Company Context
You’re a Product Manager at LedgerPay, a Series D fintech that provides invoicing, payments, and lightweight bookkeeping for small businesses. LedgerPay has 6.5M monthly active businesses globally, processes $28B in annual payment volume, and monetizes via a 2.9% + $0.30 card processing fee, 1% ACH fee (capped), and a $25/month Pro subscription.
LedgerPay competes with QuickBooks + Bill Pay, Square Invoices, and Stripe Invoicing. LedgerPay’s differentiation is “get paid faster” through payment links, reminders, and instant deposit.
User / Market Scenario
LedgerPay serves two-sided workflows:
- Invoice senders (SMBs): plumbers, marketing agencies, home services, freelancers.
- Invoice payers (customers of SMBs): consumers and other businesses paying via card/ACH.
Recent competitive intel suggests Square is winning in home services by offering “smart reminders” and a one-tap pay experience. Meanwhile, QuickBooks is bundling invoicing deeper into accounting workflows, increasing switching costs.
Key Personas (from internal segmentation)
| Persona | Share of active SMBs | Typical invoice size | Behavior | Stated pain point |
|---|
| Home Services Operator | 32% | $180–$600 | Sends invoices on mobile after job | “Customers forget; I hate chasing.” |
| Freelance Professional | 27% | $300–$2,000 | Sends 3–10 invoices/month | “I need it to look professional and get paid quickly.” |
| Small Agency Owner | 21% | $2,000–$15,000 | Net terms, partial payments | “Approvals take forever; I need visibility.” |
| Retail/Side Hustle | 20% | $50–$200 | Occasional invoices | “I don’t understand fees; customers ask questions.” |
Problem / Opportunity
LedgerPay’s north star for invoicing is “paid invoices per active invoicer per month.” Over the last two quarters, growth has plateaued.
Funnel + performance signals
- Invoice creation → sent: 92%
- Sent → opened: 74%
- Opened → payment started: 38%
- Payment started → paid: 84%
The biggest drop is Opened → payment started.
Payment delay and churn signals
- Median time-to-pay increased from 4.1 days → 5.0 days in 6 months.
- SMBs with median time-to-pay > 7 days have 1.6× higher 90-day churn.
- Support tickets tagged “invoice payment confusion” rose 22% QoQ.
Existing research (what you already have)
LedgerPay ran 12 qualitative interviews with SMBs and found themes:
- SMBs don’t know which customers are “at risk” of paying late.
- SMBs worry reminders will annoy customers and hurt repeat business.
- Some payers abandon when they see fees or need to re-enter details.
LedgerPay also ran a small survey (n=420) that found:
- 54% of payers prefer Apple Pay / Google Pay when available.
- 31% of payers report “I wasn’t sure the invoice was legitimate” at least once.
However, leadership believes the team is “over-indexing on anecdotes” and wants a rigorous mixed-methods plan to decide what to build next.
Your Task (Deliverables)
You have 6 weeks to produce a recommendation for the next quarter’s roadmap. Walk the interviewer through:
- Research goals & hypotheses: What are the top 3–5 questions you need to answer to unlock the funnel drop (Opened → payment started) and reduce time-to-pay?
- Mixed-methods study design: Propose a plan that combines qualitative and quantitative methods. Specify:
- which methods you’d use (e.g., interviews, diary study, usability tests, survey, log analysis)
- sampling strategy and segment coverage
- what you’d measure / capture in each method
- how you’ll triangulate findings and resolve conflicts (e.g., survey says X, interviews say Y)
- From insights to product decisions: Based on likely outcomes, propose 2–3 solution directions (e.g., payer trust signals, faster checkout, smarter reminders, invoice status visibility) and how research will de-risk them.
- Prioritization approach: Show how you would prioritize next-quarter bets using a structured method (e.g., RICE + Kano), given constraints.
- Success metrics & decision gates: Define what “good enough evidence” looks like to greenlight an MVP vs. stop.
Constraints
- Team capacity: 1 PM (you), 1 designer, 6 engineers, 1 data analyst, and shared access to 2 UX researchers (max 10 hours/week each).
- Timeline: 6 weeks to recommendation; MVP must be feasible in 12 weeks after that.
- Compliance & risk: Must meet PCI requirements; cannot store new payer card data outside existing vault. Any changes that increase fraud losses by > 5 bps will be rejected.
- Experimentation limits: You can A/B test UI changes, but you cannot change pricing/fees this quarter.
- Internationalization: 35% of volume is outside the US; research must include at least 2 non-US markets.
