Products That Count Podcast

What if the biggest bottleneck in your product organization is no longer engineering capacity or even go to market speed, but change management? In this episode of the CPO Rising series hosted by Products That Count Resident CPO Jay Patel, Treasure AI CPO Rafa Flores speaks on how the role of product leadership has fundamentally changed, why the "ship perfect" mindset is now a liability, and what it actually looks like to build an AI native product culture that keeps human judgment at the center. From his journey immigrating from Honduras to leading product at a global agentic AI platform, Rafa brings a rare combination of personal conviction and technical fluency to one of the most honest conversations we have had about what great product leadership looks like right now.

What if the biggest constraint on your product organization is no longer engineering capacity but the speed and quality of your decisions? In this episode of the CPO Rising Series hosted by Products That Count Resident CPO Jay Patel, Aliaswire CPO Nirmal Kumar speaks on how the CPO role has fundamentally shifted in the age of AI, what a disciplined layered bets framework actually looks like in practice, and why the future of payments is invisible, embedded, and intelligent. Drawing on nearly two decades at a Boston fintech he helped found, Nirmal brings a rare combination of engineering depth and product leadership to a conversation about building platforms that multiply, making calculated bets with real kill criteria, and transforming a team without leaving anyone behind.

What if the role that has defined a generation of tech careers disappears within five years? In this inaugural episode of the fifth year of the CPO Rising Series, Products That Count Founder & Managing Partner SC Moatti and Resident CPO Renee Niemi make their boldest prediction yet: the product manager as we know it will be replaced by the product builder by 2030. Drawing on conversations with over 1,500 CPOs this year alone, Renee unpacks what is driving the shift, what separates good CPOs from great ones from the best, and why for companies that do not get ahead of this transition, the risk is not just competitive. It is existential.

Is your organization losing 7% of its annual revenue to complexity? In this podcast hosted by Boston New Technology CPO Shweta Agrawal, Freshworks Chief Product Officer Srini Raghavan will be speaking on how AI-native tools are transforming IT and customer service operations, and what it really takes to scale AI responsibly in the enterprise. Drawing on his experience leading product at Freshworks, RingCentral, and Five9, Srini shares the frameworks, real customer stories, and mindset shifts that separate product leaders who scale from those who stall.

Everyone is using AI, but almost no one can tell you if they are actually getting better at it. In this episode of Product Talk hosted by Hoda Mehr, Co-founder and CEO of Up My Mojo and Board Member of Products That Count, Talent.com CPTO Navya Rehani Gupta speaks on the self learning system she built to make AI capability development measurable and self improving at the executive level. Navya walks through exactly how she went from using AI as a learning tool to building a full operating system called Synergy that scores her weekly across five dimensions, catches mistake patterns before they compound, and delivers the signal she needs every morning to lead product, engineering, and go to market teams without becoming the bottleneck.

What happens when speed and trust collide in fintech? In this episode of Product Talk, hosted by CentralSquare Technologies CPO Denise Hemke, Intuit Director of Product Rosa Gonzalez Welton speaks on how AI is transforming product development inside one of the most high stakes software environments in the world. When you are shipping into payroll, tax, and workforce management, moving fast is only half the equation. Rosa breaks down how Intuit is putting rapid prototyping tools in everyone's hands, raising decision velocity, and still protecting reliability through risk rubrics and controlled rollouts.

Are your dashboards giving you visibility or understanding? In this episode of Product Talk hosted by Digitalzone CPO Sonjoy Ganguly, AskEnola CEO Piyanka Jain speaks on how AI is transforming the way product leaders interpret data, make decisions, and ultimately build products. This conversation goes beyond tools and demos to focus on something more fundamental: judgment, interpretation, and what it really means to lead with data in an era where insights can be instant but wisdom still has to be earned.

What does it actually take to build a product when no one believes it's possible? In this episode of Product Talk, hosted by Thomson Reuters Director of Product Vinay Aradhya, Google Group Product Managersoftware development, and what separates great product managers from the rest. Drawing from his journey as a game developer, FinTech CTO, and the lead PM who helped build Google Stadia from scratch, Pawel brings rare perspective on the craft of building and leading in an era where everything is changing fast.

How can nuclear energy be deployed at software speed to meet the urgency of climate change? The scale and urgency of the transformation required to fight climate change has never been more clear. Building hardware and software products, acquiring the funding and creating a diverse community to enhance talent capacity and to drive innovation, is essential to tackling this global environmental crisis. In this podcast, host Silicon Valley Bank (a division of First Citizens Bank) Climate Tech & Sustainability SVP Maggie Wong will be interviewing Everstar Founder & CEO Kevin Kong to discuss leveraging AI and software to deploy nuclear power, building the right product with the right people, and the importance of grit and empathy in product development.

What if your AI knew your meetings, your goals, and your patterns, and had everything ready before you even opened your laptop? In this episode of Product Talk hosted by Denise Hemke, Rise2.AI Founder Vikash Rungta will be speaking on how product managers can build a "second brain", an AI-powered knowledge system that acts as a personal chief of staff. Vikash shares the exact framework for getting started, the most common mistakes PMs make, and why ingestion matters far more than generation.

Can AI truly be your co-founder, or is that a role only a human can fill? In this podcast hosted by Hoda Mehr, Co-founder and CEO of Up My Mojo and a Board Member at Products That Count, KC Advisors Executive Leadership Coach Keith Cowing will be speaking on what AI still can't do when it comes to building companies and teams. Drawing on his experience as a former CPO at LinkedIn, Twitter, and Flatiron Health, Keith shares a framework for what makes a great co-founder and whether AI, or an alternative profile, could ever step into that role.

How can product and engineering leaders actually prove the ROI of AI adoption when everyone is being asked to justify the investment but few teams have a clear measurement playbook? In this podcast hosted by Hoda Mehr, Co-founder and CEO of Up My Mojo and a Board Member at Products That Count, Pensero AI Co-Founder Bernardo Hernandez will be speaking on how to measure productivity gains from AI in a way that is rigorous, practical, and useful for annual planning cycles. As tools like Cursor and Claude Code promise 3 to 10× productivity gains in engineering, leadership teams are moving quickly to allocate budgets and set expectations, while product leaders are being asked to benchmark progress and quantify impact without clear precedents. This conversation explores how experienced operators are approaching that challenge and what it takes to turn AI productivity claims into measurable results that teams can confidently use for planning and decision-making.

How are Chief Product Officers redesigning their org charts and ways of working to build truly AI-native product teams? In this podcast hosted by Hoda Mehr, Co-founder and CEO of Up My Mojo and a Board Member at Products That Count, Monumental Chief Product Officer Pawan Gaargi will be speaking on how product leaders are transforming their teams to operate in the AI era. As organizations move beyond using AI as a feature-level tool and begin rethinking how products are built, shipped, and managed, product leaders are being asked to reshape processes, decision-making, and collaboration across their teams. Drawing from his experience scaling teams and rebuilding workflows through acquisitions at Monumental and from his early product leadership roots at Zynga, Pawan shares how experimentation, hypothesis-driven thinking, and hands-on leadership are helping teams become AI-native while keeping core product fundamentals like retention, player motivation, and growth metrics firmly in focus.

How can companies stop losing revenue because marketing, inventory, and operations are working from disconnected data? In this podcast hosted by EY Chief Platform Officer Justin Leibow, Conative.ai Founder Mike Le discusses how AI-driven demand forecasting helps organizations align teams, improve decision-making, and increase cash-flow efficiency. He also explores why clean, connected data matters more than models alone, and how AI agents are reshaping the way product, marketing, and inventory teams collaborate to act faster and smarter.

How can sustainable feedstock materials reshape manufacturing while accelerating climate progress? The scale and urgency of the transformation required to fight climate change has never been more clear. Building hardware and software products, acquiring the funding and creating a diverse community to enhance talent capacity and to drive innovation, is essential to tackling this global environmental crisis. In this podcast, host Silicon Valley Bank (a division of First Citizens Bank) Climate Tech & Sustainability SVP Maggie Wong will be interviewing Mothership Materials CEO & Co-Founder Jo Marini to discuss producing sustainable feedstock materials, the importance of customer discovery and building stakeholder relationships and finding joy in product development.

How can enterprises unlock AI adoption while keeping sensitive data secure? In this podcast hosted by Boston New Technology CPO Shweta Agrawal, Polygraf AI Head of Product Anar Bayramov discusses how organizations can manage AI risk, protect data flows, and build governance into their AI strategy from the start. He shares lessons from building in regulated environments, explains why visibility into AI usage is the foundation of trust, and explores how product leaders can shift the conversation from fear-driven security to enabling responsible AI at scale.

How do product leaders decide what AI should automate and what should stay human-in-the-loop? In this podcast hosted by Mphasis VP of Products Chenny Solaiyappan, Level AI Head of Product Sirisha Machiraju will be speaking on how teams move AI from experimentation to strategic priority while balancing trust, adoption, and risk in enterprise environments. She also shares a practical playbook for evaluating assistive vs. agentic workflows and explains how conversation intelligence is reshaping customer experience across industries, including healthcare.

How can product leaders cut through AI hype to build products that actually deliver value? In this podcast hosted by Boston New Technology CPO Shweta Agrawal, Former Amazon, PayPal & Target Product Leader West Stringfellow will be speaking on how to apply AI with a product-first mindset. Drawing from decades of experience scaling global platforms, he shares how to balance innovation with discipline, avoid overestimating AI capabilities, and focus on what truly drives customer impact and business growth.

What does it take to build AI-powered products that customers actually trust? In this podcast hosted by EY Chief Platform Officer Justin Leibow, Unit21 Sr Product Leader Dhiraj Bhat will be speaking on how product leaders can design systems that leverage AI effectively. Drawing from his experience building fraud prevention products, Dhiraj explores the shift from feature-driven PM to systems thinking, and why implementation and trust will define the winners in AI.

What does it mean to prompt AI the product manager way? In this podcast hosted by Hoda Mehr, Co-founder and CEO of Up My Mojo and a Board Member at Products That Count, Ridge Ventures Venture Partner Akriti Dokania will be speaking on how product leaders can approach AI prompting with a product mindset. Akriti brings a rare perspective, having worked as an engineer and product manager at Amazon and Microsoft and now serving as a venture partner and board member to several successful B2B startups. The conversation was sparked by an article Akriti recently published on how to prompt AI models the product manager way, an idea that reframes the current AI conversation. While much of the industry focuses on what AI models can do, Akriti argues that the real variable is the person using them: how the problem is framed, how the conversation is structured, and whether the user knows what kind of help they are actually looking for. Together, they go deep on practical frameworks product builders can use immediately, the mindset shifts that separate those who get real value from AI from those who stay in the shallow end, and what Akriti's experience across engineering, product management, and venture investing reveals about the difference between product builders who are truly AI-native and those who are simply using AI.