Zero to One: Product Journeys

Raman Rajakumar
  • 5.0 (1)
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Zero to One features conversations with Product leaders and senior ICs unpacking the real decisions behind building and scaling products. Each short-form episode focuses on trade-offs, judgment calls, and lessons that help sharpen how you think and operate as a product leader in a fast-moving tech landscape. Guests have come from Amazon, Stripe, UiPath, Twilio, Amplitude, X, Box, Google, 1Password, PrizePicks, VMware, Fitbit, Gusto, and more. Real stories. Real decisions. From the people building the products.

  1. FEB 5

    Building Product Marketing That Actually Lands with Customers, with Michael Rothschild

    Product marketing sits at the intersection of product, sales, and growth, but it’s often misunderstood or treated as an afterthought. In this episode, I’m joined by Michael Rothschild, a product marketing leader who’s spent his career translating deeply technical products into stories that actually land with customers. We go deep on what product marketing really exists to solve, and where teams tend to get it wrong. We cover: How product marketing differs from traditional marketing, and why the distinction matters What it really means to turn complex products into clear, customer-first narratives Lessons Michael carried over from teaching into product marketing leadership How product marketing should scale from early-stage companies to large enterprises Where launches, messaging shifts, and rebrands often break down How to position highly technical products for C-suite buyers without losing substance What product marketing should measure beyond pipeline and dashboards The role product marketing plays in making acquisitions actually work If you’ve ever wondered how great products get misunderstood, or how teams can bridge the gap between what they build and how it’s perceived, this episode will be an interesting listen!

    33 min

  2. JAN 15

    From Startups to Stripe, Trade-offs, Conviction, and Building in Ambiguity with Rama Veeraragoo

    Welcome to 2026, and a new run of conversations on Zero to One. In this episode, I’m joined by Rama Veeraragoo, a founder and product leader who’s built across early-stage startups, scaled platforms, and now at the edge of agentic systems. Rama has led 0-1 product bets at Stripe and previously co-founded DocuVision.ai, an NLP and computer vision redaction company acquired by OneTrust, where he went on to lead the Data Redaction offering. We unpack what actually separates Founder PM mode from Traditional PM mode, not as a skills debate, but as a difference in operating systems. Survival versus scale. Rama shares hard trade-offs from building in deeply regulated environments, including what it takes to pause growth in one area to pursue a high-stakes bet in another. We also get into what building in fast-moving, poorly defined technical spaces demands from product leaders today, how to stay “hacky” inside large organizations, and why speed and deep product thinking have to coexist, especially as agentic systems reshape how software gets built. In this episode, we cover: Rama’s unconventional path into product Why early-stage product often runs on intuition before data Founder mode vs manager mode, and when each breaks down What feels genuinely different about building products in the agentic era If you’re building in ambiguity, or trying to balance speed with craft, you'll love this episode.

    34 min

  3. 12/04/2025

    Orchestrating Agentic AI for HR, Inside Rival’s Product Transformation with Poornima Farrar

    In this episode of Zero to One: Product Journeys, I sit down with Poornima Farrar, Chief Product Officer at Rival. Her career spans analytics, AI, and HR tech, with leadership roles at Alteryx through their IPO, at Workday shaping AI and HCM, and at Salesforce after the Tableau acquisition. Most recently, she led a full product and AI transformation at Rival. We explore her path from linguistics and academia into product, why she gravitates toward complex back office systems, and how she approaches the intersection of research, storytelling, and execution. Poornima shares how she evaluates trade offs, frames problems for AI driven products, designs product teams for hypergrowth, and builds alignment with exec and engineering partners. We also get into consolidation and product strategy, from deciding what to keep, cut or rebuild, to how modularity, connected experiences and analytics shaped Rival’s direction. She outlines the shift from systems of record to systems of intelligence and what the next decade of enterprise software could look like as AI orchestrates more of the work. A thoughtful deep dive for anyone building in HR tech, AI, or enterprise software.

    27 min
  4. Product Sense, Personalization and Responsible AI with Sandy Huang

    11/13/2025

    Product Sense, Personalization and Responsible AI with Sandy Huang

    On this episode of Zero to One, Sandy Huang joins me to unpack a career spent building and scaling category defining products across Minted, Flipboard, Amazon and GoodRx. We get into the early zero to one moments that shaped how she builds, from scrappy startup execution to leading multimodal search and shopping for Amazon. Sandy breaks down the core drivers behind the growth at Minted and Flipboard, why personalization moves the needle more than anything else, and how she thinks about flywheels in consumer and marketplace environments. We talk through what Amazon taught her about scale, writing, critical thinking and debate, and why those mechanisms still shape how she partners with founders and product leaders today. Sandy also shares a rare look into the process behind patenting technology, how she built her product sense through years of studying human behavior, and why sharpening judgment is becoming one of the most important skills for PMs in the AI era. We close with a deep dive on responsible AI, the shift toward senior IC tracks in product, and the advice she’d give the next generation of PMs as they build in a world of more tools, more noise and much higher expectations. A brilliant conversation with one of the most thoughtful product leaders in the field. Let’s get into it.

    33 min

  5. 10/30/2025

    Problem > Product: How Nathalie Criou Builds Useful, Joyful Systems at Scale

    In this episode, Nathalie Criou joins Zero to One: Product Journeys to share insights from a career spanning Google, Amazon, Twilio, Docker, and her own start-up, RidePal. Nathalie talks about why every great product starts with a painful, expensive, human problem, what it means to stay married to the problem rather than the product, and how to balance innovation with customer readiness. We discuss lessons from scaling at Google Ads, navigating tough trade-offs at Amazon, and building product cultures grounded in humility, empathy, and clarity. Nathalie also shares her perspective on the future of product management, why focus beats force, and why, bad PMs will become extinct, and good ones will be dangerous. A thoughtful conversation on the craft of product, leadership at scale, and building systems that are both useful and joyful.

    27 min

  6. 10/16/2025

    Voice AI, Product Craft, and Founder Partnership with Ryan Johnson (CallRail CPO)

    In this episode, I sat down with Ryan Johnson, CPO at CallRail, a $100M+ PLG company serving over 200,000 businesses. Ryan’s path into product wasn’t traditional - he started in finance and operations before scaling product orgs at companies like Virtue (acquired by Oracle), Banjo (SoftBank-backed), and now CallRail. We spoke about how he leads with transparency and trust, and what it takes to scale product in a high-growth, AI-driven company. In this episode: How CallRail launched its Voice AI assistant from POC to product in months Navigating trade-offs in AI onboarding, PLG vs sales motion, and time-to-value What exec-level decision-making actually looks like from a CPO seat The difference between fundraising stories and reality -from $100M rounds to Oracle acquisitions How to find your “PM stage fit” and build a career with self-awareness If you’re a PM navigating scale, new tech, or just figuring out what kind of product leader you want to become - this will be an fun and interesting listen!

    34 min

  7. 10/02/2025

    From Eng Roots to CPO: Akshay Bhargava on Scaling Security and Trust

    Trust is one of the hardest things to measure in product, and one of the hardest things to earn. In this episode, Akshay Bhargava shares how he grew from early engineering roles into senior product leadership, with lessons from scaling security, developer tools, and observability products across Oracle, FireEye, Malwarebytes, 1Password, and New Relic. We cover: How stepping up as an engineering manager led him into product Building and launching Oracle’s first cloud security product The product that helped Malwarebytes double revenue and save customers from ransomware Moving 50+ products to consumption pricing at New Relic How he operationalizes trust across different types of products What he means by “coach and verify” and “purpose-built innovation” Why PMs who ignore AI today will be left behind tomorrow A thoughtful conversation with a leader who has shipped through complexity and scaled with conviction.

    35 min

  8. 09/18/2025

    From Youngest Amazon Senior PM to Founder of Nayru with Nabeel Khan

    What does it take to go from warehouse operations to Senior PM at Amazon by 24, then build an AI platform that helps PMs level up faster? A special episode of Zero to One this week as we dive into entrepreneurship and product , I’m joined by Nabeel Khan, founder of Nayru and former Amazon product leader. At Amazon he owned product strategy for the software used to build the vast majority of their warehouses. Today he’s channeling those lessons into personalized, AI-driven upskilling for product talent. We cover: Breaking into product from ops and moving to Senior PM at 24 Owning the toolchain that builds Amazon warehouses and consolidating 70 tools into a focused suite The tough trade offs in B2B at scale balancing current users with a future vision Building product sense through end to end process mapping, mentorship, and real user time Why he founded Nayru and how AI creates truly personalized learning plans Outcomes from the community including promotions to Director and VP Practical advice for PMs eyeing entrepreneurship runway, validation, and doing the role where you are How AI will change the PM craft and why the role becomes more important, not less Nabeel shares a systems-first, practical playbook for growing as a PM, leading at scale, and turning learning into career acceleration. Hope you all enjoy!

    33 min
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About

Zero to One features conversations with Product leaders and senior ICs unpacking the real decisions behind building and scaling products. Each short-form episode focuses on trade-offs, judgment calls, and lessons that help sharpen how you think and operate as a product leader in a fast-moving tech landscape. Guests have come from Amazon, Stripe, UiPath, Twilio, Amplitude, X, Box, Google, 1Password, PrizePicks, VMware, Fitbit, Gusto, and more. Real stories. Real decisions. From the people building the products.

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