What happens to your brand when AI buys for your customers, not them?

Mani Fazelli, VP of Product at Shopify, breaks down the biggest shift in commerce since the smartphone. In this episode, we go deep on agentic commerce: what it actually means, how merchants should prepare, and what happens to brand loyalty, conversion funnels, and the customer relationship when AI agents start making purchasing decisions autonomously.

Mani shares Shopify's internal "crawl, walk, run, fly" framework for thinking about AI-driven commerce, walks us through SimGym (their simulated AI buyer testing environment), and explains the Coinbase x Shopify Commerce Payments Protocol built on programmable USDC. This is one of the most grounded, executive-level conversations on AI agents and the future of retail you'll find.

What we cover:

Guest: Mani Fazelli, VP of Product at Shopify

Who this is for: Founders, C-suite executives, product leaders, and ecommerce operators trying to understand what AI agents mean for their business right now.

Subscribe for weekly conversations with top executives navigating the AI era:

Tamar, former CPO at Slack and a Venture Partner at IVP, has a rich history of leading and delivering innovative products on a massive scale. Previously, as the Chief Product Officer at Slack, she guided the product, design, and research sectors, witnessing a 10x revenue surge, the company's public listing, and its eventual acquisition by Salesforce. Prior to Slack, Tamar served as Vice President at Google, where she held pivotal product and engineering leadership roles, significantly contributing to flagship products like Search, Identity, and Privacy. In addition to her remarkable career, Tamar sits on the board of several public and private companies.

- Tamar’s fascinating journey through tech

Where to find Tamar Yehoshua:

Ami Vora is the Chief Product Officer at Faire, an online wholesale marketplace last valued at $12.59b. She has a wide array of experience in tech, having been an early employee at Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. She has also held a variety of roles, spanning product, marketing, and even operating Facebook’s VC fund (fbFund). Alongside her impressive career, Ami writes insightful blog posts about scaling tech products, teams, and cultures, and we unpack some of those posts in this conversation.

In today's episode, we discuss:

• Ami’s fascinating journey through tech

Where to find Ami Vora:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amvora/

Substack: https://substack.com/@amivora

Where to find Moe Ali:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/productfaculty

Twitter: https://twitter.com/productfaculty

ProductFaculty: https://www.productfaculty.com/

Referenced: Facebook’s VC fund (fbFund) that Ami operated: https://medium.com/swlh/fbfund-the-investment-fund-youve-never-heard-of-that-helped-start-lyft-bc57ee661162

Faire: https://www.faire.com/

“If I can see a problem, it’s mine to solve” blog post: https://amivora.substack.com/p/if-i-can-see-a-problem-its-mine-to

“It’s not prioritization until it hurts” blog post: https://amivora.substack.com/p/its-not-prioritization-until-it-hurts

“Listen, Document, Decide” blog post: https://amivora.substack.com/p/learning-to-make-decisions-in-a-new

Timestamps:

[00:00:59] Ami's background

[00:02:48] The mentality of leaving Microsoft for a temp role at FB

[00:05:06] Advice for forming a product vision and strategy

[00:09:12] What it means for a product experience to be "simple”

[00:10:24] How to create simple product experiences

[00:10:52] The "Listen, Decide, Document" framework

[00:12:23] Ami's attitude to prioritising amidst uncertainty

[00:13:37] Getting comfortable with making wrong decisions

[00:15:48] It's not prioritization until it hurts

[00:16:36] How to optimize your career like a product

[00:18:52] How to make time for career development

[00:20:53] If you see a problem, it's yours to solve

[00:23:03] Leadership and career hack: Upgrade from 1.0 to 2.0

[00:25:30] How to solicit valuable feedback

[00:27:35] The future of PM and how to stay ahead of it

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