The Exchanges

Q In the case of many of the GMs sharing the same customer, in some cases they have different customers. Some, some cases, multiple GMs serve the same customer. Is it that GTM function that sort of acts as the governor across those product surface areas?

A Combinations. So, so it's the GTM folks who are obviously Square first in entirety. And so that's a natural governance mechanism because they will optimize for square first as they should. Then you have the product marketing teams that frequently also serve as the glue because product marketing teams sit in between GTM teams and the product development teams. And so they serve as a bridge between the GM and the GTM functions, but also between each other. So they can also serve as a bridge between GMs. And so the product marketing teams, of Across all of these GMs are continually talking to each other to try to coordinate and find problems and solutions. So you've got that mechanism as well. The third mechanism, quite frankly, is just GM to GM kind of conversation and escalations, because we use that to also kind of continually resolve problems, but also find opportunities where we could be pairing together to achieve more for the customer. And so the GM of e-commerce has stakeholders In Square for restaurants and Square for retail and Square for appointments, because customers that are buying one of our mobile points of sale are very frequently going to say, by the way, what's my online store going to look like? Show me. And so that pairing has to be very close. And we've set those up intentionally and also culturally. And then finally, the final governance mechanism is Alyssa'…

AI assessment note: “Combinations. So, so it's the GTM folks who are obviously Square first in entirety.”

Q In terms of the GM structure that you were outlining, can you talk about how you figure out what each GM owns? It seems like it's not just buyer persona or customer oriented and like, how do you think about the territories and What makes the most sense?

A So a couple things. So, so we have two types of roles, actually, technically. So one is general managers who are people who own a P&L and are responsible for the growth and improvement type of that P&L. And then we have what we would call multidisciplinary leaders, MDLs, and I think this is a common term in the industry at this point as well, which is you may be leading multiple disciplines, but you don't necessarily have a P&L attached. So that's the canvas on which we work. And we try to Cut it a couple of different ways when we try to set these up. So one kind of classical mechanism is we are selling a set of SKUs and we want related SKUs to be closely aligned with each other. So we've got two products. One is square point of sale, which is this horizontal baseline, free, easy to get started, small business, mobile point of sale. And then we've got the equivalent of that for the web and it's called virtual terminal. And it's basically Same thing, but on a website for people who don't necessarily need the equivalent of a mobile app. Those two things are thematically very close to each other, and so they roll up under the same GM. Then you may have an individual product that's quite large as a P&L, and it's growing really fast, it serves a particular type of audience, and that's thematically coherent, so that's a GM role. And so the dimensions we evaluate on are product or pla…

AI assessment note: “one kind of classical mechanism is we are selling a set of SKUs”

Q GM structure that you all have developed, if another company is figuring out whether this structure might be right for them or some flavor of it, Do you have thoughts on what are the questions they could ask or the signs that maybe this structure might be optimal for them or the signs or considerations that maybe some version of this structure probably wouldn't be the right fit for them?

A We hear stories from the industry about companies that have tried it and then reversed course in 12 months, 18 months, two years. Um, and so while not having any access to specific insider knowledge, The, the couple of places where we've seen this go right or go wrong, two signals. One is fundamentally, are you in a single product structure or are you in a multi-product structure? And I think what we have seen or observed is companies that are fundamentally one product in the end, but have for whatever reason, cut up that one product into multiple GMs and it eventually by and large does not work. You have to recognize whether you are in this ecosystem portfolio, multi-product circumstance, or if you are in the single product circumstance and too many companies take a single product system and try to run it as a GM led system and it doesn't work. So I think that's one. The other thing, which is also interesting and cultural at some level is what's the kind of level of commitment or progressive commitment over time to evolve and iterate. Because this is a structure that Alyssa put in place right before I joined, and so that would have been summer of 20 15, and we've iterated it, we've improved it, and we've worked on it, and we're still working on it eight years in. And what we've seen is, without kind of a long haul commitment, it just doesn't work, because it's not a system tha…

AI assessment note: “One is fundamentally, are you in a single product structure or are you in a multi-product structure?”

Q What's the ideal setup to kick off a reorg? Like, what are the indications that it might be time?

A So I would say what you observe is you've got a company level strategy or strategic priorities. So for Square, it's, and going back several years, it's omnichannel upmarket growth. And then we did some stuff. We added another priority this year in flight. Uh, around generative AI. And so you look at those priorities and you're like, okay, like, where are my choke points where I feel like I'm not making the pace of progress that I could? And then you look at those choke points and then you evaluate each of those on the merits unto itself. You say, okay, like, what is the situation I'm dealing with here? Like, do I have a leadership issue? Do I have a Do I have a personnel issue? Do I have a funding issue? Do I just have a clarity problem tied to the fact that I've got this one organization that's doing four things that are semi related to each other. And the thing that I really want progress on is one of these four things and it's getting lost in the shuffle. And so what I need to do is basically pull it out and elevate it and make it its own thing. And once I make it its own thing, everybody else will understand it better. It'll be more visible. You know, the progress will be more apparent or not. Uh, and all of that's a good thing. And if I do that, then I have a shot. I've done a reorg where we had a functional structure that we converted into a GM led structure, you know, an…

AI assessment note: “where are my choke points where I feel like I'm not making the pace”

Q then we'll narrow as we go, but interested to get your kind of sort of high level thinking to start around org design and maybe some of the stuff that you figured out in the context of Square that sort of drives the underpinnings in terms of what is the point of org design? What does it look like to do it well? And sort of those types of things.

A Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I had spent 10 years of my career The first 10 years of my career working at small early stage startups, and then spent the last seven kind of working at Square, watching it scale, being a part of that scaling journey. And one of the things I learned along the way is that org design is effectively one among several tools in your management toolbox in order to drive change, in order to drive progress, in order to drive a roadmap, and in order to drive a P&L. And treat it no differently than a tool in the toolbox. Use it appropriately. And if you're going to use it, use it well and use it properly. And one of the things I learned by talking to lots of friends, watching stuff get involved internally, doing several org design changes, reorgs myself at Square is I realized that I had learned a lot of things from the folks around me, especially our CEO, Alyssa, but I needed to actually write it down in one place in order to make it more effective for myself or to make it more effective for The people that I manage who are going through their own org design conversations or peers who might be doing something similar. And I narrowed it down to six principles, right? Which I think are helpful as a frame for how to go about org design successfully. So let me just quickly outline them and I'll give a high level summary and then we can dig into whichever one…

AI assessment note: “org design is effectively one among several tools in your management toolbox”

Q she's not allowed out there person relative to other people leading very large, important companies. Um, and so I'm curious, what comes to mind? Like, what are some of the big ideas that maybe we haven't touched on maybe adjacent to what we're chatting about that sort of she's imparted and imparted on you and is sort of maybe a part of the way that you see the world now?

A Yeah, the list is long and consequential, at least from my vantage point. And it certainly is significantly responsible for my worldview and For executing and scaling the way that I have scaled and the way I've gone about doing things. Uh, so it's, I can speak personally, hugely consequential. And so in no particular order, some of the valuable and important lessons, I think one of them is just the importance of patience and having a long-term outlook. And so I, I said somewhere along in our conversation is like, commit for the long haul. And I spent 10 years working at startups where, you know, like if it's a startup that's, let's say a hundred people or less, you're not going to have a lot of in-depth conversations about annual planning. And you're going to be very focused on achieving product market fit. You're going to be very focused on what are we getting done the next 30 days? How are we going to be super responsive to competitors, customers, industry trends, and so on. And so I think one of the big lessons for me personally But also writ large is how do you invest with a multi-year timeframe in mind? And how do you patiently keep investing to make things incrementally better every six months, every 12 months? And how do you stay committed to a particular path, which is a classical problem, which is there's a lot of herky jerkiness and companies use exceptional product m…

AI assessment note: “one of them is just the importance of patience and having a long-term outlook.”