Afleveringen
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Weâve all been witness to how AI collapses the org chart: leaders are back to doing IC work, ICs are shedding the busy work, and teams are shipping features in two-week sprints that used to take a year.
Our guest today is Eric Anderson, SVP of Product at Datasite, the virtual data room platform where billion-dollar M&A deals get done. He walks us through how a real-life, AI-first team has made progress in adoption and the difficulties along the way.
In this episode, Eric shares:
How the contract has changed as the PM role has evolved. Itâs not a layoff story - but product has collapsed back to subject-matter expertise, judgment, and tasteInside their âiteration zeroâ process: where PRDs are written live in the meeting, prototypes are wired to real data, and what the new bottleneck is now that building is fastPlus how you build trust in your AI product when a billion dollars is on the line: citations for everything, correlation, not imperative statements, and why nobody lets the computer decideLinksLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-anderson-pr0ductexec/
Chapters
Datasite: https://www.datasite.com/00:00 Introduction
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03:04 AI is flattening the org chart (and why that's a good thing)
07:32 "The contract has changed": PRDs written live, ideas to code in minutes
14:42 Rise of the hyper creator: Blurring roles on the product team
17:53 Shipping fast isn't enough: Why taste and focus are the new bottleneck
21:35 Inside the virtual data room (VDR)
26:52 How Datasite builds trust in AI insights
31:59 Wrapping upWe have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!
What does LogRocket do?LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.
Special Guest: Eric Anderson.
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Weâve all been witness to how AI collapses the org chart: leaders are back to doing IC work, ICs are shedding the busy work, and teams are shipping features in two-week sprints that used to take a year.
Our guest today is Eric Anderson, SVP of Product at Datasite, the virtual data room platform where billion-dollar M&A deals get done. He walks us through how a real-life, AI-first team has made progress in adoption and the difficulties along the way.
In this episode, Eric shares:
How the "The contract has changed" as the PM role has evolved. Itâs not a layoff story - but product has collapsed back to subject-matter expertise, judgment, and tasteInside their âiteration zeroâ process: where PRDs are written live in the meeting, prototypes are wired to real data, and what the new bottleneck is now that building is fastPlus how you build trust in your AI product when a billion dollars is on the line: citations for everything, correlation, not imperative statements, and why nobody lets the computer decideLinksLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nishaat-vasi/
Resources
Zipcar: https://www.zipcar.com/The Right Kind of Wrong by Amy Edmondson: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Right-Kind-of-Wrong/Amy-C-Edmondson/9781982195069
Chapters00:00 Intro
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03:37 Zipcar and the customer experience wake-up call
05:27 Ditching the email survey for real-time feedback
09:55 Turning NPS into OKRs
13:13 The top 3 priorities: Cleanliness, damage, and maintenance
16:51 The zero-cost pilot that now saves millions of dollars
25:42 The issue with "AI theater"
27:43 How genAI spotted a hidden fuel card problem
32:13 ConclusionWe have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!
What does LogRocket do?LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.
Special Guest: Nishaat Vasi.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Our guest today is Laura Burkhauser, CEO of Descript, the video editor thatâs been AI-native long before âAI-nativeâ was something you put in a pitch deck.
Laura's route to the CEO seat started as a customer. She loved the product enough to knock on founder Andrew Mason's door and ask to work on it. She joined to lead product, but only three years later she's succeeded the well-known founder and is running the company.
Today, Laura is here to talk about both sides of that journey: finding peers and mentors when you're suddenly the most senior person in any room, and driving AI adoption across an org already known for AI in its product.
In this episode, Laura shares:
Her "tech acceptance framework" â the 4 stages from outright hostility to "rewired" â and how to figure out where YOUR team actually sitsWhy telling IC PMs that AI means 2x productivity just sounds like theyâre doing twice the work â and her âfind the dreamâ reframe that actually gets real buy-inHow Laura built Descript's AI philosophy around one principle: "Struggle with your art, not with your tools" and why she doesn't want anyone one-shotting their videosPlus the trap most companies are falling into right now: AI systems that walk out the door when the person who built them leaves, and how to make progress durable across your orgLinksLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/burkhauser/
Resources
Descript: https://www.descript.com/What Got You Here Won't Get You There: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/what-got-you-here-wont-get-you-there-marshall-goldsmith/1112274786
Chapters00:00 Intro
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01:07: Laura's career journey: From fashion startups to finding her path to product
03:26: The "what got you here won't get you there" moment
4:05: Finding peers and mentors when you're the most senior person in the room
12:06: "Struggle with your art, not with your tools" â Descript's AI philosophy
15:04: AI as a derivative technology and the democratization of creativity
17:59: The tech acceptance framework: From hostile to rewired
18:50: Running AI hackathons and reimagining company systems
22:40: Pitfalls of AI adoption: Cost, durability, and automating broken systems
24:42: The two-by-two framework for getting your team AI-pilled
27:49: ConclusionWe have a YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!
What does LogRocket do?LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.
Special Guest: Laura Burkhauser.
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A program manager told Sriram Iyer it would take 6 to 9 months to ship the first slice of their new product. Sriram challenged the team to do it in just five days.
At first, they laughed. Then he rolled his sleeves up, dug in with the team, and they did it. 5 days, from Monday to Friday.
Sriram has spent his career walking into companies like Salesforce, Adobe, and Freshworks, and pulling timelines apart. He calls himself the simplifier in chief, and the secret isn't the AI tooling. It's everything underneath the AI tooling that most leaders won't actually do. That's what make teams trust, and follow, him.
In this episode, Sriram breaks down exactly how that five-day sprint worked, including:
The "thinnest slice of pizza" principle that kills scope creep before it startsWhy AI made it possible â but isn't really the pointHow to find the team members in any org who are actually ready to just make stuff happen â and why mindset matters more than toolingAnd why none of this works without trust, prioritization, taste, and an executive willing to get in the weeds and take personal responsibility for the outcomeLinksLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sriramviyer/
Follow LaunchPod on YouTubeWe have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!
What does LogRocket do?LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.
Special Guest: Sriram Iyer.
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Long before âAI Agentâ was the buzzword in every product discussion, Julia Dalton was already deep into solving the problems of coordinating thousands of worker agents, creating clear instruction prompts, and evaluating output quality.
Julia is SVP of Product at the AI-support automation platform, Capacity. Previously, she helped scale workflow orchestration at OneSpace, formerly known as Crowdsource, where thousands of freelancers executed microtasks for major retailers. As it turns out, managing humans at scale and managing AI agents have a lot more in common than most people realize.
In this episode, Julia shares:
The two failure modes that kill every AI agent before the model ever runsWhy running a crowdsourced work platform gave her incredible insights into building effective agentic AI productsHow Julia and her team built an AI system to triage and prioritize product feedback, automating low-complexity builds and helping make better decisions on high-stakes tradeoffsLinksLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliadalton/
Chapters
Capacity: https://capacity.com/00:00 Intro
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00:52 Julia's startup roots at OneSpace
02:00 Transitioning from the human API to AI agents
02:47 Microtasking workflow chains
06:54 Routing rules and AI orchestration
11:55 Validating prompts with simulations
15:08 Recursive prompting in practice
17:46 Data and knowledge orchestration
20:57 PRP triage app for product requests
26:56 ConclusionWe have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!
What does LogRocket do?LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.
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In this week's repeat episode, weâre joined by the undisputed queen of B2B positioning: April Dunford.
April is the best-selling author of the seminal book "Obviously Awesome" and the new hit "Sales Pitch." She has spent 25 years as a startup executive and consultant, helping companies stop guessing and start winning. If you have ever struggled to explain exactly why customers should pick you over the other guy, this episode is a masterclass.
In this episode, April talks about:
Why Positioning is a Product Problem: How undefined positioning leads to wasted roadmaps, "not good enough" feedback from Sales, and engineering teams burning out on features that don't win deals.The "AI Washing" Trap: Why saying "We have AI" is no longer a strategyâand how to articulate the specific value your tech unlocks that the competition canât.Why she loves when competitors lie: How to ethically trap competitors who over-promise features (and the one question sales should tell your prospects to ask them).And finally, Vision vs. Reality: How to sell the "glorious future" without losing the deal you need to close today.LinksLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/
Resources
April's website: https://www.aprildunford.com/
April's books: https://www.aprildunford.com/books(Ethically) cheat your way to $250M+ | Mikal Lewis, Product Exec. (Whole Foods, Nordstrom): https://youtu.be/5txeT2U_YQo
Chapters00:00: Introduction
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01:45: April's journey from engineering to marketing to product positioning expert
05:00: The shifting lansscape: Position from COVID to the AI era
10:45: Moving beyond "AI washing" to find differentiated value
15:30: Defining your true competitive landscape
20:30: How to be worth your customers' migration risk
23:45: Why April likes when competitors "lie" about their capabilities and features
32:00: Why positioning is critical for product and engineering alignment
35:00: April's new book detailsWe have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!
What does LogRocket do?LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.
Special Guest: April Dunford.
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Our guest today, Jen Wang, holds a PhD from Stanford in behavior sciences, judgment, and decision-making. She built her product career at ThredUp, and now serves as Chief Product Officer and go-to-market lead at Framework.
That combination â behavioral scientist plus operating CPO â gives her a rare lens into the most urgent question in product leadership right now: how do you lead and build when the ground is shifting faster than anyone can follow?
In this episode, we talk about:
The decision-making behind why Framework scrapped their roadmapWhy iteration, not technical proficiency, has been the most important skill to drive AI adoption in teamsThereâs actually a scientific reason why everyoneâs so overwhelmed, and itâs called the âZone of AbsorptionâLinksJen's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wangjennifer/
Resources
Framework: https://frame.work/ThredUp: https://www.thredup.com/
Chapters
Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/
Leadership Without Easy Answers by Ronald A. Heifetz: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674518582
The engineer's ring: https://www.nspe.org/career-growth/pe-magazine/july-2009/called-order00:00 Introduction
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03:50: Why everyone thinks theyâre behind on AI
06:29: âThe zone of absorptionâ: The science behind AI overwhelm
10:10: Why Framework scrapped their 2026 roadmap in February
12:31: Choosing your AI toolset: When to experiment vs. When to commit
14:25: Rethinking engineering resourcing to make room for âprocess debtâ
15:43: The A/B testing parallel: Is AI history repeating itself?
18:27: AI prototyping: Productive or underbaked ideas?
25:08: The learning possibilities that AI opens up
26:56: Should product leaders take a Hippocratic oath?
28:21: ConclusionWe have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!
What does LogRocket do?LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.
Special Guest: Jen Wang.
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Raul Parquet is the Director of Ecommerce at Princess Cruises, where heâs helping to lead them into a more digital future where visa requirements, multi-destination itineraries, and endless customization options are something customers can actually complete online.
In this episode, Raul shares:
The unglamorous but vital elements of a complete eCommerce analytics stack, and the table-stakes things teams often skipWhy an Analytics team embedded inside product is a requirement, and the deployment discipline that brings with itAnd how Princess Cruises is using AI behind the scenes to help their team work smarter â and why, when it comes to customers, simplicity will always matter more than technologyLinksLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raul-parquet/
Chapters
Princess Cruises: https://www.princess.com/00:00 Introduction
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02:00 Why cruises are one of the hardest ecommerce problems to solve
6:00 Embedding analytics teams into product
8:00 The analytics stack: What "table stakes" actually looks like
13:30 How AI is already helping analytics teams work smarter
15:00 The gaps most teams don't know they have
19:00 Simplifying complex bookings: The Tesla analogy
21:00 100% of Princess Cruisers have been on the website
25:00 Where AI actually fits in the customer journey
29:00 OutroWe have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!
What does LogRocket do?LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.
Special Guest: Raul Parquet.
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I keep meeting teams across the country that are facing intense pressure to shoehorn AI into every feature, often without a coherent thesis on the problem itâll solve. But what if the smartest move in the AI gold rush is to actually slow down?
Angela Clark, VP of Digital at Patagonia, is doing exactly that. At a brand known for its fierce commitment to the planet, Angela is applying that same intentionality to their digital experience. Instead of blowing budgets on every new AI tool, sheâs taking a thoughtful approach to building a personalized customer journey across an audience that spans both elite pro athletes and weekend warriors.
In this episode, Angela shares:
How her team is designing a customer journey that caters to the buyer on a 1:1 level, including Product Detail Pages that can speak effortlessly to either extreme of their customer baseHer playbook for managing AI-related âshiny object syndrome" and keeping your roadmap focused on the customer.And why Patagonia flipped the definition of âcustomer lifetime valueâ to align with their conservation-driven mission â even happily downselling you to a refurbished item instead of a newer, more expensive version.LinksAngela's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angclrk/
Chapters
Patagonia: https://www.patagonia.com/home/00:00 Introduction
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01:43 Angela's career journey
03:30: The PDP problem: Serving elite athletes & urban buyers on the same page
07:00: Building personalization through behavioral signals
09:30: Personalization: it's not a tech problem, it's a customer journey problem
00:15:30 How Angela built the foundation of digital at Patagonia
20:30: How to navigate slow-moving organizations
23:00: Redefining customer lifetime value around Patagonia's mission
26:30: AI FOMO â and why you're not actually falling behind
31:30: ConclusionWe have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!
What does LogRocket do?LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.
Special Guest: Angela Clark.
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How many engineers does it take to run the ecommerce site for a retail company that does over a billion dollars in revenue per year?
Well, if youâre Rainbow Shops, the answer is just 2.
Most ecommerce teams assume scale requires more engineers, more tools, more complexity. Chief Digital Officer David Cost has built something many people in ecommerce would say isn't possible â a lean, fast-moving digital operation that runs on vendor partnerships instead of a massive internal team. Two engineers, hundreds of programmers' worth of output, and none of the overhead that comes with scaling the traditional way.
In this episode, David shares:
A detailed, under-the-hood look at the specific vendors they use to stay so leanHis playbook for using strategic partnerships with vendors as an external dev teamHow being a testbed for new tech gives them a competitive edgeAnd why their choice of ecommerce platform was vital in enabling Rainbowâs digital strategyLinksDavid's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidcost/
Chapters
Rainbow Shops: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rainbow-apparel-co/00:00 Introduction
Resoures
00:42 Davidâs product journey
02:36 How Rainbow runs with only two engineers
03:07 Rainbow's decision to migrate from âSalesforce Commerce Cloud to Shopify
07:14 How Rainbow uses AI to support a lean team
11:34 Rainbow's partnership with Lica for AI-generated product images
17:25 The future of personalization in ecommerce
23:01 Shop Pay and Rainbow's checkout features
26:15 ConclusionLica: https://lica.world/
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Fuego: https://fuego.io/We have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!
What does LogRocket do?LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.
Special Guest: David Cost.
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40,000 people a year die from traffic accidents in the US. Our guest today is Chinmay Jain, Director of Product Management on Waymo's Driving Behavior team, who is working to make that number 90% smaller.
In this episode, Chinmay shares:
How he thought through leaving YouTube at its peak to join a moonshot company that could have civilization-level impactWaymoâs actual AI eval process, using massive simulations based on millions of real-world driving miles to maximize edge cases, ultimately turning trust into their real productAnd the misleading, but common, metrics Chinmay and his team learned to spot that could have seriously derailed Waymoâs progressLinksChinmay's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chinmayjain/
Chapters
Waymo: https://waymo.com/00:00 Introduction
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01:40 Chinmayâs decision to leave YouTube for Waymo
04:12 How does Waymo test its AI in the physical world?
06:09 Waymoâs layered evaluation system
09:53 Simulations and ML gains at Waymo
16:48 Waymoâs metrics for safety
21:33 What driving choices make training AI drivers the hardest?
24:00 ConclusionWe have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!
What does LogRocket do?LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.
Special Guest: Chinmay Jain.
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Most financial products are optimized for transactions, not human emotion. For many people, this transforms an already fraught topic into pure anxiety.
Our guest today is building banking for what she calls the Cortisol UI.
Melissa Douros has spent over 26 years in financial services, starting in debt collection and now serving as the Chief Product Officer at Green Dot. Early on, she learned firsthand that shame is a terrible retention mechanism. That lesson now shapes how she builds financial products for millions of users â for whom the time spent simply navigating their finances can be the most stressful of the day.
In this episode, Melissa shares:
How finserv companies can design for the âCortisol UIâ by building trust and experiences that reduce anxiety before the transactionAn experiment she ran for Discoverâs 5% cashback program where test users collapsed under decision paralysis â proving that more choice can actually increase financial stressHow she flipped Great Wolf Lodgeâs booking model from 70% call center to 90% digital while enhancing the human experienceAnd how Green Dot is navigating AI and agentic commerce without breaking the one thing banks canât afford to lose: trustLinksMelissa's: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissadouros/
Resources
Green Dot Corporation: https://www.greendot.com/LaunchPod - Nan Yu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27rGB-6XQJg
Chapters
LaunchPod - Ben McAllister: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-6Cs3RJeZw00:00 Introduction
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01:00 Melissa's finserv background and how she landed in product
05:10 How Green Dot builds trust as a financial services product
07:29 Building for the "Cortisol UI" to lessen user stress, especially in finance
9:55 Quietly fixing customer issues while not inundanting them with feature releases
14:35 Green Dot moving compliance from the backend to a key part of the product team
16:20 Launching AI features in a high-risk industry
18:36 Decision paralysis and Discover's failed attempt at a 5% cashback reward program
24:57 How Melissa digitized Great Wolf Lodge's customer experience
30:51 ConclusionWe have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!
What does LogRocket do?LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.
Special Guest: Melissa Douros.
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How do you redesign the most visited e-commerce webpage in the world? Rahul Chaudhari helped reshape the Amazon homepage during his years as a product leader there, before becoming VP of Product and Technology at Kohl's.
In this episode, Rahul shares:
Amazonâs âcustomer backwardsâ approach - and how he used it to unlock half a billion dollars of value on the Amazon homepageThe secret to product adoption: leverage existing customer habits to unlock new opportunities And how Amazon and Google raised the bar for digital experiences so high that now every other product pays the priceLinksRahul's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahul-chaudhari/
Chapters00:00 Intro: Rahul's journey from marketing to product
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03:08 Why âmidâ digital experiences no longer work
07:35 Rebuilding the Amazon homepage âheroâ to be customer-backwards
12:48 Experimentation + adoption metrics: measuring what actually matters
14:20 Adoption > clicks: Defining the right success metrics
18:41 AI and the future of retail: Rethink the business model, not the tools
21:50 Agentic shopping: What happens when ChatGPT becomes the homepage?
23:30 From keyword search to intent-based shopping
25:57 AI needs containers, not just models
30:29 Will AI level the playing field for small retailers?
33:16 ConclusionWe have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!
What does LogRocket do?LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.
Special Guest: Rahul Chaudhari.
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In this episode, weâre joined by Maryam Ashoori, VP of Product and Engineering at IBMâs Watsonx platform. With a background that includes 2 master's degrees in AI, a PhD in Systems Design Engineering, and named on over 30 patents at IBM, sheâs been on the bleeding edge for over a decade. Currently leading the charge on Agentic AI and AI Governance at IBM, Maryam is a bridge between the theoretical frontier of AI and the messy reality of enterprise deployment.
In this episode, Maryam:
Tells why AI has been stuck in pilot purgatory for longer than expected, and what you need to do today for a successful enterprise deploymentCalls shenanigans on the âbiggest, best modelâ crowd, and why often a smaller, more focused tool is the right choiceExplains how to build an agnostic architecture that can handle the realities of an AI world where models advance faster than anybody can keep upLinksLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mashoori/
Resources
IBM: https://www.ibm.com/us-enReinventing SaaS: Zuora's AI Transformation | Karthik Chakkarapani and Shakir Karim (Zuora): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHVxnLikMpQ
Chapters
Linearâs Secret to Building Powerful AI Products | Nan Yu, Head of Product (Linear): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27rGB-6XQJg00:00 Intro
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02:18 From ChatGPT hype to enterprise reality: use cases, ROI, and the rise of agents
06:11 Security, accountability & governance: whoâs responsible when agents go wrong?
10:37 Risk-based rollout: use-case scoping, Risk Atlas, and guardrails like PII detection
17:10 Observability for agentic workflows
18:21 Why compute optimization matters
22:58 Designing for model agility: abstraction layers, routing, and picking the right model
27:23 ConclusionWe have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!
What does LogRocket do?LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.
Special Guest: Maryam Ashoori.
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In this episode, weâre joined by Deepika Manglani, VP of Product and Program Management at the LA Times. Deepikaâs career in media spans over 15 years, culminating in her current role, where sheâs bringing the 140-year-old institution into the future.
In this episode, Deepika shares:
How her team is using AI to preserve a unique trove of historical data, over 12 million pages of news archives from as far back as the 1800sWhat this digital archive and maturation of AI enables for future storytelling, media innovation, and news personalizationWhy combining product and program management was critical to navigating massive transformation at the LA Times through a period of heavy M&A activity LinksLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepikamanglani/
Chapters
LA Times: https://www.latimes.com/00:00 Intro
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00:15 Deepika's career journey in media and product leadership
01:25 Building from scratch at LA Times
05:06 Digitizing historical archives
08:40 Challenges and innovations in AI and OCR
19:54 Future prospects and personalization in news
24:33 ConclusionWe have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!
What does LogRocket do?LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.
Special Guest: Deepika Manglani.
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In this episode, weâre joined by Ben McAllister, the Chief Product and Technology Officer at CrossFit, and one of the most thoughtful product leaders Iâve had the pleasure of speaking with.
Benâs path is anything but linear: with a degree in physics, a short stint in consulting, and time spent as a creative director at a design agency before moving into senior product roles at Under Armour. Now heâs shaping one of the worldâs most iconic fitness ecosystems.
In this episode, Ben shares:
Why attention is the ultimate currency in product design, and how to design for the âspotlightâ versus the periphery.The âInfovoreâ Advantage: Why the best product leaders borrow ideas from outside the tech world; andHow to build a cohesive product strategy for a complex, decentralized network like CrossFitâs global community of affiliates and athletes.LinksLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcallister/
Resources
X: https://x.com/benmcallister?lang=en
CrossFit: https://www.crossfit.com/The Age of the Infovore: Succeeding in the Information Economy (https://tylercowen.com/dd-product/the-age-of-the-infovore-succeeding-in-the-information-economy/)
Chapters
On the Origin of Stories (https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674057111)00:00: Introduction
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00:41: Ben's non-linear career path: From physicist to product leader
03:23: The "infovore" mindset in product management
06:00: Storytelling, juxtaposition, and the science of learning
08:48: Designing product for attention
12:00: Why product leaders shouldn't ignore marketing
15:10: CrossFit's origins as an internet-native brand
19:44: What is the CrossFit Open?
24:37: ConclusionWe have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!
What does LogRocket do?LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.
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In this episode, weâre joined by Karthik Viswanathan. Formerly a product leader at AT&T, Macyâs, and Optum, heâs now the founder of TalAiro, an HR tech startup that is rethinking the operating system for recruiting.
Karthik argues that the hidden failure of the modern tech stack is forcing the user to serve as a âmanual integration layer. He explains how the push to "unbundle" features results in a âChaos Taxââ consuming 40-60% of the workday with fighting disconnected tools rather than doing their jobs.
Beyond that, Karthik also discusses:
How AI can make work more human: Why the true value isn't in replacing jobs, but automating the "devil's cut" of administrative work.The journey from enterprise leader to founder: What building TalAiro from scratch taught Karthik about prioritization after years of leading enterprise product orgs, such as focusing on the 20% of workflows that drive 80% of the valueLinksLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karthikvish/
Chapters
TalAiro: https://www.talairo.ai/00:00: Introduction
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00:54: Karthik's product background
02:58: The "chaos tax" and how tool sprawl negatively impacts product efficiency
04:25: Challenges in HR tech
09:26: Working backwards from customer problems to build your digital solution
11:53: How TalAiro differentiates itself as an HR tool
15:03: The role of AI in enhancing human potential
20:59: Karthik's transition from enterprise to startup leader
27:14: ConclusionWe have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!
What does LogRocket do?LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.
Special Guest: Karthik Viswanathan.
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This week, weâre joined by the undisputed queen of B2B positioning, April Dunford.
April is the best-selling author of the seminal book "Obviously Awesome" and the new hit "Sales Pitch." She has spent 25 years as a startup executive and consultant helping companies stop guessing and start winning. If you have ever struggled to explain exactly why customers should pick you over the other guy, this episode is a masterclass.
In this episode, April talks about:
Why Positioning is a Product Problem: How undefined positioning leads to wasted roadmaps, "not good enough" feedback from Sales, and engineering teams burning out on features that don't win deals.The "AI Washing" Trap: Why saying "We have AI" is no longer a strategyâand how to articulate the specific value your tech unlocks that the competition canât.Why she loves when competitors lie: How to ethically trap competitors who over-promise features (and the one question sales should tell your prospects to ask them).And finally, Vision vs. Reality: How to sell the "glorious future" without losing the deal you need to close today.LinksLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/
Chapters
April's website: https://www.aprildunford.com/
April's books: https://www.aprildunford.com/books00:00: Introduction
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01:45: April's journey from engineering to marketing to product positioning expert
05:00: The shifting lansscape: Position from COVID to the AI era
10:45: Moving beyond "AI washing" to find differentiated value
15:30: Defining your true competitive landscape
20:30: How to be worth your customers' migration risk
23:45: Why April likes when competitors "lie" about their capabilities and features
32:00: Why positioning is critical for product and engineering alignment
35:00: April's new book detailsWe have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!
What does LogRocket do?LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.
Special Guest: April Dunford.
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From U.S. Army sniper to VP of Product, Robert Henkhaus knows a thing or two about high-stakes decision-making. Today, heâs a product leader at Enverus, the software platform guiding billions of dollars in global energy capital.
Fresh off Enverusâ acquisition by Blackstone, Robert joins us to discuss how to innovate when the pressure is on.
In this episode, we cover:
Why "Black Box" AI Fails: How Enverus builds trust with investment stakeholders by forcing AI to "show its work" on multi-million dollar recommendations.The Death of the Dashboard: Robertâs hot take on why AI will soon make traditional charts obsolete.Surviving Acquisition: The "60-Day Horizon" strategy Robert uses to keep team velocity high amidst Private Equity uncertainty.LinksLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-henkhaus/
Chapters
Enverus: https://www.enverus.com/00:00 Intro
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03:39: Product innovations at Enverus
4:03: AI in the energy sector: How Enverus is implementing AI in oil and gas operations
6:47: Progressive disclosure and using AI to improve the user experience
9:56: Product engagement scores: How Enverus tracks success metrics
15:39: How internal teams are engaging with AI at Enverus
17:53: Are dashboards dead? How AI is transforming analytics
19:36: Enverus' recent acquisition by Blackstone
28:00: ConclusionWe have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!
What does LogRocket do?LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.
Special Guest: Robert Henkhaus.
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In this repeat episode of LaunchPod, originally published on Aug 12, 2025, weâre talking with Bret Tushaus, VP of Product at Deltek.
In this episode, we discuss:
How Deltek built Dela â an AI agent framework powering everything from smart summaries to autonomous accountingWhy AI is rewriting the role of Product Management, and what leaders need to know nowHow Bretâs team leveled up their AI skills fast â with short, high-impact sprints focused on real tools and real problemsLinksLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-tushaus-b959b56/
Chapters
Deltek: https://www.deltek.com/en00:00 Introduction to AI in Product Management
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01:06 Building AI-Powered Solutions at DelteK
03:05 Smart Summaries and Predictive Analytics
08:24 Intelligent Exploration and Conversational Interfaces
17:39 The Future of AI Agents
22:14 Getting Started with AI in Your Team
26:52 Final ThoughtsWe have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!
What does LogRocket do?LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.
Special Guest: Bret Tushaus.
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