Pre-IPO companies have a special energy. There's an urgency, a scrappiness, and a willingness to try things that often gets lost once the IPO paperwork is filed. From 2014 to 2017, I had the privilege of working at Square during exactly this phase, when we were big enough to matter but small enough to move fast.

Those years shaped how I think about product marketing in ways I'm still unpacking. We launched Cash App, multiple hardware products, and expanded into international markets. Some initiatives succeeded spectacularly. Others failed quietly. But three principles emerged from those experiences that I still carry with me today.