LaunchPod | Product Management Podcast

I keep meeting teams across the country that are facing intense pressure to shoehorn AI into every feature, often without a coherent thesis on the problem it’ll solve. But what if the smartest move in the AI gold rush is to actually slow down? Angela Clark, VP of Digital at Patagonia, is doing exactly that. At a brand known for its fierce commitment to the planet, Angela is applying that same intentionality to their digital experience. Instead of blowing budgets on every new AI tool, she’s taking a thoughtful approach to building a personalized customer journey across an audience that spans both elite pro athletes and weekend warriors. In this episode, Angela shares: How her team is designing a customer journey that caters to the buyer on a 1:1 level, including Product Detail Pages that can speak effortlessly to either extreme of their customer base Her playbook for managing AI-related “shiny object syndrome" and keeping your roadmap focused on the customer. And why Patagonia flipped the definition of “customer lifetime value” to align with their conservation-driven mission — even happily downselling you to a refurbished item instead of a newer, more expensive version. Links Angela's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angclrk/ Patagonia: https://www.patagonia.com/home/ Chapters 00:00 Introduction 01:43 Angela's career journey 03:30: The PDP problem: Serving elite athletes & urban buyers on the same page 07:00: Building personalization through behavioral signals 09:30: Personalization: it's not a tech problem, it's a customer journey problem 00:15:30 How Angela built the foundation of digital at Patagonia 20:30: How to navigate slow-moving organizations 23:00: Redefining customer lifetime value around Patagonia's mission 26:30: AI FOMO — and why you're not actually falling behind 31:30: Conclusion Follow LaunchPod on YouTube We have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.Special Guest: Angela Clark.

How many engineers does it take to run the ecommerce site for a retail company that does over a billion dollars in revenue per year? Well, if you’re Rainbow Shops, the answer is just 2. Most ecommerce teams assume scale requires more engineers, more tools, more complexity. Chief Digital Officer David Cost has built something many people in ecommerce would say isn't possible — a lean, fast-moving digital operation that runs on vendor partnerships instead of a massive internal team. Two engineers, hundreds of programmers' worth of output, and none of the overhead that comes with scaling the traditional way. In this episode, David shares: A detailed, under-the-hood look at the specific vendors they use to stay so lean His playbook for using strategic partnerships with vendors as an external dev team How being a testbed for new tech gives them a competitive edge And why their choice of ecommerce platform was vital in enabling Rainbow’s digital strategy Links David's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidcost/ Rainbow Shops: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rainbow-apparel-co/ Chapters 00:00 Introduction 00:42 David’s product journey 02:36 How Rainbow runs with only two engineers 03:07 Rainbow's decision to migrate from  Salesforce Commerce Cloud to Shopify 07:14 How Rainbow uses AI to support a lean team 11:34 Rainbow's partnership with Lica for AI-generated product images 17:25 The future of personalization in ecommerce 23:01 Shop Pay and Rainbow's checkout features 26:15 Conclusion Resoures Lica: https://lica.world/ Fuego: https://fuego.io/ Follow LaunchPod on YouTube We have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.Special Guest: David Cost.

40,000 people a year die from traffic accidents in the US. Our guest today is Chinmay Jain, Director of Product Management on Waymo's Driving Behavior team, who is working to make that number 90% smaller. In this episode, Chinmay shares: How he thought through leaving YouTube at its peak to join a moonshot company that could have civilization-level impact Waymo’s actual AI eval process, using massive simulations based on millions of real-world driving miles to maximize edge cases, ultimately turning trust into their real product And the misleading, but common, metrics Chinmay and his team learned to spot that could have seriously derailed Waymo’s progress Links Chinmay's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chinmayjain/ Waymo: https://waymo.com/ Chapters 00:00 Introduction 01:40 Chinmay’s decision to leave YouTube for Waymo 04:12 How does Waymo test its AI in the physical world? 06:09 Waymo’s layered evaluation system 09:53 Simulations and ML gains at Waymo 16:48 Waymo’s metrics for safety 21:33 What driving choices make training AI drivers the hardest? 24:00 Conclusion Follow LaunchPod on YouTube We have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.Special Guest: Chinmay Jain.

Most financial products are optimized for transactions, not human emotion. For many people, this transforms an already fraught topic into pure anxiety. Our guest today is building banking for what she calls the Cortisol UI. Melissa Douros has spent over 26 years in financial services, starting in debt collection and now serving as the Chief Product Officer at Green Dot. Early on, she learned firsthand that shame is a terrible retention mechanism. That lesson now shapes how she builds financial products for millions of users — for whom the time spent simply navigating their finances can be the most stressful of the day. In this episode, Melissa shares: How finserv companies can design for the “Cortisol UI“ by building trust and experiences that reduce anxiety before the transaction An experiment she ran for Discover’s 5% cashback program where test users collapsed under decision paralysis — proving that more choice can actually increase financial stress How she flipped Great Wolf Lodge’s booking model from 70% call center to 90% digital while enhancing the human experience And how Green Dot is navigating AI and agentic commerce without breaking the one thing banks can’t afford to lose: trust Links Melissa's: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissadouros/ Green Dot Corporation: https://www.greendot.com/ Resources LaunchPod - Nan Yu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27rGB-6XQJg LaunchPod - Ben McAllister: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-6Cs3RJeZw Chapters 00:00 Introduction 01:00 Melissa's finserv background and how she landed in product 05:10 How Green Dot builds trust as a financial services product 07:29 Building for the "Cortisol UI" to lessen user stress, especially in finance 9:55 Quietly fixing customer issues while not inundanting them with feature releases 14:35 Green Dot moving compliance from the backend to a key part of the product team 16:20 Launching AI features in a high-risk industry 18:36 Decision paralysis and Discover's failed attempt at a 5% cashback reward program 24:57 How Melissa digitized Great Wolf Lodge's customer experience 30:51 Conclusion Follow LaunchPod on YouTube We have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.Special Guest: Melissa Douros.

How do you redesign the most visited e-commerce webpage in the world? Rahul Chaudhari helped reshape the Amazon homepage during his years as a product leader there, before becoming VP of Product and Technology at Kohl's. In this episode, Rahul shares: Amazon’s “customer backwards” approach - and how he used it to unlock half a billion dollars of value on the Amazon homepage The secret to product adoption: leverage existing customer habits to unlock new opportunities And how Amazon and Google raised the bar for digital experiences so high that now every other product pays the price Links Rahul's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahul-chaudhari/ Chapters 00:00 Intro: Rahul's journey from marketing to product 03:08 Why “mid” digital experiences no longer work 07:35 Rebuilding the Amazon homepage “hero” to be customer-backwards 12:48 Experimentation + adoption metrics: measuring what actually matters 14:20 Adoption > clicks: Defining the right success metrics 18:41 AI and the future of retail: Rethink the business model, not the tools 21:50 Agentic shopping: What happens when ChatGPT becomes the homepage? 23:30 From keyword search to intent-based shopping 25:57 AI needs containers, not just models 30:29 Will AI level the playing field for small retailers? 33:16 Conclusion Follow LaunchPod on YouTube We have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.Special Guest: Rahul Chaudhari.

In this episode, we’re joined by Maryam Ashoori, VP of Product and Engineering at IBM’s Watsonx platform. With a background that includes 2 master's degrees in AI, a PhD in Systems Design Engineering, and named on over 30 patents at IBM, she’s been on the bleeding edge for over a decade. Currently leading the charge on Agentic AI and AI Governance at IBM, Maryam is a bridge between the theoretical frontier of AI and the messy reality of enterprise deployment. In this episode, Maryam: Tells why AI has been stuck in pilot purgatory for longer than expected, and what you need to do today for a successful enterprise deployment Calls shenanigans on the “biggest, best model” crowd, and why often a smaller, more focused tool is the right choice Explains how to build an agnostic architecture that can handle the realities of an AI world where models advance faster than anybody can keep up Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mashoori/ IBM: https://www.ibm.com/us-en Resources Reinventing SaaS: Zuora's AI Transformation | Karthik Chakkarapani and Shakir Karim (Zuora): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHVxnLikMpQ Linear’s Secret to Building Powerful AI Products | Nan Yu, Head of Product (Linear): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27rGB-6XQJg Chapters 00:00 Intro 02:18 From ChatGPT hype to enterprise reality: use cases, ROI, and the rise of agents 06:11 Security, accountability & governance: who’s responsible when agents go wrong? 10:37 Risk-based rollout: use-case scoping, Risk Atlas, and guardrails like PII detection 17:10 Observability for agentic workflows 18:21 Why compute optimization matters 22:58 Designing for model agility: abstraction layers, routing, and picking the right model 27:23 Conclusion Follow LaunchPod on YouTube We have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.Special Guest: Maryam Ashoori.

In this episode, we’re joined by Deepika Manglani, VP of Product and Program Management at the LA Times. Deepika’s career in media spans over 15 years, culminating in her current role, where she’s bringing the 140-year-old institution into the future. In this episode, Deepika shares: How her team is using AI to preserve a unique trove of historical data, over 12 million pages of news archives from as far back as the 1800s What this digital archive and maturation of AI enables for future storytelling, media innovation, and news personalization Why combining product and program management was critical to navigating massive transformation at the LA Times through a period of heavy M&A activity Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepikamanglani/ LA Times: https://www.latimes.com/ Chapters 00:00 Intro 00:15 Deepika's career journey in media and product leadership 01:25 Building from scratch at LA Times 05:06 Digitizing historical archives 08:40 Challenges and innovations in AI and OCR 19:54 Future prospects and personalization in news 24:33 Conclusion Follow LaunchPod on YouTube We have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.Special Guest: Deepika Manglani.

In this episode, we’re joined by Ben McAllister, the Chief Product and Technology Officer at CrossFit, and one of the most thoughtful product leaders I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with. Ben’s path is anything but linear: with a degree in physics, a short stint in consulting, and time spent as a creative director at a design agency before moving into senior product roles at Under Armour. Now he’s shaping one of the world’s most iconic fitness ecosystems. In this episode, Ben shares: Why attention is the ultimate currency in product design, and how to design for the “spotlight” versus the periphery. The “Infovore” Advantage: Why the best product leaders borrow ideas from outside the tech world; and How to build a cohesive product strategy for a complex, decentralized network like CrossFit’s global community of affiliates and athletes. Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcallister/ X: https://x.com/benmcallister?lang=en CrossFit: https://www.crossfit.com/ Resources The Age of the Infovore: Succeeding in the Information Economy (https://tylercowen.com/dd-product/the-age-of-the-infovore-succeeding-in-the-information-economy/) On the Origin of Stories (https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674057111) Chapters 00:00: Introduction 00:41: Ben's non-linear career path: From physicist to product leader 03:23: The "infovore" mindset in product management 06:00: Storytelling, juxtaposition, and the science of learning 08:48: Designing product for attention 12:00: Why product leaders shouldn't ignore marketing 15:10: CrossFit's origins as an internet-native brand 19:44: What is the CrossFit Open? 24:37: Conclusion Follow LaunchPod on YouTube We have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.

In this episode, we’re joined by Karthik Viswanathan. Formerly a product leader at AT&T, Macy’s, and Optum, he’s now the founder of TalAiro, an HR tech startup that is rethinking the operating system for recruiting. Karthik argues that the hidden failure of the modern tech stack is forcing the user to serve as a “manual integration layer. He explains how the push to "unbundle" features results in a “Chaos Tax”— consuming 40-60% of the workday with fighting disconnected tools rather than doing their jobs. Beyond that, Karthik also discusses: How AI can make work more human: Why the true value isn't in replacing jobs, but automating the "devil's cut" of administrative work. The journey from enterprise leader to founder: What building TalAiro from scratch taught Karthik about prioritization after years of leading enterprise product orgs, such as focusing on the 20% of workflows that drive 80% of the value Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karthikvish/ TalAiro: https://www.talairo.ai/ Chapters 00:00: Introduction 00:54: Karthik's product background 02:58: The "chaos tax" and how tool sprawl negatively impacts product efficiency 04:25: Challenges in HR tech 09:26: Working backwards from customer problems to build your digital solution 11:53: How TalAiro differentiates itself as an HR tool 15:03: The role of AI in enhancing human potential 20:59: Karthik's transition from enterprise to startup leader 27:14: Conclusion Follow LaunchPod on YouTube We have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.Special Guest: Karthik Viswanathan.

This week, we’re joined by the undisputed queen of B2B positioning, April Dunford. April is the best-selling author of the seminal book "Obviously Awesome" and the new hit "Sales Pitch." She has spent 25 years as a startup executive and consultant helping companies stop guessing and start winning. If you have ever struggled to explain exactly why customers should pick you over the other guy, this episode is a masterclass. In this episode, April talks about: Why Positioning is a Product Problem: How undefined positioning leads to wasted roadmaps, "not good enough" feedback from Sales, and engineering teams burning out on features that don't win deals. The "AI Washing" Trap: Why saying "We have AI" is no longer a strategy—and how to articulate the specific value your tech unlocks that the competition can’t. Why she loves when competitors lie: How to ethically trap competitors who over-promise features (and the one question sales should tell your prospects to ask them). And finally, Vision vs. Reality: How to sell the "glorious future" without losing the deal you need to close today. Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/ April's website: https://www.aprildunford.com/ April's books: https://www.aprildunford.com/books Chapters 00:00: Introduction 01:45: April's journey from engineering to marketing to product positioning expert 05:00: The shifting lansscape: Position from COVID to the AI era 10:45: Moving beyond "AI washing" to find differentiated value 15:30: Defining your true competitive landscape 20:30: How to be worth your customers' migration risk 23:45: Why April likes when competitors "lie" about their capabilities and features 32:00: Why positioning is critical for product and engineering alignment 35:00: April's new book details Follow LaunchPod on YouTube We have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.Special Guest: April Dunford.