The Product Podcast

Hosted by Product School CEO Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia, The Product Podcast drills deep into the minds of Chief Product Officers from Cisco, Lovable, Perplexity, Shopify and many more. We move beyond high-level theory to reveal how top executives actually lead in the age of AI. We dig deep into their real-world decision-making, strategic frameworks, and the operational playbooks used to build intelligent products. If you are a VP, Director, or CPO looking to drive innovation at scale, this is your essential listen.

The Product Podcast is a education podcast hosted by Product School, with 848 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Product School hosts The Product Podcast, a education show with 848 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

• 

  The Product Podcast

  Mural CPO on How to Put AI in Multi-Player Mode for Your Team; Why AI Made Work Lonelier, Not Better | Elaina O'Mahoney

  Aug 26, 202632 min

  Visual collaboration is missing from the AI era. That's the provocation Elaina O'Mahoney, Chief Product Officer at Mural, brings to this episode of The Product Podcast with Carlos (CEO at Product School). We spend all day alone in our tools, typing or talking to an LLM, and when it's time to collaborate we drop words into a doc instead of thinking together visually. Elaina makes the case that AI has quietly turned work into "solo-player mode," and that the teams who win next will be the ones who rebuild shared context and multiplayer collaboration on top of it. Elaina and Carlos get into why ideas are now cheap (you can go from a thought to a working prototype in hours) and why that makes shared context, not idea generation, the real bottleneck. She argues that everyone is a designer at heart, that product leaders should replace the five-page strategy doc with a fast prototype that conveys the North Star, and that "shipping" can mean a workflow or an agent, not just a production release. They also dig into the crowded "where work happens" landscape (Slack, Teams, Jira, Linear, Notion) and the blank-canvas gap around how and why decisions actually get made, how to create safe spaces for people to try AI and fail inside large enterprises, and the pricing tension between legacy seat-based SaaS and AI-native usage models. What you'll learn: - Why Elaina says visual collaboration is "absent" in the AI era, and why that matters - The "solo-player mode" problem: how AI made work lonely, and what multiplayer should look like - Why ideas are now cheap, and how that shifts the bottleneck to shared context and faster decisions - Why the real blank space isn't planning or chat, but how and why decisions get made - The case that everyone is a designer, and how visual thinking speeds up decisions - How a CPO ships to demo a direction (a prototype instead of a strategy doc) - What's still scarce in an AI world: data science, taste, and synthesizing analytics - How to create safe, low-risk spaces for teams to try AI and fail inside big enterprises - Why smaller "champion" teams beat top-down rollouts, and how internal builders spread practices - The pricing dilemma: seat-based SaaS vs. AI-native usage models Chapters: 00:00 Intro 00:59 Intro: Elaina O'Mahoney, CPO at Mural 01:31 Mural's origin as a collaboration canvas 03:01 Multiplayer vs. AI's solo-player mode 04:23 Ideas are cheap now: idea to prototype in hours 05:44 The competitive landscape and convergence 08:31 The blank space nobody owns: how decisions get made 09:22 Lowering the bar so everyone can design 11:33 Everybody should be shipping now 12:25 Shipping to demo, not to production 14:04 Creating safe spaces to try AI in the enterprise 17:10 Forward-deployed engineers 19:14 Building a community around Mural 22:11 The pricing dilemma: SaaS vs. AI-native usage 24:07 Measuring real AI impact 26:19 How Elaina structures her team 28:20 The innovator's dilemma 30:03 From annual QBRs to monthly loops 31:05 Ten years of Mural, and a World Cup sign-off Connect with the Guest: Elaina O'Mahoney, Chief Product Officer, Mural LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eomahoney/ Host: Carlos, CEO at Product School LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/villaumbrosia/ About Mural: Mural is a visual collaboration platform built for teams to brainstorm, converge, and make decisions together on a shared canvas. Originally created by co-founders in Argentina, it scaled rapidly during the shift to remote work. About the Product Podcast: Product School's podcast brings you candid conversations with the founders and product leaders shaping tech. Social Links: Find out more about Product School here Follow our Podcast on TikTok here Follow Product School on LinkedIn here

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  The Product Podcast

  Square Global Head of Product on: How to Build AI Agents People Actually Use, Why $49B Company Got Rid of General Managers | Willem Avé

  Aug 19, 202629 min

  Two years ago, Square tore up its general-manager model and rebuilt the entire company around functional excellence. In this episode of The Product Podcast, Carlos (CEO at Product School) sits down with Willem Avé, Global Head of Product at Square (part of Block), to unpack why they made that bet, what it costs, and how AI is now reshaping the org itself. Willem started at Block as a CTO whose company was acquired, grew up through engineering, and has seen every era of the company from the little white card reader to today's multiple product ecosystems. He explains why orgs should be built around customer outcomes (and how quality degrades the further you drift from that principle), why hardware demands a different kind of craft than software, and how Jack Dorsey's thinking pushed them toward the idea of running Block like a "mini AGI company," where AI encodes institutional knowledge instead of red tape and process. Then he opens up a live demo of "manager bot," an agent that lets a small-business owner delegate real tasks (like an inventory workflow for a bakery) without worrying about memory, connectors, or prompts. He closes with a genuine hot take on TAM and what AI agents mean for the size of the market Square can serve. What you'll learn: - Why Square replaced general managers with a fully functionalized org, and what "functional excellence" buys you - How to organize teams around customer outcomes, and why quality drops the further you drift - Why hardware craft (approachable, reliable, "it just works") differs from software craft - What it means to run a company like a "mini AGI," and how AI can encode knowledge instead of process - Why the era of the simple question-answer chatbot is ending, and what replaces it - A live look at "manager bot": delegating real business tasks to an agent - Why small-business owners want outcomes, not memory, connectors, or prompt-craft - Willem's hot take on TAM, and how agents expand who Square can serve - Why economic empowerment and democratizing advanced technology is the throughline Chapters: 00:00 Trailer 01:32 Inside Square and Block: how the teams are designed 03:34 The four orgs: audiences, platform, growth, money 04:46 Marrying hardware and software in one function 05:56 Finding leaders who understand both worlds 07:25 The DRI model and killing the silent veto 09:16 Can everyone report to one person? 11:12 Why flat orgs still need great managers 12:41 Building for people who are not on X every day 14:41 The loneliness of running a business 17:24 Demo: Manager Bot doing real work 20:19 Why AI should not create more work for sellers 22:13 Hot take: TAM is almost infinite 24:22 Killing the fragmented point solution stack 26:06 WhatsApp, Instagram, and the comms problem 27:54 Buzz and what nobody has solved yet 28:34 Closing Connect with Willem Avé: Global Head of Product, Square (Block) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/willem-ave/ Host: Carlos, CEO at Product School: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/villaumbrosia/ About Square: Square, part of Block, builds payments hardware and software plus a broader ecosystem of tools that help sellers and small businesses run and grow. Block also includes Cash App and other brands. About the Product Podcast: Product School's podcast brings you candid conversations with the founders and product leaders shaping tech. Social Links: Find out more about Product School here Follow our Podcast on TikTok here Follow Product School on LinkedIn here

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  The Product Podcast

  How Skydio Ships Flying Robots With Just 20 Product Managers

  Aug 12, 202632 min

  Most people think of drones as toys. Alden Jones thinks of them as infrastructure. In this episode of The Product Podcast, Carlos (CEO at Product School) visits Skydio's California office to sit down with Alden Jones, VP of Product at Skydio, the autonomous drone company building "flying robots" for public safety, defense, and infrastructure inspection. With a history degree and a military background (he was a truck-driving officer running supply convoys in Iraq) rather than an engineering one, Alden explains how a vertically integrated company of nearly 1,000 people builds everything in house, from chip-level design to hardware, embedded software, and cloud, and why autonomy, not just flight, is the real product. He breaks down Skydio's "Drone as First Responder" (DFR) program, where a drone often reaches the scene before human officers, and the outcomes dashboard cities use to track response times. He compares the economics against police helicopters (roughly $3,000 an hour to operate and $10-25M to buy), walks through the defense and tactical ISR use cases shaped by the war in Ukraine, and explains how thousands of cheaper camera drones could democratize air support while saving lives. He covers physical security (where 90-95% of alarms turn out to be false), the work of earning FAA trust to unlock groundbreaking waivers, and why Skydio's $3.5B, five-year investment in US and allied supply chains is funded by revenue instead of debt. He also opens up the product org itself: roughly 20 product managers across the entire stack, "strike teams" that work like forward-deployed engineers, and a customer-first culture where PMs are expected to go watch the robot fly in the real world. What you'll learn: Why Skydio calls its products "flying robots," and the "toys to tools to infrastructure" thesis What full vertical integration looks like: chip-down design to cloud, all in house How "Drone as First Responder" changes 911 response, tracked in a live outcomes dashboard The real economics of drones vs. police helicopters How the war in Ukraine reshaped Skydio's thinking on tactical ISR and democratizing air support Why 90-95% of physical security alarms are false, and how autonomous drones clear them at near-zero marginal cost How Skydio earns FAA trust to fly beyond visual line of sight and win first-mover waivers Why a $3.5B, five-year US manufacturing commitment is funded by revenue, not debt How one pilot flying multiple drones becomes possible only through real autonomy How Skydio runs product with ~20 PMs, "strike teams," and a customer-first org design Why shipping hardware plus software (the Tesla comparison) shapes a roughly two-year program cycle Connect with Alden Jones, VP of Product, Skydio: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aldenljones/ Host: Carlos, CEO at Product School LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/villaumbrosia/ About Skydio: Skydio is a US-based manufacturer of autonomous drones ("flying robots") for public safety, defense, security, and infrastructure inspection. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in California, the company is vertically integrated across hardware, autonomy software, and cloud. About the Product Podcast: Product School's podcast brings you candid conversations with the founders and product leaders shaping tech. Social Links: Find out more about Product School here Follow our Podcast on TikTok here Follow Product School on LinkedIn here

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  The Product Podcast

  How to Know Your AI Feature Actually Works (n8n's Founder's Metric) | Jan Oberhauser, CEO n8n

  Jul 29, 202646 min

  n8n's founder puts the company's GitHub repo, nearly 200,000 stars, right next to the paid signup button, and he's genuinely fine if you never pay. In this episode of The Product Podcast, Carlos (CEO at Product School) sits down with Jan Oberhauser, CEO of n8n, the open-source automation platform that's crossed $100 million in ARR at a $5.2 billion valuation. Jan breaks down the "fair-code" license bet that let him give the product away and still build a business, how that free version became the on-ramp into enterprises like Meta, Nvidia, Dell, Accenture, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, and Mercedes, and why he believes the people with the problem should build the automation themselves, not a centralized team or an outside agency. He also walks through a live build of a personal AI agent (email and calendar), shows how n8n falls back from Claude to GPT via OpenRouter when a model isn't available, and explains how enterprises get automations into production faster because each agent can only do exactly what it's been permitted to do. What you'll learn: Why n8n rejected traditional open source for a "fair-code" license, and how it avoided the community backlash that burned other companies Why trust and consistency, not features, are the real center of a community How the free, self-hosted version drives bottom-up adoption inside major enterprises Why "sprinkling AI on top" kills products, and what to build instead How to chain agents so one agent's output becomes the next agent's input Why n8n is the "connective tissue" between models, tools, and business systems How guardrails (an agent can only do what it's explicitly allowed) speed up enterprise procurement and production Why the people with the problem should own the building, not a centralized AI team How 10,000+ community templates and 500+ integrations expand what non-technical builders can ship How one company routes 75% of support through an n8n agent, with customers happier than with humans Connect with Guest (Jan Oberhauser) : LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janoberhauser X: https://x.com/JanOberhauser Host : Carlos, CEO at Product School LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/villaumbrosia/ About Jan Oberholzer: Jan is the CEO of n8n, an open-source (fair-code) workflow automation and orchestration platform for building AI agents. He started the company over seven years ago, before LLMs went mainstream, and has grown it past $100M ARR at a $5.2B valuation. About the Product Podcast: Product School's podcast brings you candid conversations with the founders and product leaders shaping tech. Social Links: Find out more about Product School here Follow our Podcast on TikTok here Follow Product School on LinkedIn here

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Episode #305

  ServiceNow President & CPO on Why the Market Can't Tell AI Winners From Losers, and How to Transform Before It Kills You | Amit Zavery | E305

  Jul 22, 202654 min

  In this episode of The Product Podcast by Product School, Carlos González de Villaumbrosia sits down with Amit Zavery, President and Chief Product Officer at ServiceNow. The platform runs more than 75 billion workflows a year with around $15 billion in annual revenue growing over 20%. Its market cap is above $100 billion, yet the stock is down more than 30% this past year, while its AI business is on track for $1.5 billion, ahead of a $1 billion plan. Amit previously ran product and platform at Oracle for over two decades and was a VP and General Manager at Google Cloud. What you'll learn: Why the market can't yet tell AI winners from losers, and why companies that don't transform will get killed Why the idea of one company becoming the single end-to-end enterprise orchestrator is a fallacy The spare part approach that makes most enterprise AI projects fail, and what pacesetters do instead Why access is shifting from user interfaces to agents, and what taking action actually requires How to hold long-term conviction on platform bets while the market judges you on short-term sentiment Key takeaways: Transform or die: the market will separate AI-native platforms from legacy vendors Interoperability beats domination in the agentic era Governance only wins when it accelerates innovation, not when it blocks it Credits: Host: Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia Guest: Amit Zavery Social Links: Find out more about Product School here Follow our Podcast on TikTok here Follow Product School on LinkedIn here

  ListenShow Notes

Recent guests on The Product Podcast. Study who booked and why before you pitch.

Based on semantic analysis of episode topics and host coverage, this show is a strong guest fit for executives in:

Industry fit is computed by PitchCentric using vector embeddings of the show's episode catalog.