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@lerato_product
Lerato Dlamini
Product manager · fintech
1 followers 0 following Johannesburg, South Africa
PM writing about scoping MVPs, talking to users, and working with engineers across timezones.
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How I cut a feature list from twenty to four
Inherited a feature backlog of twenty items for a new fintech feature and no clear way to prioritise between them. Went back to actual support tickets and user interviews instead of guessing, and it turned out sixteen of those twenty items came from internal opinions, not user requests. The four that remained were unglamorous but solved real, frequently reported problems.
Looking for a technical co-founder, being upfront that this is unpaid and uncertain right now
I've been validating a small fintech idea for reconciling informal savings groups and I'm not a developer, so I need someone technical who wants real ownership rather than a contract. To be clear upfront, there's no salary right now and no guarantee this goes anywhere, just early customer interviews and a rough plan. If that trade sounds interesting rather than off-putting, message me and we can talk honestly about what it would actually involve.
Could sponsored challenges work here without turning into ad space
Just thinking out loud, no announcement, no existing sponsor. If a company funded a build challenge with a small prize pool in exchange for their name on it, would that feel like useful funding for builders or would it quietly start pulling the community toward whatever that sponsor wants promoted? Curious where people would draw the line between funded and compromised.
Explaining network effects to my non-technical uncle finally made it click for me too
He asked why a scheduling app I'm building couldn't just be great on day one, and the honest answer is it gets genuinely better every time one more clinic joins, more coverage data, more patterns to learn from, more reasons for the next clinic to bother switching. A community works the same way, one more honest builder here makes the feed slightly more useful for everyone already reading it. Trying to explain it simply out loud exposed how much of it I'd only understood vaguely before.
What working with a fully remote team taught me about clarity
Our engineering team spans three countries and overlapping hours are short, so a message that would get clarified instantly in an office can sit unanswered for half a day if it's vague. I've had to get much more deliberate about writing requirements with enough context that someone can act without needing to ask me anything first. Nobody taught me this skill directly, I only learned it from watching messages fail.
What should never have a paywall on a platform like this
Genuinely curious what people here consider non-negotiable. My own list would be posting your work, asking questions, following mentors, and having a basic profile that shows what you've built. Everything past that, deeper analytics, premium placement, dedicated support, feels fair to charge for eventually. Where would people draw that line differently?
Running standups across three timezones without losing anyone
We used to do a live daily standup and it consistently favoured whoever was awake at the meeting time, usually not the same two people every day. Switched to an async written update posted before a shared cutoff time, with a short live call only twice a week for anything that actually needs discussion. Less energetic than daily video calls, but far more equal across the team.
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