Product Talk

What if the strategy you just shipped is already obsolete? In this episode of Product Talk hosted by Digitalzone CPO Sonjoy Ganguly, Syntheseed CPO Sam Somashekar speaks on what it means to lead product in an era where the pace of change has outrun the annual planning cycle, AI is generating strategies that all sound the same, and the pressure to experiment is pulling leaders further from the strategic thinking they were hired to do. Sam and Sanjay explore why the human element is more important than ever, how shared KPIs across functions unlock real alignment, and what product leaders need to stop doing right now.

What happens when software powers every customer-facing interaction a business has, from the app to the agent interface to the care experience? Everything becomes a product. In this episode of the CPO Rising series, hosted by Products That Count Resident CPO Renee Niemi, Comcast SVP of Connected Living Products Randall Hounsell speaks on what it means to lead product at one of the most complex consumer technology ecosystems in the world. Randall shares why data-driven is misunderstood, how he is rewiring Comcast's entire product lifecycle to be AI-first, and why vision and strategy are the most durable skills a product leader has in a world where everything else is changing fast.

What separates a good product manager from a great one, and can you actually spot it in an interview? In this episode of the CPO Rising Series hosted by Axiom Law CPO Katrina Benjamin, OpenTable SVP of Product Shayani Roy speaks on the three qualities she hires for above everything else, why the CPO role is fundamentally shifting from people management to doing, and what it means to build products for an industry as creative and relationship-driven as restaurants. With 60,000 restaurants and 1.9 billion diners annually, OpenTable's approach to AI, velocity, and innovation offers a masterclass in how to move fast without losing focus.

What does it actually take to decarbonize the built environment, and can construction be reimagined fast enough to matter? 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 Armelle Coutant, CEO & Co-Founder of Kit Switch, to discuss enabling decarbonization through electrified and low-waste interior systems, productizing construction for speed and scalability, as well as navigating a complex, slow-moving industry through strategic pilots and ecosystem partnerships.

What does it mean to ship products when a wrong decision does not just hurt conversion rates but puts patients at risk? In this episode of the CPO Rising Series hosted by Products That Count Resident CPO Jay Patel, Planned Parenthood Direct CPO Hannah Park speaks on what it really takes to lead product in one of the most politically volatile and privacy-sensitive environments in healthcare. Hannah shares how she thinks about trust as a non-negotiable design constraint, why her team has deliberately held off on bringing AI into the patient experience, and how she builds teams that can make good decisions without waiting for permission when the regulatory ground shifts overnight.

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.