Maya Chen

Maya Chen

Staff PM at Notion | Ex-Stripe, Ex-Airbnb

"I build platforms that empower other builders"

Platform StrategyAPI Design0-to-1 ProductsTeam BuildingCross-functional LeadershipB2B SaaS

Career Summary

Staff PM with 8 years of experience building 0-to-1 products and scaling teams. Led platform initiatives at Stripe and growth at Airbnb before joining Notion to build their API platform.

Career Timeline

Key moments and achievements in chronological order

Context

Notion was growing rapidly but had no formal API offering. Developers were scraping and building unofficial integrations, creating support burden and security concerns.

Approach

Recruited a team of 6 engineers and 2 designers. Established API design principles based on developer research. Built internal dogfooding program with 5 teams. Launched beta with 50 design partners before public release.

Outcome

Launched public API to 10K+ developers in first month. API integrations now drive 15% of new workspace creation. Team grew to 12 people across 3 pods.

Metrics

10K+ developers, 15% of new signups via integrations, NPS of 72 among API users

Context

Stripe Connect onboarding had a 34% completion rate. Platforms were churning before they could even start processing payments.

Approach

Conducted 40 user interviews across different platform types. Identified 3 distinct onboarding personas with different needs. Redesigned flow with progressive disclosure - only ask what is needed for each platform type.

Key Decisions

Chose to build 3 tailored flows instead of one flexible flow. Invested in real-time ID verification to reduce friction. Made some compliance fields optional initially with follow-up prompts.

Outcome

Completion rate increased from 34% to 67%. Time to complete dropped from 47 minutes to 12 minutes. Platform activation within 7 days increased by 41%.

Tradeoffs

Had to accept slightly higher fraud rate initially (0.2% increase) in exchange for better conversion. Built fraud detection to catch issues post-onboarding.

Approach

A/B test with 5% of users over 8 weeks. Test group saw results re-ranked based on past preferences (location type, price range, amenities). Control used standard relevance ranking.

Outcome

Booking conversion increased by 8.3% in test group. However, we saw a 12% decrease in bookings at new-to-platform listings. Guest satisfaction scores were flat.

Key Learnings

Personalization helps conversion but can create filter bubbles that hurt marketplace health. We needed to balance personalization with exploration. Led to building an explore mode that deliberately surfaces diverse options.

Key Learnings

1) Your users are builders - respect their technical sophistication. 2) Documentation is product. 3) Breaking changes are existential - versioning strategy matters from day one. 4) The best platform features are the ones you never have to build because developers can build them themselves.