Why engineering-first fits agent development

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

Featured Links

Product Experience Document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15kCm8ZcPqY12174WjyfuVLhrWOXGGqnB1vow7o_2ZqI/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.l62rzxz2fw6v

Follow Rags on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ragsvadali/

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.