The Product Experience

Mind the Product

The Product Experience features conversations with the product people of the world, focusing on real insights of how to improve your product practice. Part of the Mind the Product network, hosts Lily Smith (ProductTank organiser and Product Consultant) & Randy Silver (Head of Product and product management trainer) “go deep” with the best speakers from ProductTank meetups all over the globe, Mind the Product conferences, and the wider product community.

  1. 23 HR AGO

    How to connect vision, strategy, and execution - Martin Eriksson (Author, The Decision Stack)

    Martin Eriksson is a Product Leader, Co-founder of Mind the Product and ProductTank, and Author. His new book, The Decision Stack, offers a mental model for connecting every layer of organisational strategy — from vision to the decisions teams make every single day. We discuss: — Why 95% of employees cannot name their organisation's strategy — and what that costs — The five questions every company must be able to answer, from vision to principles — Why strategy is the most commonly missing layer in the stack, and why exec teams are often reluctant to fill it — How to challenge upwards and surface strategic gaps without calling leadership out — Why empowering teams without context sends them running in every direction — How principles — not values — are the tool that eliminates recurring debates — The "this or that" technique for making trade-offs visible across a team — Why you cannot communicate strategy often enough Chapters — 00:00 Introduction — 01:11 Martin's background in product — 02:19 The origin of The Decision Stack — 03:44 The five questions the stack answers — 04:27 Why strategy is most often missing or unclear — 08:18 Who should be making strategic decisions — 09:44 Time horizons: how long should strategy last — 11:43 Using the decision stack in practice — 13:36 How to surface gaps from lower in the organisation — 16:01 Why context is the prerequisite for empowerment — 19:32 How the stack reduces decision-making overhead — 21:04 Language, frameworks, and avoiding rigidity — 23:43 Where to start: top-down or bottom-up — 26:34 Fractal stacks and scaling across teams — 28:44 Strategy for maintenance work and existing products — 31:41 The role of principles at the foundation of the stack — 33:38 How principles emerge — top-down and bottom-up — 37:07 The "this or that" technique for surfacing trade-offs — 39:26 Communicating strategy continuously across the organisation — 43:34 The most common mistake when getting started Featured links The Decision Stack — Martin's new book: https://www.thedecisionstack.com/ The trade-off poll tool mentioned in the episode: https://thisorthat.thedecisionstack.com/ ProductTank:  Martin Eriksson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martineriksson/ HBR: The Office of Strategy Management — source of the 95% statistic cited in the episode: https://hbr.org/2005/10/the-office-of-strategy-management 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) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

    45 min

  2. 15 APR

    The document that can replace PRDs — Rags Vadali (Founder & CEO, floto.ai)

    What does product management look like when your engineers aren't writing code? Rags Vadali, founder of Floto and former PM at Google and Meta, joins Lily and Randy to talk about how building AI-native products has completely inverted his process. No PRDs, prototypes before specs, and a new artefact at the centre of it all: the Product Experience Document (PXD). They get into why the real product when you're building an agent is the experience layer on top of it, how synthetic personas work (and where they don't), and what discovery still requires that AI can't replace. Plus: what product sense means when everyone on your team is shipping code. Chapters  0:00 What is a product when you're building an agent? 1:00 Guest intro: Rags on getting into product at Google, YouTube, Meta, and now founding Floto 3:33 How the team at Floto actually works — and why it's "completely upside down" 6:01 Why building AI products forced a process inversion (and why speed made it necessary) 7:11 Agents and the experience layer: redefining what the product actually is 9:39 Running two to three products in parallel, and throwing away 50–60% of what gets built 14:31 Discovery principles that haven't changed — and the ones AI is helping with 18:15 Synthetic personas: where they work, where they don't, and the insight from flipping the question 22:03 The Product Experience Document (PXD): genesis, philosophy, and why it's not a PRD 25:57 Experience principles: encoding how it should feel to talk to an agent 27:06 Good, bad, ugly: why example interactions and anti-patterns are critical 28:55 Critical moments and closing conversations: designing the arc 33:33 Where this way of working applies — and where it doesn't 35:10 Hiring for product sense: why it now applies to every role 39:43 Final advice: what product people should not stop doing Product Experience Document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15kCm8ZcPqY12174WjyfuVLhrWOXGGqnB1vow7o_2ZqI/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.l62rzxz2fw6v 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) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

    42 min

  3. 8 APR

    What I learned from an industry pivot - Kate Kempe (Director of Product, International Baccalaureate)

    Kate Kempe made the leap from 13 years at Amazon — most recently leading Alexa's screened products — to head up product at the International Baccalaureate, an NGO with no established product function. In this episode, she talks through what that transition actually involved: finding focus during a job search through Phil Terry's Never Search Alone methodology, reconciling Amazon instincts with a slower-moving, mission-driven organisation, and learning to be interested rather than interesting when you're the new person trying to make an impression. Chapters 01:07 — Kate's introduction 01:37 — From arts degree to Amazon: career origins 03:30 — Why leave Amazon? Finding the IB opportunity 05:08 — Never Search Alone: how the job search council works 10:37 — Building a personal inventory before committing to a role 13:38 — Amazon vs the IB: culture, pace, and decision-making 16:10 — Making the case in a mission-driven organisation 19:02 — Influence and persuasion — the "bus" analogy 23:44 — Building a product function from scratch 25:10 — Shifting from project delivery to product health 29:45 — Crossing domains: how to land and establish yourself 35:26 — Be interested, not interesting 37:50 — Advice for big tech → mission-driven transitions 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) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

    41 min

  4. 1 APR

    How to build EQ as a Product Leader - Pippa Topp (CPO, giffgaff)

    Pippa Topp, Chief Product Officer at giffgaff, joins Lily and Randy to talk about emotional intelligence in product teams — what it is, how it develops, and why it matters for leadership. The conversation covers recognising defensiveness as an EQ signal, the conscious competence model, applying empathy inward as well as outward, and how to cultivate a culture of reflection across a product org. Pippa also shares her own journey from judgement to over-empathy to finding the balance, and makes the case for self-belief as the foundation of emotional resilience. This episode is brought to you by Mailtrap, modern email delivery for developer and product teams: fast delivery. high inboxing rates. 24/7 expert support. Try for free today. Chapters 00:00 – Introduction & what is emotional intelligence? 04:39 – How low EQ shows up at work: defensiveness and reactive communication 08:28 – Extending product empathy skills to stakeholders and peers 10:33 – The conscious competence model and coaching people who don't know what they don't know 13:21 – Coaching techniques: life stories, separating facts from narrative 14:58 – Assessment tools and organisational EQ at giffgaff (Insights) 16:33 – Pippa's own EQ journey: from judgement to over-empathy to balance 22:37 – Coaching a junior PM through resistance, self-doubt, and breakthrough 28:40 – Leading through a forced decision: surfacing team emotion to move forward 32:39 – Cultivating EQ culture: group coaching, values-based behaviours, measurement 38:48 – Neurodivergence, self-awareness, and building a feedback culture 44:00 – Can AI support emotional intelligence? 47:41 – Is it okay to cry at work? 51:29 – Self-belief as the foundation of emotional resilience 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) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

    57 min

  5. 25 MAR

    The state of product in Europe - Elias Lieberich (Product Strategy Coach)

    Elias Lieberich, Founder of Product Matters and formerly a PM at Google and YouTube, makes the case that the real gap between European and Silicon Valley product practice is in its culture. He identifies three recurring patterns in European companies: process obsession, a limited appetite for validation, and an underappreciation of engineering and design. Drawing on work with German Mittelstand businesses, deep tech startups, and large enterprises, Elias explains how to introduce product thinking without triggering resistance, through small, visible wins rather than wholesale transformation. This episode is brought to you by Mailtrap, modern email delivery for developer and product teams: fast delivery. high inboxing rates. 24/7 expert support. Try for free today. Chapters 00:56 – Elias's background: Google, YouTube, and Google X 04:08 – European vs. Silicon Valley product culture 07:43 – Three gaps: process obsession, lack of validation, undervaluing engineers 12:04 – What European companies actually want — and the copy-paste trap 13:34 – Show, don't tell: finding immediate value 15:37 – Bringing the whole organisation on the journey 25:02 – Roadmaps, frameworks, and meeting companies where they are 26:35 – Building trust through small, compounding wins 29:29 – Change aversion as a bell curve 31:02 – What European companies do well — and what's worth exporting 33:13 – Working with deep tech startups in Europe 36:44 – The killer question: who is this for? 40:25 – Practical advice: start with what's within your control 42:53 – Wrap-up 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) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

    44 min

  6. 18 MAR

    How to fix broken systems - Kate Tarling (CEO, The Service Group)

    Kate Tarling — consultant, trainer, and author of The Service Organization — joins Lily and Randy to discuss what it takes to deliver great services inside large, complex organizations. The conversation covers the distinction between products and services, why transformation so often stalls, how to make the business case for change using existing investment, and how product people can contribute to, and benefit from, a more service-oriented way of working. This episode is brought to you by Mailtrap, modern email delivery for developer and product teams: fast delivery. high inboxing rates. 24/7 expert support. Try for free today. Chapters 00:01:30 — Introduction and Kate's background00:04:00 — Defining services vs. products00:07:00 — Product organizations vs. service organizations00:09:00 — Why service delivery is hard00:11:30 — Transformation in practice: there is no magic process00:13:30 — Starting with one area and cutting across silos00:15:30 — Common mistakes organizations make00:19:30 — Measuring progress and making the business case00:22:30 — Redirecting existing investment: a UK government example00:25:00 — Triage functions and portfolio management00:26:00 — How product people can contribute in service organizations00:30:30 — Kate's 12 principles00:34:00 — Summary00:37:00 — Examples of good service organizations 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) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

    41 min

  7. 11 MAR

    How to communicate the value of product work - Rich Mironov (CPO Coach)

    Rich Mironov has spent decades watching product teams lose the room because they were speaking the wrong language. In his new book Money Stories, he makes the case that product managers need a second vocabulary: one built around revenue, retention, and return.  In this conversation, he walks through the core framework, why order-of-magnitude estimates beat false precision, how to build a roadmap that holds its ground against sales pressure, and what the AI moment has in common with the early days of mobile.  This episode is brought to you by Mailtrap, modern email delivery for developer and product teams: fast delivery. high inboxing rates. 24/7 expert support. Try for free today. Chapters 02:03 — What are money stories, and why do executives need them?03:59 — How accurate do you actually need to be? The case for order-of-magnitude thinking05:52 — Using money stories as a sorting mechanism — and how to handle the "close this deal now" pressure10:54 — Tagging roadmaps with revenue ranges and the "or principle"15:58 — Does every PM need this, or just senior leaders?21:46 — The two flavors of ROI: earning your keep vs. feature-level returns26:57 — Why feature-level ROI almost never works — and why product leaders need to push back30:33 — The story archetypes: upsell stories explained38:02 — The retention/churn story archetype41:32 — Why product people get this wrong: fear of commitment and the need to be understood44:52 — How AI changes (and doesn't change) the money story framework48:58 — How to build financial literacy as a product managerOur 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) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

    52 min

  8. 4 MAR

    Lessons from Games, Big Tech, & Hollywood - Laura Teclemariam (LinkedIn, Netflix, Warner Bros. Entertainment)

    Laura Teclemariam has had one of the most varied careers in product — from mobile gaming economies at EA to building Netflix's animation studio from the ground up, to owning LinkedIn's core identity products. In this episode, she joins Lily and Randy to trace the through-line of her "jungle gym" path, unpack what gaming taught her about retention, why entertainment sharpens your product instincts in ways big tech can't, and how she's now teaching the next generation of PMs at UC Berkeley — with AI at the centre of everything. Chapters 00:00 — Intro: The feedback you didn't see coming at LinkedIn 02:00 — Laura's background: engineer, founder, consultant, PM 03:50 — Why a nonlinear career is more coherent than it looks 06:00 — Gaming as the most honest product environment 07:20 — Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, mods, and retention crisis 09:00 — How gaming metrics (DAU, retention) predicted big tech's future 12:10 — Data ends debates in tech; taste ends them in entertainment 13:05 — Netflix Animation: building a studio's product function from scratch 15:15 — Storyboards as prototypes, animatics as MVPs 19:40 — Tool consolidation: going from 400 to 130 tools across productions 22:05 — Build vs. buy decisions when the budget is a feature film 26:40 — What it takes to hire PMs for entertainment vs. general tech 28:20 — STAR interviews and evaluating stakeholder chops 29:20 — Why LinkedIn came next: curiosity about social network retention 31:50 — The weight of building for 1B+ users and LinkedIn's trust-first culture 35:50 — Profile, Messaging, Groups: LinkedIn's original value proposition 37:00 — Teaching advanced product management at UC Berkeley 38:10 — The course thesis: AI for everything, and the "great convergence" 42:00 — Does the PM/design/engineering triad collapse with AI? 45:30 — What Laura's students taught her about curiosity and safe-to-fail environments 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) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

    50 min
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About

The Product Experience features conversations with the product people of the world, focusing on real insights of how to improve your product practice. Part of the Mind the Product network, hosts Lily Smith (ProductTank organiser and Product Consultant) & Randy Silver (Head of Product and product management trainer) “go deep” with the best speakers from ProductTank meetups all over the globe, Mind the Product conferences, and the wider product community.

Information

  • Creator
    Mind the Product
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2026
  • Episodes
    381
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Product Experience
  • Show Website
    The Product Experience

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