Capital One Product Strategy Case: Choosing Your Product

In the Capital One product strategy case, you pick the product. You make that decision before Power Day, and it sets how far you can go for the rest of the hour, because the conversation doesn't stay on what the product does. It moves into how the product works as a business. So choose something you can talk about as a daily user and also as someone who has looked at how it makes money. This post covers how to choose, how to test a shortlist, and how deep to prepare once you've picked.

The Capital One Power Day post gives the three picking rules in a few lines. This is the long version.

What the Capital One product strategy case is

The Capital One product strategy case is one of the three one-hour interviews on Power Day, alongside two business case interviews. It centers on a digital product, and you should prepare to discuss that product in product management language rather than in case-interview structure. Candidates I've worked with describe the business case hours as connected chains of questions, which the Capital One case interview vs McKinsey post covers. The product hour is the one that works differently, and it needs its own prep.

In one candidate's Power Day, the product strategy interview started from a product the candidate chose, and they were told to pick it themselves and not to over-prepare it. Read that instruction as don't bring a script to read aloud. It is not a reason to show up knowing only what the product's home screen looks like.

Why the product you pick carries the whole hour

In one candidate's product strategy interview, every question came back to the product they had picked, so a weak pick would have weakened every answer after the first. One thin answer costs you a minute. A product with nothing more to give by the twentieth minute costs you the rest of the hour.

Expect the product strategy conversation to go past what the product does. In one candidate's product strategy interview, the questions moved into business angles, such as how the product makes money and what else competes for the same users. Those two are examples, not the list and not the order. Whatever you pick needs something to say at angles like those, or you run out of material mid-hour.

One candidate's prep for the product strategy interview covered every angle they were asked about. My read on why: the product was one they could research as a business, not only use. A product you love but can't find anything about beyond its app store listing leaves you guessing once the questions turn to the business.

The three rules for choosing, and why each one exists

Avoid super-famous products for the product strategy interview, the kind nearly everyone uses, such as Spotify. A product that famous is an obvious pick, which makes it a likely pick for other candidates too. Finding something distinctive to say about a product that big takes far more work than it would for a smaller one.

Avoid anything so niche that you spend the product strategy hour explaining what it is. Every minute spent establishing what the product does is a minute not spent on the business questions the hour moves into. A product the interviewer has never heard of also means they have to take your word for how it works, so your reasoning has less to push against.

Pick something in the middle that you personally use every day. Daily use gives you the one kind of knowledge that research can't: what the product is like on an ordinary Tuesday, where it slows you down, and what you would change if it were yours. For the product strategy interview, one candidate chose a consumer app they used daily, which is the middle-ground pick these rules point to.

Two candidates I've worked with also reached the product strategy interview, and one of them chose a fitness tracking app.

Four tests for a shortlist

Before you commit to a product, run every option on your shortlist through four tests: the two-sentence test, the this-week test, the money test, and the complaint test. They are my checks, built from the three picking rules, not anything Capital One publishes.

The two-sentence test. Explain the product in two sentences to someone who has never heard of it. If it takes a paragraph, or needs background on a hobby or an industry first, it's too niche for a one-hour interview.

The this-week test. Ask whether you have opened the product in the last seven days, for your own reasons. If not, you would be speaking as a researcher, and daily use is the thing that makes your answers yours.

The money test. Check whether you can find out how the product makes money from public sources. A pricing page counts. So does an annual report or an earnings release if the company is public. One candidate's prep for the product strategy interview went as far as reading the company's public financial filings. A product from a private company that publishes nothing can still work, but you will be reasoning from the outside on every business question.

The complaint test. Name at least two things about the product that annoy you as a user. Frustrations you have actually felt are the most credible material you have whenever the conversation turns to what the product should do better. One candidate's ideas for improving their product started from things that bothered them as a daily user.

One candidate's shortlist, and why three options were cut

One candidate weighed several products before settling on one for their product strategy interview, and cut three of them for three different reasons. Each reason lines up with one of the picking rules or tests, which is why the cuts are more useful to study than the final pick.

One candidate cut a professional networking app from their product shortlist because there was nothing about it they particularly wanted to improve. That is the complaint test failing. A product you use without friction can still be a product you like, but it leaves you with little of your own to say when the conversation turns to what should change.

One candidate cut a very well-known photo-sharing social app from their product shortlist because it was so famous that, in their judgment at the time, plenty of other candidates would have picked it too. That is the first picking rule, avoiding super-famous products, applied before any research started.

One candidate cut a credit score app from their product shortlist because the app had a paid version and they had never been a premium user, so they felt they didn't know the product well. My read: that is a gap in the this-week test. Using the free version every day is not the same as knowing the whole product, and if you have never touched the part that makes money, you are a researcher for exactly the part the business questions are about. Add a question to the this-week test: have you used the paid side, if there is one?

My read of the three cuts on one candidate's product shortlist: each came down to where the candidate stood relative to the product (nothing they wanted to change, a pick they expected many others to make, a paid tier they hadn't used) rather than to the product itself.

How deep to prepare the product you pick

Prepare the product you pick as knowledge, not as a script. One candidate was told not to over-prepare the product, and the same candidate's prep still covered every angle they were asked about. The two fit together once you separate knowing from memorizing: know a lot, and write nothing you would read aloud.

For the product strategy interview, gather three categories of material on the product you pick:

• How it makes money. The pricing page and plans, and, if the company is public, its latest annual report or earnings release. If you bring a number from a filing, know where it came from and what it includes, because a figure you can't explain when asked is worse than no figure. One candidate checked the source of each figure during prep, and in the interview named the report and the period before giving the number.
• What competes with it. Direct rivals, and the other things people use instead.
• What bothers you. A running list of frustrations, written down while you use the product, not reconstructed from memory the night before.

Research is half of the prep for the product you pick, and use is the other half. The Power Day post suggests using your product on purpose for a week before the day. Keep your frustration list open during that week and add to it in the moment.

The full question sequence for the product strategy hour, with worked answers for one product, is what the paid guide covers. That part isn't written yet.

What to do this week

Product prep for Power Day is mostly a choice plus a week of attention. Start with these steps:

Write a shortlist of three products you use at least weekly. Include one you'd never have thought of as interview material. Those are often the middle-ground picks.

Run the four tests and drop anything that fails the two-sentence test or the money test. Those two failures are the hardest to fix with prep.

Set your own deadline for the product choice. One candidate submitted no product name in advance and first said which product they wanted to discuss in the interview itself, so on that loop there was no formal deadline to pick by. Without one, it's easy to let the choice slide toward the night before, which leaves no week of deliberate use.

Ask your recruiter about the format of the product interview. Format questions are among the ones a recruiter is positioned to answer, as the recruiter call post covers.

Start the frustration list today. Dated, specific, and written while the product is open in front of you.

Say your two-sentence explanation out loud to someone who doesn't use the product. If they ask what it is afterward, go back to the shortlist.

Pick early, pick something you actually use, and make sure you can see how it makes money. The rest of the hour stands on that choice.