Craig Miller on being Shopify's CPO, Marketing by an Engineer, Leadership, and Scale | The Black Box of Product Management

In our first episode ever, Brandon speaks with Craig Miller, the former CPO & CMO of Shopify and a company legend. He joined the company when it was worth less than $100M and 70 employees, and by the time he left it had grown to over $130 BILLION and 10k employees. He was the company's first marketer, and then built up the growth team as it's CMO. Mid-tenure, Craig took over the product team which he grew from 5 to 250. The winding conversation covers Craig's early career in engineering and marketing, mental models for leadership and product, and tons of stories from his 9+ years at Shopify, from the earliest days to the present. 0:00​ - Intro 1:06​ - What's the vague experience listed on your LinkedIn called, "Owner"? 3:52​ - What happened after "Owner", aka Kijiji 6:52​ - How Craig came to run Marketing at Kijiji despite being an electrical engineer 8:54​ - The start of the Shopify story 11:49​ - The PS that changed Craig's Life (https://medium.com/inside-shopify/the...​) 14:33​ - Craig's Big Hairy Audacious Goal for Shopify 16:00​ - Canadian tech imposter syndrome 18:44​ - "If you have ambition, you're an entrepreneur" 25:35​ - Why Craig hired me, and his thoughts on interviewing/hiring 30:13​ - Being a product exec role at a hyper-growth company 34:32​ - Leading through others 45:52​ - Projects or features that launched at Shopify that are great examples of PM thinking at the company 53:38​ - The importance of the details 1:02:10​ - Scaling the product management team from 5 to 250 1:08:30​ - What Craig is most proud of during his time at Shopify 1:10:00​ - What Craig is doing now 1:15:00​ - Final question - what's the single most important mental model or principle you have for life, work or both?