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"Less about the how, more about the why." That's how Itamar Rotem sums up product management today.

Allie Vogel sat down with Itamar, CPO at Faddom, for episode 26 of Flexxible by Design.

His path into product was not the typical one. He started in intelligence in the IDF, moved into technical pre-sales at Verint, and eventually made the jump to product management without an engineering background. Today he's part of Faddom's founding team, where he co-leads R&D alongside the CTO.

In this conversation, Allie and Itamar talk about why product management requires perspective, and why that perspective takes time to build. They get into sales as an underrated career skill, what juniors actually bring to the table, and a deal that was lost and then closed six months later when the prospect changed companies.

They also dig into how roles are blurring across product, design, and development. Designers are being asked to think like product managers, developers are being asked about the why instead of only the how, and as the tools get faster, the work that matters moves back to judgment about what should be built at all.

Connect with Itamar Rotem on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itamar-rotem/
Learn more about Faddom: https://faddom.com/
Learn more about Flexxi Studio: https://flexxi.studio

Every AI conversation right now starts with speed. This one doesn't stay there.

Allie sat down with Cody Rogers, CPO of Hubstaff, to talk about what AI is doing to product development and the way teams work. Instead of the usual replacement argument, Cody makes the case for AI helping people do better work, not fewer people doing it.

His example: a technical CEO submitted three pull requests over a weekend with AI. Fast, obviously. But nobody had asked for the feature, and the team still had to review it, support it, and explain it to customers. That's the difference between writing code and building a product.

Cody's take: when execution gets cheap, judgment, taste, strategy and domain knowledge get more expensive. Not less. The teams that get the most out of AI won't be the ones producing more. They'll be the ones who know what deserves to be produced at all.

Eight plus years of industry experience, and a real question about where all of this is actually going.

Full episode out now!

Episode Resources:

Cody's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/codyrogers/

Hubstaff page: https://hubstaff.com

Compliance training is the last place you would expect a conversation about craft, which is exactly why this one goes where it does.

Allie sits down with Hannelore McElheny, VP of Design at Ethena, the compliance platform behind teams at Airbnb, Figma and Notion.

Hannelore's argument: the faster design gets, the more valuable research becomes. AI makes polished output cheap, so the differentiator moves to whether you actually understand the person you're designing for.

We get into: How Hannelore gets more out of one customer success call than most teams get out of a formal studyWhy research came back into the design role instead of leaving it.

What she hires for now that the tooling changes every few monthsHow her team works with Cursor, Claude Code and Figma MCP in day to day product work.

What happened when Ethena's marketing team picked up the same toolsDesign as a strategic advantage inside enterprise compliance, a category not known for it.

Enjoy!

Episode resources:

Ethena Site: ⁠https://www.goethena.com

Ethena's LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethena/

Hannelore's LinkedIn: ⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannelore-mcelheny-b34b8724/

Episode 23: AI Won't Take Your Job — But Ignoring It Will.

Allie, Founder of Flexxi Studio sits down with Brooke Weinbaum, VP of Product at Copyleaks, the company built to answer one question: is this real, or is it AI?

They get into how AI fraud is already hitting insurance claims, and how marketplace sellers are passing off recreated goods as the real thing. They also talk about how Brooke's team leans on tools like Claude and Gemini inside their own design process, and where roles like AI prompters are already showing up on job titles that didn't exist two years ago.

What they discovered together: the real risk was never AI taking your job. It's ignoring it while everyone around you learns to use it.

New episode of Flexxible by Design is live now, enjoy!

Episode resources:

CopyLeaks Site: https://copyleaks.com/ai-detector 

Copyleak's LinkedIn:   / copyleaks   

Brooke's LinkedIn:   / brookeweinbaum

Tal Herman wears two hats most people would never combine: Product and Marketing at Orchid Security. In this episode of Flexxible by Design, she joins Allie to unpack what happens when the person building the product is also the one telling its story, and why that dual role has made her sharper at both.

Allie and Tal dig into identity security, from enterprise access to the everyday accounts most people never think twice about, and why breaches and digital trust issues have made this space more urgent than ever.

AI runs through the whole conversation, but not the way you'd expect. Tal calls it an implementation choice rather than the future itself, and makes the case that the real challenge isn't adopting AI. It's whether teams actually understand the problem they're trying to solve. For founders, product leads, and marketers building something people should trust, this one's worth the full listen.

Product development doesn't look like it did six months ago, and Sébastien Gendreau is living proof. In this episode, Allie sits down with the VP Product at Agorapulse, who's spent 15 years watching the company evolve from an early Facebook contest tool into a full social media platform used by agencies, universities, and global brands. They get into why developers are now moving five to ten times faster than traditional product workflows can handle, and how Agorapulse is shifting from detailed Figma specs to fast, AI-assisted prototyping, including a custom design skill built in Claude Code that generates interfaces aligned to their design system.

This isn't a conversation about AI hype. It's about what actually happens inside a product org when the speed changes and the roles you've always known start to blur, from team reactions to Sébastien's honest advice for founders: understand the problem, build for one real user, and stop waiting for perfect before you ship.

Most companies are getting AI wrong, they're automating everything and losing the human connection in the process. In this episode, Ry Sullivan, Chief Product Officer at Snappy, breaks down how his team built an AI-powered gifting and recognition platform that creates real emotional impact at enterprise scale. We cover his path from Wall Street finance to product innovation, and why emotional intelligence is now a core product strategy…not just a soft skill.

You'll learn how to balance automation with authenticity, why strong design systems drive both productivity and brand consistency, and where AI-powered personalization is headed in the marketplace landscape. Whether you're a founder, product leader, or marketer navigating the future of tech, this conversation will challenge how you think about building products that actually matter.

Most people assume AI makes creativity cheaper. Josh Ulm thinks it does the opposite. As Head of Design at VSCO, he talks about what it actually looks like when a creative company goes all-in on AI, not to automate photography, but to amplify what photographers were already trying to do: capture emotion, tell real stories, and express something only they could express.

Josh breaks down how VSCO is integrating AI across the entire photographic workflow, why authenticity is about to matter more than it ever has, and what creative leaders need to understand about human judgment in an AI-powered world. If you're a designer, founder, or creative leader figuring out where AI fits without losing what makes your work worth making, this is the episode.

Most design leaders followed a straight path. Shivang Patwa didn't. He went from designing buildings to designing digital products,  and somewhere along the way, he developed a framework for simplifying complexity that most UX designers spend years trying to figure out. Today, as VP of Design at Cowbell, he's applying that thinking to one of the hardest design challenges out there: making cyber insurance feel human.

This episode is an honest conversation about what it really takes to lead design in a technical, data-heavy company, how AI is changing the way teams are built and what gets hired, and why the designers who thrive in the next few years won't be the ones who resist AI,  they'll be the ones who figured out how to use it better than everyone else.

Most design skills are becoming obsolete faster than ever, and your future success depends on adapting quickly. In this eye-opening episode, John Garvie reveals how the evolution of AI tools is transforming the very role of designers, urging a shift from specialist to generalista, a fluid, strategic, and empowered thinker who spans discipline.

Discover how the concept of the Generalista is not just a buzzword but a vital mindset for thriving in today's fast-paced, AI-enabled landscape.

This episode isn’t just theory; it’s your blueprint for future-proofing your design career in a landscape that’s shifting at lightning speed. Whether you're a designer, product leader, or aspiring innovator, you'll gain the clarity and tools to expand your influence, stay relevant, and lead change confidently.

To learn more about the Generalista, check out https://www.generalista.ai/