Product Talk

Products That Count
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Produced by Products That Count, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that helps everyone build great products, this podcast is an award-winning show by and for product minds, with millions of downloads and a 5-star rating on most major platforms. Each of the 300+ episodes features a product leader interviewing another product leader and exploring what it takes to build great products. Recent ones feature the Chief Product Officers of Brex, Glassdoor, Experian and more. About Us: Products that Count is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that helps everyone build great products. It celebrates product excellence through coveted Awards that inspire 500,000+ product managers and honor great products and the professionals responsible for their success. It accelerates the career and rise to the C-suite of 30% of all Product Managers globally by providing exceptional programming – including award-winning podcasts and popular newsletters – for free. It acts as a trusted advisor to all CPOs at Fortune 1000, and publishes key insights from innovative companies, like Capgemini, SoFi, and Amplitude, that turn product success into business success. Learn more at ProductsThatCount.com.

  1. 1d ago

    The question AI still can't answer about product management | Cengage Product SVP

    Ghazal Badiozamani is the SVP of Product Management at Cengage, one of the world's largest education companies with roots in publishing that go back over 100 years. Before Cengage, she spent eight years at Elsevier helping legacy businesses understand and adopt emerging technology, starting with machine learning before it was mainstream, eventually building a digital team from scratch and launching a digital authoring system from nothing. In this episode of the CPO Rising series, Products That Count Resident Chief Product Officer Renee Niemi sits down with Ghazal to talk about what it takes to lead product inside a company that has existed for over a century, why the squad model may be approaching a fork in the road, and her take on the most pressing question in AI-era product development: what does product even mean now? In this episode, we cover:  (1:11) Ghazal's path from strategy to product at Elsevier, and what prompted the move to Cengage (4:32) What it actually feels like to lead product inside a company that's been around for generations (6:08) Why product problems always end as people problems, and why that's the most interesting part of the job (7:28) How design principles and core values serve as anchors through both digital transformation and AI adoption (12:59) AI's progression: from efficiency tool to fundamental question about what product even is (14:55) Why building for nonlinear human thinking is the new product challenge (16:58) Team structure today and two very different futures for the squad model (19:46) Why removing design from the triad is a mistake, and what each personality type actually contributes (23:23) Development speed: from 3 to 5 months down to 2, and why customer absorption is now the real constraint (27:14) The CPO alpha effect: the two capabilities that are almost never found in the same person (30:45) The funnel-based product analytics dashboard Ghazal checks almost every day Blog and detailed workflow walkthroughs from this episode: https://productsthatcount.com/the-question-ai-still-cant-answer-about-product-management-cengage-product-svp/

    The question AI still can't answer about product management | Cengage Product SVP

  2. 3d ago

    Why speed is the AI feature no one asks for but everyone needs | Fireworks AI VP of Technology and Strategy

    Rob Ferguson is the VP of Technology and Strategy at Fireworks AI, a company that makes frontier AI infrastructure accessible to any organization that wants to own its own models rather than depend on someone else's. He started studying machine learning before it was called AI, worked on Pro Tools and AI systems for a music streaming service, helped design Amazon Go's grab-and-go technology, and built startup programs at AWS and Microsoft. Now he is at what he calls the front row of AI, sitting between applied research and go-to-market and translating what the technology can actually do into things companies can actually buy and build on. In this episode of Product Talk, iDonate VP of Product and Engineering Nacho Andrade sits down with Rob to talk about why speed is the AI feature no one asks for but everyone needs once they see it, how AI training went from lab-only to cheap as a cup of coffee, and his hot take that we are at the end of SaaS and entering an era he calls workwear. In this episode, we cover: (0:48) Rob's background from music and machine learning to Pro Tools, Artio, Amazon Go, and Fireworks (3:43) What it means to sit at the intersection of applied research and go-to-market (11:41) What Fireworks AI actually does: inference infrastructure and model training in one place (14:11) Who Fireworks serves and how the customer has changed as training costs have dropped (16:52) Speed as a hidden AI feature: why nobody asks for it and everyone needs it once they see it (20:18) The shift from AI as talkers to AI as doers, and what that means for product (21:24) AI independence vs AI dependence: why owning your model changes what you can build (23:27) The most common problem Rob sees: agents that work but cost thousands of dollars to run (26:25) Drawing the line in the sand: why doing less deeply beats promising everything (27:41) Hot take: we're at the end of SaaS and entering the era of workwear (31:55) Why domain experts and liberal arts thinkers become more valuable as surface-level software commoditizes (33:04) What the AI industry gets wrong about itself and the case for openness and independent scrutiny (38:24) The voice tech stack Rob is obsessed with and uses every day Blog and detailed workflow walkthroughs from this episode: https://productsthatcount.com/why-speed-is-the-ai-feature-no-one-asks-for-but-everyone-needs/

    Why speed is the AI feature no one asks for but everyone needs | Fireworks AI VP of Technology and Strategy

  3. 6d ago

    How Brightline Brought Mental Health Care to 400,000 Kids Who Had Never Had It

    Mahssa Mostajabi is the Head of Product at Brightline Health, a pediatric behavioral health company delivering therapy, psychiatry, and coaching to kids, teens, and families across both virtual and in-person settings. She joined Brightline in April 2025, on the exact day the company's first Brooklyn clinic opened, stepping into an organization mid-pivot from virtual-first to hybrid care. Before Brightline, her path wound through women's health, maternal care, insurance, and fintech, with a consistent through line: building for people in overlooked moments in highly regulated environments. In this episode of Product Talk, Planned Parenthood Direct Chief Product Officer Hannah Park sits down with Mahssa to talk about what it means to build a product when your user is an entire family, how Brightline brought free behavioral health coaching to over 400,000 kids in California (77% of whom had never received mental health care before), and why the calculus around AI is fundamentally different when your users are children. In this episode, we cover: (1:37) Mahssa's path from Girls Inc. and nonprofits through women's health to pediatric behavioral health (3:50) Why she keeps choosing highly regulated industries, and what that means for how she builds (5:51) Building for the whole family: navigating kids, parents, clinicians, and payers (10:30) How Brightline designs explicitly for teen privacy without losing parental trust (12:31) Joining Brightline on day one of the hybrid pivot and how she oriented herself fast (15:11) On-site clinic visits as a new joiner: what user interviews with clinic staff revealed (16:20) What in-person care surfaced that virtual data could not (21:43) Building Bright Life Kids with California's DHCS: what a true state partnership looks like (23:27) What a first mental health session owes a child who has never received care before (24:38) Why standard outcome measures often fail pediatric populations, and what Brightline built instead (29:16) Where AI belongs in pediatric behavioral health, and where Brightline says it should not go Blog and detailed workflow walkthroughs from this episode: https://productsthatcount.com/how-brightline-brought-mental-health-care-to-400000-kids-who-had-never-had-it-and-why-ai-is-not-the-one-delivering-it/

    How Brightline Brought Mental Health Care to 400,000 Kids Who Had Never Had It

  4. Sep 23

    The Conviction Bet No Customer Asked For and How Asana's CPO Builds the Case for One

    Arnab Bose is the Chief Product Officer at Asana and one of the most outcome-oriented product leaders in the industry. Before Asana, he spent nearly six years as CPO of the Okta platform, where he led product strategy across identity and security. He joined Asana in September 2025, stepping into a company mid-transformation: the collaborative work management category must reinvent itself from a tool for organizing human work into an orchestration layer for humans and AI agents working side by side. In this episode of the CPO Rising series, Products That Count Resident Chief Product Officer Renee Niemi sits down with Arnab to talk about the one principle that has defined his career, what it actually looks like to build and defend a conviction bet when no customer has asked for it yet, and why the era of being lauded for shipping your roadmap is officially over.   What you'll learn: The secret operating principle Arnab says separates good CPOs from exceptional ones, and why almost everyone claims to follow it but almost no one actually enforces it How he built the business and technical case for continuous authentication at Okta before any customer asked for it, and what would have gone wrong if he had not Why the largest product opportunities are almost never customer-requested, and how to build conviction without customer pull What the CWM industry has to become in the age of AI agents, and why Arnab says the per-seat SaaS model is getting completely upended How the CPO role is shifting from roadmap ownership to revenue and retention accountability The two future archetypes for product orgs: head of R&D with engineering, product, and design reporting in, or CPO with general managers owning real revenue numbers Where AI is actually moving the needle at Asana internally, and what still requires a human being   In this episode, we cover: (1:10) Arnab's career from Microsoft to Okta to Asana (3:10) The one operating principle that separates good CPOs from exceptional ones (5:37) How to operationalize outcome-driven thinking across a product org (11:39) The continuous authentication conviction bet at Okta: building the case before customers asked (13:33) How to build technical truth and a financial business case for a net-new market (16:37) What gets missed when commercialization, partners, and sales enablement are afterthoughts (18:38) What AI speeds up and what still requires human judgment (20:39) Why the entire CWM industry must transform from human collaboration to human-AI orchestration (24:06) How CPO accountability has shifted toward revenue and retention outcomes (27:15) The two future archetypes for the product org (29:42) Where AI is actually moving the needle at Asana, and where it isn't yet (33:59) The headwinds Arnab sees in AI adoption, and why buyer ROI isn't matching the hype (37:03) How Asana thinks about build vs. buy vs. partner in an AI-native world   Blog and detailed workflow walkthroughs from this episode: https://productsthatcount.com/the-conviction-bet-no-customer-asked-for-and-how-asanas-cpo-builds-the-case-for-one/

    The Conviction Bet No Customer Asked For and How Asana's CPO Builds the Case for One

  5. Sep 21

    What a CPBO Learned Building a Personal Fleet of AI Agents

    Michael Affronti is the Chief Product and Business Officer at DriveCentric, the number one CRM and engagement platform for automotive dealerships, and one of the most hands-on product leaders building and using AI agents today. He spent three and a half months earlier this year back in the code, learning how agents actually work from the bottom up, memory, state management, harnesses, before returning to the executive seat. In this episode of Product Talk, Sonjoy Ganguly sits down with Michael to unpack how he runs a personal fleet of over a dozen agents (named Jarvis at home, Q at work), how his AI Labs team ships two production agents a month, and what product leadership actually looks like when the team is a mix of people and agents. What you'll learn:  1. Why Michael says the most important thing AI does for product managers isn't automation, it's shortening the distance to a decision 2. How he built a personal agent fleet for everything from Sunday meal planning to conference talk prep, and what happened when agents went rogue 3. The SDLC next-gen project at Drive Centric: mapping every step from idea to shipped product, then cutting everything that doesn't require human judgment 4. Why product briefs are actually getting longer at Drive Centric while everything else in the process is getting shorter 5. How the AI Labs team operates as single-person full-stack companies, owning the brief, the code, the customer conversation, and the launch 6. Why being too restrictive with AI access is the biggest mistake companies are making right now 7. What the best product leaders will look like in five years, and why portfolio thinking is the skill that won't get automated away In this episode, we cover: (0:51) Michael's career arc from Microsoft Outlook to Salesforce Payments to Bumble trust and safety to Drive Centric (8:44) How the role of product management shifted from tactical launches to business impact ownership (10:52) How AI changed his leadership style, and what he's deliberately kept the same (11:02) Shortening the distance to a decision: prototypes, voice notes, and same-day customer feedback (13:29) Why one-on-ones are becoming less frequent but more meaningful (14:17) The "back to being builders" thesis and AI's shift toward judgment over artifacts (16:41) The SDLC next-gen project: mapping every step from idea to shipped product and cutting the rest (19:41) Why engineers are now joining customer meetings, and what that signals (20:53) The personal agent fleet: Jarvis at home, Q at work, and what went wrong (24:41) How Drive Centric built agent-building into company OKRs (26:01) Where companies are making mistakes with AI, and the AI Labs experiment (28:26) What the best product leaders will look like in five years Blog and detailed workflow walkthroughs from this episode: [link]

    What a CPBO Learned Building a Personal Fleet of AI Agents

  6. Sep 16

    CPO Rising Series: IBM CPO on Building Products for a World That's Five Years Away

    How do you make product bets today for a world that will not arrive for another six years? In this episode of the CPO Rising series hosted by Products That Count Resident CPO Renee Niemi, IBM Z and Linux One Chief Product Officer Tina Tarquinio will be speaking on how she and her team manage hardware, firmware, and software roadmaps across multiple time horizons at once, from quantum-safe encryption to AI inference built directly onto the chip. Tina also shares how IBM's shift to design thinking transformed its product culture from a checkpoint-driven process into a client-obsessed discipline, why usage data matters more than revenue as a product metric, and what it actually took to grow a flagship product line more than 4x over a decade.

    CPO Rising Series: IBM CPO on Building Products for a World That's Five Years Away

  7. Sep 14

    ŌURA VP of Product on Building the Future of Women's Health

    What does it take to build health products that truly understand women's bodies? In this podcast, Planned Parenthood Direct CPO Hannah Park sits down with ŌURA VP of Product Inessa Lurye to discuss how she's building science-driven products that turn wearable data into meaningful health insights and better conversations with clinicians. She shares what it takes to adapt algorithms to the complexity of women's health, balance product development with long-term research, and build for diverse populations. The conversation also explores AI, health equity, and how product leaders can make informed bets on where healthcare is headed.

    ŌURA VP of Product on Building the Future of Women's Health

  8. Sep 9

    Loa Carbon CEO & Co-Founder on Producing Sustainable Natural Gas in Energy Transition

    What if the waste product of one industry could become the clean fuel source for another? 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 Loa Carbon CEO & Co-Founder Ryan Shearman to discuss producing cost-effective and sustainable natural gas from CO2 waste, the use of artificial intelligence in product development, and the importance of market demand and commercialization strategies when building a product.

    Loa Carbon CEO & Co-Founder on Producing Sustainable Natural Gas in Energy Transition
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5
out of 5
45 Ratings

About

Produced by Products That Count, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that helps everyone build great products, this podcast is an award-winning show by and for product minds, with millions of downloads and a 5-star rating on most major platforms. Each of the 300+ episodes features a product leader interviewing another product leader and exploring what it takes to build great products. Recent ones feature the Chief Product Officers of Brex, Glassdoor, Experian and more. About Us: Products that Count is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that helps everyone build great products. It celebrates product excellence through coveted Awards that inspire 500,000+ product managers and honor great products and the professionals responsible for their success. It accelerates the career and rise to the C-suite of 30% of all Product Managers globally by providing exceptional programming – including award-winning podcasts and popular newsletters – for free. It acts as a trusted advisor to all CPOs at Fortune 1000, and publishes key insights from innovative companies, like Capgemini, SoFi, and Amplitude, that turn product success into business success. Learn more at ProductsThatCount.com.

Information

  • Creator
    Products That Count
  • Years Active
    2015 - 2026
  • Episodes
    714
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Product Talk

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