Company Context
You’re the PM for ShieldPay, a Series D fintech (650 employees) that provides payment orchestration + fraud prevention APIs for mid-market and enterprise merchants. ShieldPay processes $38B annualized TPV, serves 4,200 merchants, and has 99.95% API uptime. Revenue is primarily usage-based (per transaction + fraud checks) with enterprise contracts adding platform fees.
ShieldPay is competing against Stripe, Adyen, and Checkout.com. The company’s differentiation is a “single integration” that routes payments across multiple PSPs plus a fraud layer that reduces chargebacks.
User / Market Scenario
ShieldPay sells into two distinct audiences within the same customer account:
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Developers / technical implementers (e.g., Staff Engineer, Engineering Manager)
- Care about: time-to-first-success, API reliability, SDK quality, docs, debugging tools, sandbox parity, webhooks, idempotency, and clear error messages.
- They influence vendor selection by recommending solutions that are easiest to integrate and operate.
-
C-level executives / economic buyers (CFO, COO, sometimes CISO)
- Care about: ROI, risk reduction, compliance posture, vendor consolidation, contract terms, and predictable costs.
- They approve budget and often demand proof of business impact.
Competitive landscape (observed in win/loss)
- Stripe wins when developers drive the decision: best-in-class docs and fast integration.
- Adyen wins when execs drive the decision: enterprise credibility and global coverage.
- ShieldPay wins when it can prove both: “fast integration” and “measurable fraud + routing ROI.”
Problem / Opportunity
ShieldPay’s conversion funnel shows a mismatch between technical adoption and executive buy-in:
- Top-of-funnel: 180K monthly visits to docs; 22K create a sandbox account.
- Activation: 31% complete “first successful transaction” in sandbox.
- Drop-off: Only 7% of activated sandbox accounts request a sales demo.
- Sales feedback: In late-stage deals, 42% stall at procurement because CFO/COO “doesn’t see clear ROI vs current stack.”
Recent user research (n=24 interviews) highlights a messaging gap:
- Developers: “Your docs are good, but I don’t understand why I should switch from Stripe unless you show me operational advantages.”
- CFOs: “I don’t care about webhooks. Show me chargeback reduction, auth uplift, and total cost.”
- COOs: “Routing sounds risky—what’s the operational blast radius if something fails?”
Leadership wants a plan to tailor messaging across these audiences while keeping the product narrative coherent.
Your Task (Deliverables)
- Segment and define the core Job-to-be-Done for (a) developers and (b) C-level executives in this buying journey.
- Propose a single product narrative (north-star value proposition) and then show how you would tailor the message for each audience without contradicting yourself.
- Design the messaging surfaces you would change or create (e.g., docs landing page, in-product onboarding, sales deck, ROI calculator, security/compliance page). Explain what content goes where and why.
- Recommend a prioritized MVP plan (6–8 weeks) for improving messaging and conversion, including what you would test first and what you would defer.
- Define success metrics and an experiment/measurement approach to determine whether your tailored messaging is working.
Constraints
- Timeline: 8 weeks to ship a measurable MVP (web + docs + lightweight in-product changes). No major backend work.
- Team: 1 PM (you), 1 designer, 2 web engineers, 1 developer advocate (50%), 1 marketer (50%).
- Compliance: Must avoid unsubstantiated claims (e.g., “reduce fraud by 40%”) unless backed by case studies; legal review adds a 10-day lead time.
- Brand risk: Messaging must not imply ShieldPay replaces all PSPs in every region (coverage is strong in US/EU, limited in LATAM/APAC).
You can ask clarifying questions during the interview, but assume you cannot run new customer research beyond lightweight usability tests and analysis of existing win/loss notes.
