How to be a MoonPay PM: An open letter

Since joining MoonPay I’ve received countless DMs asking for opportunities and advice. These range from the generic “how do I break into web3?” to highly niche questions about our product roadmap.

By far the most common request I get is to list MoonPay’s hiring criteria for Product Manager roles. It would seem by the sheer number of these requests that everybody wants to be a PM. And that makes sense: people want to make decisions on what gets built and how. They want to turn ideas into reality and ship game-changing products. They want influence.  

I’ve thought long and hard about what makes a good MoonPay PM. And since I wouldn’t get any work done If I responded to each request, here’s my public response to aspiring applicants: 

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Hi [NAME], 

Thank you for reaching out and I’m pleased to hear of your interest in becoming a PM at MoonPay. Attracting the right talent is one of our highest priorities and we’re always on the lookout for people hungry for new opportunities. 

I want to start by saying I know how difficult it can be to break into any industry as a PM. There’s no School for Product Management–every company treats it differently.

At MoonPay, we’ve set a high bar for PM hires. It’s by far our most scrutinized position and rightfully so: as a PM you have direct contact with every level of the org from C-level down. We expect you to thread the needle in several key areas where priorities may collide, and to do so with poise and professionalism. 

Like other fintechs, we believe strongly in autonomous teams that have full ownership over their area of expertise. You will be empowered to make your own decisions - however risky - as long as they fit within the company’s overall mission and strategy.

Unlike other fintechs, however, MoonPay PMs don’t need to build trust. If you pass our interview process, you have our unconditional trust from day one. It’s up to you not to lose it. 

So what skillset do we look for in a PM? 

Courage

We look for folks who aren’t afraid to jump in the deep end. 

Working in a regulated environment that evolves every 6-12 months forces you to constantly adapt. You have to separate the signal from the noise, differentiate fads from game-changing innovation, and be ready to make extreme pivots that don’t compromise our long-term vision. 

Many of the decisions you’ll make will be leaps of faith. But that’s exactly what we need in a PM: someone who is courageous enough to take that leap.  

You can never be 100% right with courage, but you can be 100% wrong without it. MoonPay is a startup, so we consider the latter to be unreasonably costly.

Initiative

We look for the ability to lead in messy situations. 

As a PM, people across the org will be looking to you for guidance. You need to know how much or little information anyone in the business needs to know at any given moment.

Your relationship with your counterpart, the Engineering Manager, is integral. But the lines of responsibility are blurry since we consider both roles equally important. It’s therefore up to you two to align on priorities, responsibilities, and decision-making.

Vision

We look for entrepreneurial-minded foresight. 

As I mentioned above, the crypto industry is in constant flux. It feels like a decade since NFTs were the talk of the town, but that was just 2-3 years ago. 

We’re not in the business of predicting markets (if we were, we wouldn’t be providing the services we do today) but we do expect PMs to have a pulse on what’s going on. Placing strategic short- and long-term bets is crucial. And you must listen carefully to customer feedback: it’s one of the most reliable ways we measure ourselves against our competitors. 

In short, we need you to understand what pays the bills today and what pays the bills tomorrow.

Agility 

We look for folks who can learn, execute, and adjust quickly. 

We don’t do 12-month long projects at MoonPay. We rarely even plan six weeks in advance. 

Instead of long-term projects, we prefer to break bigger projects into smaller chunks and release them fast and iteratively. “Kaizen” - the practice of continuous, incremental improvement  - is one of MoonPay's core values. 

As a PM, we need you to learn fast and adjust faster. If you fail, you need to fail faster too. In short, we prioritize speed over perfection. 

Ownership

We look for people who can take full ownership—not just of their projects, but of their outcomes.

At MoonPay, you won’t just ship features. You’ll own an area end-to-end, defining its vision, roadmap, and execution. No one will tell you what to do—you’ll be expected to figure out what moves the needle and make it happen.

We believe in proactive disruption. If we don’t build the thing that challenges MoonPay’s status quo, someone else will. As a PM, we need you to take charge, make hard calls, and drive impact. And we need you to do all this from the foundation of extreme ownership. 

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If you exemplify the above traits, I guarantee you will thrive as a MoonPay PM and I urge you to apply to an open role or drop me a LinkedIn DM to get the process started. 

Our products won’t build themselves—let’s talk.