In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily and Randy speak with Dan Dalton (Director of Product Management at Sage) about the current state of product management, and how the role must evolve in today’s climate.

Chapters
0:00 Introduction: product management at a crossroads
1:00 Dan Dalton’s background and path into product
3:00 The evolution of product management: 2010 to today
8:15 Framework‐fundamentalism, the broken ladder & career expectations
13:45 Why many product careers are being set up to fail
19:20 Responding to disruption: returning to basics, focusing on impact
24:40 The role of soft skills and mindset in product leadership
28:55 How Dan’s team operates: fast prototyping, design system, code assets
31:10 Hiring and developing product talent: soft skills over tick‐boxes
35:30 AI, hype and bubbles: what product leaders need to keep in mind
40:15 The mental flywheel: pragmatism, curiosity, resilience, detachment
45:00 Wrap up & closing remarks

Featured Links: Follow Dan on LinkedIn | Sage | 'Why is everyone hating on Product Managers?' feature by Peter Yang

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Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

You can’t build great products on gut instinct, and yet, according to IBM’s global study of 1,000 enterprises, 77% of organisations using generative AI aren’t seeing any financial benefit. In this episode on The Product Experience podcast, Lily Smith sits down with Matthew Certner, Digital Product Engineering and Design Partner at IBM, to unpack the four key traits that drive ROI in AI-powered product teams: flexibility, incremental and targeted delivery, data-led decisions, and cross-functional collaboration. 

Recorded live at the Industry conference, this conversation offers practical lessons for any product leader navigating the hype and reality of AI adoption. 

Chapters
00:00 – The danger of building on gut instinct
00:37 – IBM’s global study on generative and agentic AI adoption
01:00 – Meet Matthew Certner, Digital Product Engineering Partner at IBM
02:00 – Why most enterprises aren’t realising ROI from AI
04:50 – What the top-performing 20% of companies do differently
05:10 – The four key behaviours driving success
07:00 – Flexibility: adapting quickly to market feedback
08:10 – Incremental and targeted delivery — the “golden thread” principle
10:30 – Data-led decision-making versus the HIPPO effect
11:45 – Cross-functional collaboration and robust adoption
13:10 – Behavioural factors that make or break AI adoption
14:20 – Inside IBM’s “value orchestration” framework
15:10 – The Golden Thread in practice — a sticky-note story from Dallas
17:10 – Transparency and traceability in product development
18:00 – How IBM helps teams that aren’t seeing value from AI
21:00 – The paradox of moving too fast or too slow with AI
24:00 – Making the Golden Thread a living document
25:20 – Inside IBM Garage: speed of a startup, scale of an enterprise
27:40 – Why productivity savings, not hype, drive AI ROI
29:00 – How large organisations structure innovation teams
30:00 – The future: 800 million new products by 2026
31:00 – Why 95% will fail — and what the 5% will get right
33:10 – Final reflections: value, purpose and the human element

Featured Links: Follow Matthew on LinkedIn | IBM Garage | Industry Conference Cleveland 2025 recap at Mind The Product

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Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

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Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

Christian Idiodi, Partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, and Co-author of the valuable product book Transformed, dismantles some of the most persistent myths in product leadership. 

Drawing from his global perspective and work across Africa’s fast-emerging tech ecosystem, Christian makes the case for a new kind of leadership, one grounded in clarity, context, and radical trust.

Chapters
00:00 — The environment, not the people
02:00 — Building product leadership in Africa
06:00 — Stories of impact
10:00 — What real leadership means
14:00 — Managing minds, not hands
19:00 — The “first team” mindset
23:00 — Focus, not prioritisation
25:00 — Scaling and the myth of process
29:00 — AI and the redefinition of excellence
35:00 — Creating space for practice
40:00 — Product crits and leadership feedback
41:30 — Inspire Africa Conference

Key Takeaways
— Better outcomes start with better environments. Leadership is about designing the conditions for people to do their best work — not managing their output.
— Africa is building for Africa, by Africans. The Inspire Africa Conference is catalysing coaching, capital, and community to accelerate meaningful innovation.
— Strategy defines focus. If prioritisation is hard, the strategy probably isn’t real.
— Leadership is a different sport. Managing people’s minds, not hands, requires context, clarity, and trust — not control.
— AI won’t replace good leaders. But it might replace bad leadership. Judgment, product sense, and curiosity are the new differentiators.
— Create practice space. Growth requires safety to make mistakes, experiment, and learn — at every level of the organisation.
— Critique is culture. Teams that coach and critique together develop sharper thinking and stronger product judgment.

Featured Links: Follow Christian on LinkedIn | Silicon Valley Product Group | Inspire Africa 

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Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith speaks with Sahil Jain, co-founder and CEO of Samepage.ai, about one of product management’s hardest challenges: keeping teams aligned. 

From his early career at Yahoo and AOL to founding multiple startups, Sahil shares lessons on building products that tackle “unsolvable” problems like communication and alignment. He explains why shared understanding matters more than speed, how product managers can become better storytellers, and why early-stage startups should obsess over just a handful of teams before chasing scale.

Chapters

• 0:00 – Why alignment is so hard
• 1:14 – Sahil’s unconventional career path
• 4:00 – First foray into startups at AOL and beyond
• 6:50 – Founding AdStage and lessons from raising early capital
• 9:00 – Moving into product leadership after acquisition
• 12:53 – On delusion, motivation, and tackling “unsolvable” problems
• 16:34 – Starting Samepage.ai and the problem of information asymmetry
• 22:43 – Validating the problem and testing prototypes
• 27:22 – Why product managers are the perfect early adopters
• 29:20 – The first 10 obsessed teams: startup focus
• 34:00 – Neurodivergence, communication, and shared understanding
• 36:43 – From Claude Shannon to storytelling: frameworks for better communication
• 39:59 – Lessons from Duolingo on multimodal learning
• 41:19 – Where to find Samepage.ai

Featured Links: Follow Sahil on LinkedIn | Samepage.ai | 'What we learned at Industry conference - day one' feature by Louron Pratt at Mind the Product

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Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

In this episode of The Product Experience, hosts Lily Smith and Randy Silver speak with Damilola Adelekan, Lead Product Manager at Remedial Health, who discusses building pragmatic, people-centred solutions in Africa’s fragmented and under-resourced healthcare system. 

Chapters
05:30 – Early Lessons from Volunteering and Nonprofits
07:00 – Why Digitising a Broken System Isn’t Enough
10:00 – Tackling Trust, Funding, and Fragmentation in Healthcare
12:30 – Collaborating Beyond the Organisation
14:30 – Building a Full Healthcare Supply Chain
16:00 – Pragmatism Over Perfection in Product Vision
18:00 – Cross-Team Collaboration at Scale
20:00 – Structuring Product Work Across Functions
22:00 – Communications Tips for Cross-Functional Leadership
24:00 – Increasing Tech Adoption Among Low-Digital-Literacy Users
26:00 – Customer Research in Low-Tech Contexts
28:00 – Voice of the Customer: Calls, Feedback, and Sales Teams
30:00 – What Inspires a Product Manager in Nigeria?

Featured Links: Follow Damilola on LinkedIn | Remedial Health | Inspire Africa | 'How I got my job in product' feature with Damilola at Mind The Product

We want to hear from you!

Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

In this episode of The Product Experience, Patrick Ndjientcheu, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Irembo, shares how his team transitioned from delivering projects for government to building a portfolio of scalable products. 

Patrick talks about shifting mindsets from execution to strategy, spinning out payments and identity into independent products, and the challenges of balancing internal bias with customer needs. 

He also reveals how Irembo is evolving into a super app, why sales enablement is crucial in a B2B context, and the lessons he has learned guiding teams through the move from project to product to product portfolio.

Six things we learned from Patrick

Project to product mindset: Repeat customer demand signals value, turn ad-hoc projects into structured products with identity, principles, and strategy.

Team restructuring without turnover: Shifting from project delivery to product development requires reorganising teams around capabilities.

Spinouts emerge from features: Payments and identity started as embedded features, but with scale and external demand, became standalone products.

Bias is real: Teams naturally over-index on the dominant revenue product. Separation, customer interviews, and rebranding are critical to balance focus.

Sales enablement matters: Without educating sales and customers on new platform capabilities, adoption stalls and value is under-communicated.

Leadership lesson: Product leaders must bring the whole organisation on the journey—marketing, sales, finance, and operations—not just product teams.

Featured Links: Follow Patrick on LinkedIn | Irembo | Inspire Africa 

We want to hear from you!

Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith speaks with Sally Foote, a seasoned product leader whose journey from product roles to C-suite commercial leadership spans Carwow, Go Compare, and The Guardian. They unpack the increasingly vital intersection between product, marketing, and sales.

Sally explains why growth is a shared responsibility, how product managers can become commercially fluent, and why understanding marketing economics is now critical. Expect actionable advice on working across functions, owning growth levers, and designing products that fuel acquisition and retention. Whether you’re in B2B or B2C, there’s something in here for every product leader looking to elevate their commercial impact.

Key Takeaways:
— Modern product managers must understand marketing funnels, ROI, and acquisition costs to create scalable impact.
— Propositions beat PPC: In saturated digital channels, differentiation must come from product innovation.
— Stop the handoffs: A strict separation between product, marketing, and sales creates missed opportunities and inefficiencies.
— Product roadmaps matter to the business: While sometimes shunned by PMs, roadmaps help align and activate sales and marketing functions.
— Product marketing isn't enough: What’s needed is cross-functional growth thinking—not just better product copy.
— B2B is a rich source of insights: Embedding PMs in sales cycles and advisory panels unlocks product innovation directly from the source.
— AI is reshaping go-to-market: From focus groups to pricing strategies, machine learning is changing how teams make commercial decisions.
— Your funnel is only as good as your data: PMs should design products with marketing data needs in mind to drive better acquisition performance.

Featured Links: Follow Sally on LinkedIn | YourRoom AI focus group | Carwow | Watch Sally's 'Maximum Possible Products' talk at #mtpcon London 2019 | Sustainable living made easy with Bower Collective 

We want to hear from you!

Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

Product decisions built on daily-active metrics fall apart when your customers show up once a year, or once a decade. In this episode, Randy Silver talks to Vivek Kumar about building and growing low-frequency products, from property and tax to jobs and dating.

Chapters
04:25 — What makes a product “infrequent”? Episodic use and recall decay
07:05 — Rethinking PMF: penetration and market share over retention curves
10:36 — When iteration is slow: prioritising problems under seasonal cycles
14:28 — BELT framework: behaviours, enduring vs transient problems, lock-ins
21:56 — Spotting enduring problems: “what will still matter in 10 years?”
24:11 — ICE framework overview for infrequent products
26:03 — Engagement: active retention, complexity, single- vs constant-touch
29:55 — Predictable vs unpredictable retention; referrals as a strategy
31:06 — Lifetime retention: seeding frequency hooks (e.g., estimates, salary data)
33:01 — Distinctiveness and brand: why CAC collapses when you own the memory
33:48 — Control over experience: monetisation through end-to-end journeys
36:13 — Research that works: ethnography, diary studies, “follow-me-home”
40:22 — Example: discovering the real tax filing pain (document collection)
43:04 — Ethics and value: “cures vs treatments”, utility vs entertainment products

Featured Links: Follow Vivek on LinkedIn

We want to hear from you!

Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

In this episode of The Product Experience, Randy Silver and Lily Smith sit down with Katja Forbes, Executive Director at Standard Chartered Bank, design leader, and lecturer, to explore the fast-approaching world of machine customers.

Katja shares why businesses must prepare for a future where AI agents, autonomous vehicles, and procurement bots act as customers, and what this means for product managers, designers, and organisations.

Key takeaways

1. Machine customers are here already. From booking services for Tesla cars to procurement bots closing contracts, AI-driven commerce is no longer hypothetical.
2. APIs are necessary but insufficient. Businesses need to think beyond plumbing and address trust, compliance, and customer experience for non-human agents.
3. Signal clarity matters. Organisations must make their value propositions machine-readable to remain competitive.
4. Trust will be quantified. Compliance signals, ESG proof, uptime guarantees, and reliability ratings will replace human gut instinct.
5. New roles will emerge. Trust analysts and human–machine hybrid coordinators will be critical in shaping future interactions.
6. Ethics cannot be ignored. Without careful design, agentic commerce could amplify consumerism and poor societal outcomes.
7. Practical first step. Even small businesses can prepare by structuring their product and service data into machine-readable formats.
8. Product managers must adapt. The skill to manage ambiguity, think systemically, and anticipate unintended consequences will be central to success.

Featured Links: Follow Katja on LinkedIn | Katja's website | Sign-up for pre sale access to Katja's forthcoming book 'The CX Evolutionist'

We want to hear from you!

Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith and Randy Silver are joined by Kirsten Mann, former CPO at Prospection and now startup founder and board member, to discuss how product leaders can play a vital role on company boards.

Drawing from her own board experience and a research series interviewing founders and directors, Kirsten explains why product, culture, and customer insight must be central to boardroom conversations.

Key Takeaways
— Product’s Place on Boards: Product is a strategic lever, boards should treat it with the same seriousness as financials.
— Culture as a Strategic Asset: Culture emerged as the most frequently cited factor in board-level success—more than AI or tech.
— From Operator to Overseer: Transitioning to a board role requires stepping back from execution and focusing on governance and strategic guidance.
— Communicating with Boards: Product leaders must avoid jargon, speak in terms of customer problems, outcomes, and investment returns.
— The Risk of Exclusion: If your product team isn’t presenting to the board, that’s a red flag.
— Practical Preparation: Aspiring board members should build financial literacy, start with non-profit boards, and cultivate visibility through writing or public speaking.

Chapters
00:00 – Culture over strategy: Why getting culture right matters more than clever planning
00:45 – Meet Kirsten Mann: Introduction and credentials
01:45 – Career transition: From CPO at Prospection to board member, investor, and startup founder
04:50 – Early board experience: Saving a youth club through governance and tech
06:45 – Product’s value on boards: Bringing customer and tech insight into strategic discussions
08:00 – Oversight, not execution: Adjusting from exec roles to governance roles
09:50 – Frustration sparks research: Why Kirsten began writing about product leaders on boards

We want to hear from you!

Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

In this episode of The Product Experience, Randy Silver speaks with Dariusz Dziuk, Product Lead for Music Expression at Spotify, about the origins and evolution of Canvas, the looping visuals that accompany music tracks. From early assumptions and first principles thinking to scaling and measuring marketplace success, he shares how a bold experiment turned into one of Spotify’s most engaging features.

Key Takeaways
— Balancing Art and Science: Product management often lives between structured analysis and intuitive creativity—success lies in mastering both.
— First Principles and Assumptions: Questioning defaults—like static, square cover art—can open doors to bold innovation.
— Real Stakes Drive Real Creativity: Artist engagement with Canvas only truly emerged once the stakes felt genuine and public.
— Marketplace Thinking: Canvas succeeded because it delivered value for all marketplace participants—creators, consumers, and the platform itself.
— Innovation Through Structure: Weekly design sprints and rapid prototyping allowed Spotify’s innovation lab to explore and discard ideas quickly, eventually landing on Canvas.
— Scaling Insights: Measurable impact came later—higher engagement, saves, shares, and a new visual identity for music on Spotify.
— Artist-Centric Focus: Prioritising the needs of the supply side (artists) can unlock cold start challenges and marketplace growth.

Chapters
0:00 – Marketplace Thinking at Spotify
1:20 – Darius Jurek’s Journey into Product
2:45 – From Engineering to 0-to-1 Product Innovation
4:00 – Is Product Management an Art or a Science?
6:30 – The Brief: Connecting Creators and Fans
8:20 – Building an Innovation Lab
10:00 – Exploring Dozens of Ideas
11:45 – Why Canvas Won Out
13:10 – The Challenge of Validating a New Format
16:00 – Questioning the Assumptions Around Cover Art
19:00 – Real Stakeholder Feedback and Creative Buy-In
21:00 – Marketplace Metrics of Success
23:30 – Canvas and the Evolution of Music Discovery
26:00 – Visual Design, Collaboration, and Artist Empowerment
28:00 – Darius on Supplier-Led Product Strategy

Featured Links: Follow Dariusz on LinkedIn | Dariusz's website | Spotify | '#mtpcon @ Pendomoniu

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Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily and Randy dive into the nuanced world of team collaboration with Jenny Wanger, product ops consultant. Jenny challenges the overuse of RACI matrices in product teams, arguing they often obscure deeper organisational issues rather than solve them. They discuss better alternatives, the root causes behind requests for RACI, and the value of prioritising human relationships over rigid frameworks.

Chapters
0:00 – The accountable vs. responsible dilemma
0:37 – Meet Jenny Wanger: Product ops and Reforge
1:20 – RACI: A quick explainer
3:16 – Why RACI falls short in product teams
7:00 – Infantilisation and territorialism
9:18 – The flaws in the terminology
10:14 – The consulted conundrum
11:05 – RACI as a conversation starter
12:01 – Better alternatives: Rapid and others
14:20 – When RACI might be useful
18:01 – Team dysfunction and RACI misuse
23:00 – A case study in resolving collaboration issues
26:00 – RACI as scaffolding, not infrastructure
28:02 – AI, documents, and relationships
30:05 – Diagnosing the real problem behind a RACI request
32:38 – Job descriptions vs. RACI
35:25 – Everyone’s a bit of everything
37:04 – Focusing on mission and collaboration
39:57 – Final thoughts and where to find Jenny’s work

Key Takeaways
— RACI isn't a cure-all: It often signals deeper dysfunction like poor team structure, unclear mission, or lack of trust.
— Healthy teams don't need RACI: When collaboration and communication are strong, formal frameworks become redundant.
— Use RACI as scaffolding: Let it initiate conversations, but don’t enshrine it as a permanent solution.
— Language matters: Terms like “accountable” and “responsible” are often confused, making the framework less clear than intended.
— Consider better alternatives: Frameworks like RAPID offer more clarity around decision-making without creating silos.
— Prioritise relationships over roles: Documents don't build culture—conversations and mutual understanding do.

Featured Links: Follow Jenny on LinkedIn | Jenny's RACI feature at her website | Dave Johnson's page at The Pragmatic Agilist 

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Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

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Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

We revisit our conversation with Frances Ibe, Chief Experience Officer at Tide. Frances shares invaluable insights on her journey from developer to product leadership and how to avoid common pitfalls during the discovery process.

Chapters
01:07 – Meet Frances Ibe
02:05 – Common Discovery Pitfalls
03:34 – Embedding Continuous Discovery
04:51 – The Myth of Talking to 20 Customers
06:38 – What is a Data Prototype?
08:03 – Building Confidence in Product Bets
10:42 – Sharing Insights Across the Business
13:52 – Keeping Sprint Reviews Engaging
15:49 – Discovery Through Observation
17:21 – Responding to Data-Driven Disruption
18:30 – The Power of Storytelling
20:49 – Training Teams in Storytelling
22:36 – Maintaining Message Consistency
23:48 – Collaborating Across Disciplines
25:01 – Francis' Game-Changing Advice

Featured Links: Follow Frances on LinkedIn | Tide | 'Six things we learned at the Pendomonium and #mtpcon roadshow - London 2024' feature by Louron Pratt

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Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

Erica Wass, Principal Product Consultant at Brainmates, joins the Product Experience podcast to share pragmatic tools for building strategic foresight into your roadmap. From horizon scanning to backcasting, this episode explores how product teams can harness future-focused techniques—bolstered by generative AI—to improve decision-making, resilience, and impact.

Chapters:
0:00 – Why foresight matters in product
1:00 – Introducing Erica Wass
2:30 – How product is changing
3:45 – The value of strategic foresight
5:00 – Clarifying the term and its importance
7:00 – Who owns foresight in the product org
10:00 – Techniques: Horizon scanning, scenario planning, backcasting
14:30 – Horizon scanning in action: Google & Android
16:00 – Scenario planning for resilience
21:00 – Tips on running scenario sessions
23:45 – Backcasting: Vision-first roadmapping
26:00 – Using AI to accelerate foresight
30:00 – Product team dynamics in the AI era
33:00 – Mistakes to avoid and balancing action with foresight
37:00 – Wrap-up and takeaways

Key Takeaways
— Horizon scanning helps teams identify early, weak signals that may grow into significant trends.
— Scenario planning enables resilience by preparing teams for a range of plausible futures.
— Backcasting flips traditional planning by working backward from a long-term goal to define near-term milestones.
— Generative AI can democratise access to foresight tools—when used with critical thinking and proper validation.
— Product professionals should take a proactive role in guiding strategic conversations, regardless of their title.
— Avoid extremes with AI: neither fear it nor over-rely on it. Use it as a pairing partner rather than a replacement.

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Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

Featured Links: Follow Brigitte on LinkedIn | DrDoctor | European Commission Public Health 'Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare' feature

We want to hear from you!

Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith and Randy Silver speak with Dee Miller, Director of Product Strategy and Insights for Product Equity at Adobe. Dee shares her personal journey into inclusive design, and discusses how Adobe is moving beyond accessibility compliance to build genuinely usable, inclusive, and emotionally accessible products. 

Featured Links: Follow Dee on LinkedIn | The Adobe Accessibility Checker | Listen to previous The Product Experience episode: 'Building Accessible Products' with Jonathan Hassell (CEO & Founder, Hassell Inclusion) 

We want to hear from you!

Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily and Randy speak with Faith Forster about the art of aligning product work with commercial outcomes. From redefining velocity as a function of customer value to implementing impact models that quantify ROI, Faith outlines practical frameworks to help product teams think commercially without compromising user value. 

She also explores the evolving role of AI in product development, the necessity of syncing planning cycles with business units, and why happy teams are the cornerstone of faster, better delivery.

Key takeaways

• Velocity = Value: Product velocity isn't about coding speed—it's about reducing time to customer value to improve ROI and lower opportunity cost.
  
  
• Impact Modelling: A disciplined approach to estimating commercial outcomes before development helps product teams understand and justify their work.
  
  
• AI Integration: Teams are expected to primarily use AI tools within three months to boost delivery speed and build organisational capability.
  
  
• Viability from Day One: Pricing and revenue potential must be considered from the outset—not after feature completion.
  
  
• Cross-Functional Alignment: Successful planning requires synchronising product cycles with finance, sales, and marketing calendars.
  
  
• Happy Teams, Better Results: Reducing friction between design, engineering, and product roles directly impacts delivery speed and feature quality.

Chapters
00:00 – Redefining velocity: Why speed isn’t just about code
01:05 – Faith’s journey from Dex to Legal
03:02 – Introducing the commercial value talk
04:51 – Understanding the P&L from a product lens
08:07 – Why team cost-awareness matters
10:00 – Building better impact models
12:25 – Increasing ROI through value velocity
16:37 – The AI imperative: Adoption, anx

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Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily and Randy sit down with Moshe Mikanovsky—product coach, educator, and host of the Product for Product podcast—to explore what makes an effective product management toolkit. From identifying the real problems in your workflow to choosing and implementing tools that stick, Moshe outlines a pragmatic, user-centric approach to tool selection.

Chapters:
2:59 – From Engineering to Product Management
5:25 – Why Choosing Tools is Hard
8:11 – Elements of a Product Stack
10:49 – From Roadmaps to Analytics
14:01 – A Framework for Selecting Tools
18:01 – Comparing Tools Beyond Features
21:18 – Test and Validate Your Tool Choices
26:01 – Why Implementation is Critical
28:04 – What’s Changing in Product Tools
29:26 – AI and the Future of Product Management
32:01 – Keeping Your Stack Modern
34:29 – Making the Case for Budget & ROI
37:23 – When ROI Forces a Change
38:45 – Final Thoughts & Listener Call to Action

Featured Links: Follow Moshe on LinkedIn | Moshe's Product Manager Toolkit |

We want to hear from you!

Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

Transformations are hard, and too often, they fail to deliver on their promise. In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily and Randy speak with Jen Swanson, CEO of Tuckpoint Advisory Group, to unpack why transformation initiatives falter and what it truly takes to succeed.

Key Takeaways
— Transformation requires intentionality: Real transformation isn't accidental or surface-level; it must be deliberate, comprehensive, and backed by leadership.
— Avoid ‘transformation theatre’: Pretending to change—without restructuring ownership, processes, or collaboration—is worse than doing nothing at all.
— Start with honest orientation: Knowing your starting point is essential before plotting a path forward.
— Executive involvement is non-negotiable: Transformations can’t be delegated. Leadership must model the change and communicate relentlessly.
— Product-led is about mindset, not just teams: Everyone should operate within the product model, but not all need to be on product teams.
— Pace matters: Organisations must assess their capacity for change and determine the right balance between ambition and sustainability.
— Give grace for the learning curve: People need space to be bad at new things before they get good—psychological safety is essential.

Chapters
0:00 – Introduction & the myth of sneaky transformations
1:01 – Jen’s background and path into product
2:53 – What transformation really means
5:53 – Defining honest orientation
8:00 – What is transformation theatre?
12:09 – When real change feels fake
13:04 – The importance of executive commitment
16:04 – Why transformations fail
19:11 – Common catalysts for transformation
22:06 – Product-led vs product thinking

We want to hear from you!

Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

What does it mean to build world-class products in the age of AI? In this episode, Randy Silver talks to Ezinne and Oji Udezue, co-authors of Building Rocketships, a playbook for building high-growth companies in today’s fast-evolving tech landscape. Together, they unpack what product looks like now, how AI changes collaboration, and why ambition, clarity, and disciplined execution matter more than ever.

Key takeaways
— Building world-class products starts with clear ambition and choosing big, meaningful problems
— AI isn't replacing PMs, it's changing the way product work gets done—especially in how we collaborate
— Vibe coding enables faster iteration and clearer communication through prototyping in code
— The product manager’s job is to lead teams and help the organisation build the right thing, not just anything
— Clarity, focus, and leadership buy-in are essential to successful transformation, even in legacy organisations
— Product teams need to shift from writing specs to orchestrating systems that drive customer and business outcomes
— Every product person should master the full arc: solving today's problems, helping customers succeed, and spotting future opportunities

Chapters 
0:00 The "should PMs code?" debate
1:54 First product roles and how the book came to life
4:49 The mission behind Building Rocketships
7:13 Why the book is for leaders and their partners
10:01 Differences between world-class teams and everyone else
13:35 What ambition really looks like
17:10 How clarity transforms legacy companies
23:10 AI, vibe coding, and the new spec: working prototypes
30:10 Redefining the product team’s role in the AI age
35:02 What skills PMs actually need to thrive now
42:54 The one mistake PMs can't afford to make

Featured Links: Follow Ezinne on LinkedIn | Follow Oji on LinkedIn | ProductMind | Buy their new book 'Building Rocketships: Product Management for High Growth Companies'

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Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

This week on The Product Experience, we revisit a great conversation with Todd Green, now President of King – the studio behind Candy Crush. Todd shares how he thinks about building products that are not only globally successful but enduringly fun. 

Todd takes us behind the curtain on what it really takes to build for mass audiences, create fun at scale, and grow empowered product teams.

Key takeaways

• Fun can’t be optimised: Building successful games (or products) requires capturing something visceral. Metrics help, but “fun” starts as a feeling, not a number.
• Audience motivation matters more than demographics: Instead of targeting by age or gender, King focuses on why people play – whether it’s for calm, connection or challenge.
• Legacy products need product management too: The real work starts when a product survives beyond launch. King invests heavily in balancing new features with legacy complexity.
• Good product leaders own the business: At King, product leads (executive producers) are responsible for P&L – it's a full-stack role across delivery, team, and outcomes.
• Sharing insights is a team sport: King has full-time roles and informal networks dedicated to transferring learning between game teams.
• Ethical responsibility is core: King prioritises player wellbeing and long-term satisfaction – not just engagement – as a business principle.
• Building great managers is a product in itself: Todd sees first-line manager development as one of his top priorities for sustaining culture and performance.

Key chapters 

•  00:00 – Intro and Todd’s promotion
•  01:40 – Todd’s media roots and time at Fremantle
•  06:15 – Digital bibles and global format sharing
•  10:50 – Lessons from the Susan Boyle YouTube moment
•  13:40 – Shifting to King and the discovery of fun
•  18:30 – Motivations beyond boredom
•  22:45 – Building for a massive, diverse audience
•  26:40 – The product structure at King
•  30:10 – Keeping Candy Crush fresh after years at the top
•  35:05 – When to launch a new game
•  38:50 – Ethics and responsibility in game design
•  42:20 – Why qual and quant both matter
•  45:10 – How King shares knowledge across teams
•  48:00 – The hiring landscape and talent challenges
•  51:00 – Growing new managers an

We want to hear from you!

Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

AI has changed the way developers work—and Stack Overflow is right at the centre of that shift. In this episode, Jody Bailey, CPTO at Stack Overflow, shares how the platform is adapting to AI, protecting its community, and embracing new revenue streams. We explore how LLMs are reshaping developer behaviour, why canonical answers still matter, and what it takes to keep trust, quality and community alive in the age of instant AI-generated code. If you’re working on dev tools, building with AI, or just wondering how to keep your product relevant through disruption, this one’s for you.

Key takeaways

• AI is both a disruptor and an enabler
• Engagement is shifting, not disappearing
• Community remains the core asset
• AI doesn't kill quality—it challenges it
• Prompt engineering is the new entry-level skill
• Innovation is iterative—even with AI
• Stack is designing for tomorrow’s engineers
• Jody’s vision is long term

Chapters
00:00 – intro to Jody Bailey and his role at Stack Overflow
03:30 – impact of AI and shift in how developers search for answers
07:45 – Stack’s new business model: licensing data to LLMs
10:15 – protecting community-contributed data and enforcing attribution
13:20 – changing nature of search and the role of AI
17:00 – trust, verification, and the evolving user experience
21:10 – internal AI experiments and lessons learned
25:00 – balancing community, learning, and AI-powered answers
28:20 – new skills required for developers in an AI world
31:40 – evolving engineering roles and the future of team structures
36:10 – making Stack Overflow accessible for the next generation
39:50 – what Jody’s most excited about for the future

Featured Links: Follow Jody on LinkedIn | Stack Overflow | ‘Yes, Artificial Intelligence Has A Creative Side, Sort Of’ feature at Forbes

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Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

Intercom’s CPO Paul Adams joins The Product Experience to talk about how the company has radically transformed its approach in the wake of AI's acceleration. From ripping up roadmaps and reorganising teams to reinventing pricing models, Paul shares what it really takes to adapt—fast.

Key takeaways

• "You’re not selling users anymore. You’re selling work."
• AI has shifted Intercom’s business model from seat-based to outcome-based pricing—charging per resolution, not per person.
• "We ripped up our strategy five days after ChatGPT launched."
• Intercom made a bold, immediate pivot to reorient its product and vision around AI, including launching a new website and scrapping existing roadmaps.
• "The only thing that’s persisted is our principles."
• While teams, triads and structures were dismantled, Intercom kept its core product principles intact—like 'start with the problem'.
• "This isn’t evolution—it’s a new species of company."
• Intercom now compares itself to AI-native startups, not its former self. It has rebuilt the product team into flexible, role-fluid workstreams.
• "People have left because it’s not for them."
• The pace of change has human costs. Leadership must communicate directly and honestly to support people through radical transformation.
• "I worry I’ll be left behind too."
• Even senior leaders are actively relearning—Paul admits to using tools like Replit and Lovable to stay current with AI-native UX trends.

Chapters

• 00:00 – Opening thoughts: fear of being left behind in the AI era
• 00:18 – Introduction to the episode and Paul Adams
• 01:00 – Paul’s journey from Google and Facebook to Intercom
• 01:51 – What it’s like to witness Intercom evolve over 11+ years
• 02:22 – The energy and disruption brought on by AI
• 03:17 – From seat-based to value-based pricing: the big shift
• 05:06 – Why AI made Intercom rethink everything, fast
• 07:58 – Sales team challenges: retraining to sell a new model
• 09:43 – The business impact: Fin’s rapid growth and dual-model tension
• 11:02 – What it means to “sell work” instead of licences
• 12:58 – New kinds of jobs emerging around AI tooling
• 14:45 – Ripping up process: how Intercom builds products now
• 16:00 – Competing with AI-native startups, not legacy Intercom
• 17:49 – The one thing tha

We want to hear from you!

Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

In this episode of The Product Experience podcast, we sit down with Product Consultant Joca Torres, whose work at Gympass is featured in Marty Cagan’s book Transformed. Joca shares the four core principles of successful digital transformation—principles he’s applied in both high-growth startups and century-old corporations.

We unpack what it really takes to shift a company from a delivery mindset to a product-led culture, the traps of discovery theatre, and how empowered teams actually behave. 

Key takeaways
— Discovery should be fast and focused. Avoid drawn-out discovery phases that confirm what you already know. Good discovery is grounded in existing insights and validated quickly.
— The Four Principles of Product Culture:

• Deliver Early and Often – Frequent releases drive learning and responsiveness.
• Focus on the Problem – Avoid premature solutions. Spend time understanding what really needs solving.
• Deliver Results – Products are a means, not an end. Success is measured in impact, not output.
• Ecosystem Mindset – Recognise the full range of users and stakeholders. Product is about balancing value across them.

— Transformation is behavioural, not technical. Digital tools are important, but they won’t matter if people and processes don’t change with them.
— Executive sponsorship is essential. Cultural shifts only take hold when the leadership team actively supports and models them.
— Beware of product theatre. Following the right rituals doesn’t mean you’re creating value. Focus on outcomes, not optics.
— Empowered teams are responsible teams. True empowerment means owning the problem, the solution, and the results. It isn’t for everyone.

Chapters
00:00 – The Problem with “Discovery”
01:00 – Introducing Joca Torres
02:30 – A Surprising Need for Digital Transformation
04:00 – What Makes a True Digital Transformation
08:00 – The Four Pillars of Change
13:00 – Thinking Beyond the End User

We want to hear from you!

Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here!

It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes. 🙏

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...

As startups grow, product teams often find themselves caught between speed and structure. In this episode of The Product Experience, Charlotte King, Lead Product Manager at eBay, shares practical insights from her work leading teams through this transition at companies including Moonpig, Flipdish, and ThoughtWorks. 

Charlotte unpacks how to define product’s role during scaleup, build team structure around strategic value, and use tools like Wardley Mapping and Team Topologies to support organisational change. She also introduces the DHM model (Delightful, Hard to copy, Margin-enhancing) and discusses how to make strategy tangible for cross-functional teams. This conversation is especially useful for product leaders, heads of product, and founders navigating scale.

Chapters
1:13 – Charlotte’s background
2:36 – Product’s role in startups, scaleups and enterprises
4:35 – What product teams need to succeed during scale
6:42 – Defining product’s role as the company grows
9:00 – Using Wardley Mapping to assess team maturity
14:30 – Creating and communicating guiding principles
20:30 – Using the DHM model to prioritise value
25:48 – Structuring teams with Team Topologies
29:03 – Multidisciplinary collaboration in practice
30:41 – Lessons from leading transformation
32:30 – Final reflections and takeaways

Featured Links: Follow Charlotte on LinkedIn | eBay | Wardley Maps | What we learned at #mtpcon London 2025' feature by Kent McDonald and Louron Pratt

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Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether...