Summary of "“We strive for things to work a 100% percent of the time at Flutterwave." - Lizanne"

Overview

Lizanne (VP of Products at Flutterwave) is currently in Lagos, Nigeria, attending a series of meetings and planning sessions with product colleagues and other stakeholders outside the product function. During her trip, she also tries local food—mentioning jollof rice—and looks forward to more traditional dishes.

Why She Moved Into Fintech

Lizanne shares that her interest in fintech grew after:

Working at a major payments network
Engaging with fintech innovation communities

She became especially drawn to the creativity and problem-solving within sub-Saharan Africa’s fintech ecosystem. She joined Flutterwave to better understand the region’s fintech landscape and help develop solutions that enable consumers and businesses to move money seamlessly.

Scope of Product Leadership

As a product leader, she emphasizes that product work spans a broad set of responsibilities, including:

Thinking about the competitive landscape
Optimizing internal processes
Improving customer experiences

She also highlights the importance of doing this efficiently, with minimal impact on resources.

Work-Life Integration and Mindset

Lizanne discusses her approach to work-life integration while raising two boys. Her perspective is that doing work she truly loves makes it feel more like passion than “work.”

Typical Routine

Her day-to-day rhythm includes:

Morning runs to clear her head and set intentions for the day/week
Morning one-on-one check-ins with team members
Regular project meetings
Late-evening focus time for deeper analysis, such as:
- Evaluating projects
- Assessing capabilities or feature sets
- Determining the revenue case for proposed work

Advice and Collaboration

For advice, she stresses:

Collaboration
Openness to new ideas
Actively listening to different perspectives

She particularly underscores the need for close collaboration between product design and engineering. She notes that Flutterwave is moving toward stronger cross-functional collaboration, with engineering viewed as essential to delivering and shipping product to market.

Mission for Flutterwave’s Product Team

Lizanne describes the product team’s mission as building and delivering meaningful products for:

Consumers
Merchants

This is enabled by leveraging Flutterwave’s strong infrastructure across Africa. She says customers should expect:

Seamless onboarding
Intuitive product use
A high standard of reliability—“things to work 100% of the time”—which the company is striving to achieve.