Wise: Creating a culture expects “thoughtful mistakes” with Clara Nobre, Senior PM

People Driven Products

At fintech company Wise (formerly TransferWise), product managers — and all employees from designers to engineers — are empowered to speak directly with customers to advance the product.

But the company, which enables people to transfer money abroad at lower costs, also recognizes that you can’t have innovation without failure.

“We are quite open to people failing because if you're not open to people failing, they're not going to take risks,” Clara Nobre, Wise’s Senior Product Manager, says in this episode.

Wise understands “informed failure” — or failure that results when due diligence was done and a good process was followed, but a new feature or integration doesn’t work out as anticipated.

The company culture tolerates and expects “thoughtful mistakes” and then encourages employees to “take this learning and move forward,” explains Clara, who joined Wise in 2019.

The company is growing quickly and Clara’s team has almost tripled in size since she started.

On this episode of People Driven Products, Clara discusses the role that quantitative vs. qualitative research plays when determining how to prioritize product features. She talks through Wise’s integration with QuickBooks, and reveals what she looks for when interviewing candidates for her team.