, but of course, it depends on the execution.

The thing is: While we want to stay close to our portfolio companies, we always try to keep noise away from them, so they can focus on what matters most: building their business. We consider time the most valuable resource founders have on their way to proving their hypotheses.

So everything we offer our startups outside their core business has to add specific value for them, ideally leading to new partnerships or business opportunities.

Let’s take a closer look at the workshop

We invited Ruhi Dang from our portfolio company Stripe to lead workshops with different startups from the SquareOne portfolio, particularly those in the earlier stages of their journey. Having worked at Amazon and now leading Product for Europe at Stripe, she brings a wealth of experience in all things product.

Talking to outstanding professionals like her is a rare opportunity, especially for early-stage founders. We thought a lot about who would benefit the most from meeting her, and the other way round.

So here’s what we’ve done: In five different 1:1 sessions, we connected Ruhi with either product leaders of our portfolio or leaders of portfolio companies that have specific touchpoints with Stripe in their day-to-day business, such as Inai (payment orchestration), which integrates with Stripe.

A win-win situation: Ruhi was able to share her expertise with our portfolio companies but at the same time received valuable and very targeted feedback from our startups, most of them being (potential) customers or partners.

My key learnings

We’re super happy about the feedback we’ve received so far, so here are my learnings from the Stripe Product Leaders Workshop, in case you’re planning a similar event:

• Bring the right people together: The right stakeholders must meet — in our case product leaders or Stripe partners.
• Have a clear concept in place: Everyone needs to know in advance what to expect and what not to expect from an event. Communicate this. This way, founders can decide if it is worth their time or not.
• Preparation is key: Allow all participants to exchange relevant information beforehand. This way, everyone already knows the context, the time can be used more efficiently, and conversations can directly start with higher quality.

Questions? Feel free to reach out or connect with me on Linkedin.

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