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The Product Experience features conversations with the product people of the world, focusing on real insights of how to improve your product practice. Part of the Mind the Product network, hosts Lily Smith (ProductTank organiser and Product Consultant) & Randy Silver (Head of Product and product management trainer) “go deep” with the best speakers from ProductTank meetups all over the globe, Mind the Product conferences, and the wider product community.
352 Episodes
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In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith speaks with Sahil Jain, co-founder and CEO of Samepage.ai, about one of product management’s hardest challenges: keeping teams aligned. From his early career at Yahoo and AOL to founding multiple startups, Sahil shares lessons on building products that tackle “unsolvable” problems like communication and alignment. He explains why shared understanding matters more than speed, how product managers can become better storytellers, and wh...
In this episode of The Product Experience, hosts Lily Smith and Randy Silver speak with Damilola Adelekan, Lead Product Manager at Remedial Health, who discusses building pragmatic, people-centred solutions in Africa’s fragmented and under-resourced healthcare system. Chapters 05:30 – Early Lessons from Volunteering and Nonprofits 07:00 – Why Digitising a Broken System Isn’t Enough 10:00 – Tackling Trust, Funding, and Fragmentation in Healthcare 12:30 – Collaborating Beyond the Organi...
In this episode of The Product Experience, Patrick Ndjientcheu, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Irembo, shares how his team transitioned from delivering projects for government to building a portfolio of scalable products. Patrick talks about shifting mindsets from execution to strategy, spinning out payments and identity into independent products, and the challenges of balancing internal bias with customer needs. He also reveals how Irembo is evolving into a super app, wh...
In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith speaks with Sally Foote, a seasoned product leader whose journey from product roles to C-suite commercial leadership spans Carwow, Go Compare, and The Guardian. They unpack the increasingly vital intersection between product, marketing, and sales. Sally explains why growth is a shared responsibility, how product managers can become commercially fluent, and why understanding marketing economics is now critical. Expect actionable advice on ...
Product decisions built on daily-active metrics fall apart when your customers show up once a year, or once a decade. In this episode, Randy Silver talks to Vivek Kumar about building and growing low-frequency products, from property and tax to jobs and dating. Chapters 04:25 — What makes a product “infrequent”? Episodic use and recall decay 07:05 — Rethinking PMF: penetration and market share over retention curves 10:36 — When iteration is slow: prioritising problems under seasonal cycles ...
In this episode of The Product Experience, Randy Silver and Lily Smith sit down with Katja Forbes, Executive Director at Standard Chartered Bank, design leader, and lecturer, to explore the fast-approaching world of machine customers. Katja shares why businesses must prepare for a future where AI agents, autonomous vehicles, and procurement bots act as customers, and what this means for product managers, designers, and organisations. Key takeaways Machine customers are here already. From book...
In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith and Randy Silver are joined by Kirsten Mann, former CPO at Prospection and now startup founder and board member, to discuss how product leaders can play a vital role on company boards. Drawing from her own board experience and a research series interviewing founders and directors, Kirsten explains why product, culture, and customer insight must be central to boardroom conversations. Key Takeaways — Product’s Place on Boards: Product is ...
In this episode of The Product Experience, Randy Silver speaks with Dariusz Dziuk, Product Lead for Music Expression at Spotify, about the origins and evolution of Canvas, the looping visuals that accompany music tracks. From early assumptions and first principles thinking to scaling and measuring marketplace success, he shares how a bold experiment turned into one of Spotify’s most engaging features. Key Takeaways — Balancing Art and Science: Product management often lives between structure...
In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily and Randy dive into the nuanced world of team collaboration with Jenny Wanger, product ops consultant. Jenny challenges the overuse of RACI matrices in product teams, arguing they often obscure deeper organisational issues rather than solve them. They discuss better alternatives, the root causes behind requests for RACI, and the value of prioritising human relationships over rigid frameworks. Chapters 0:00 – The accountable vs. responsible dil...
We revisit our conversation with Frances Ibe, Chief Experience Officer at Tide. Frances shares invaluable insights on her journey from developer to product leadership and how to avoid common pitfalls during the discovery process. Chapters 01:07 – Meet Frances Ibe 02:05 – Common Discovery Pitfalls 03:34 – Embedding Continuous Discovery 04:51 – The Myth of Talking to 20 Customers 06:38 – What is a Data Prototype? 08:03 – Building Confidence in Product Bets 10:42 – Sharing Insights Across the Bu...
Erica Wass, Principal Product Consultant at Brainmates, joins the Product Experience podcast to share pragmatic tools for building strategic foresight into your roadmap. From horizon scanning to backcasting, this episode explores how product teams can harness future-focused techniques—bolstered by generative AI—to improve decision-making, resilience, and impact. Chapters: 0:00 – Why foresight matters in product 1:00 – Introducing Erica Wass 2:30 – How product is changing 3:45 – The value of ...
Featured Links: Follow Brigitte on LinkedIn | DrDoctor | European Commission Public Health 'Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare' feature 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...
In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith and Randy Silver speak with Dee Miller, Director of Product Strategy and Insights for Product Equity at Adobe. Dee shares her personal journey into inclusive design, and discusses how Adobe is moving beyond accessibility compliance to build genuinely usable, inclusive, and emotionally accessible products. Featured Links: Follow Dee on LinkedIn | The Adobe Accessibility Checker | Listen to previous The Product Experience episode: 'Bui...
In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily and Randy speak with Faith Forster about the art of aligning product work with commercial outcomes. From redefining velocity as a function of customer value to implementing impact models that quantify ROI, Faith outlines practical frameworks to help product teams think commercially without compromising user value. She also explores the evolving role of AI in product development, the necessity of syncing planning cycles with business units...
In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily and Randy sit down with Moshe Mikanovsky—product coach, educator, and host of the Product for Product podcast—to explore what makes an effective product management toolkit. From identifying the real problems in your workflow to choosing and implementing tools that stick, Moshe outlines a pragmatic, user-centric approach to tool selection. Chapters: 2:59 – From Engineering to Product Management 5:25 – Why Choosing Tools is Hard 8:11 – Elements ...
Transformations are hard, and too often, they fail to deliver on their promise. In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily and Randy speak with Jen Swanson, CEO of Tuckpoint Advisory Group, to unpack why transformation initiatives falter and what it truly takes to succeed. Key Takeaways — Transformation requires intentionality: Real transformation isn't accidental or surface-level; it must be deliberate, comprehensive, and backed by leadership. — Avoid ‘transformation theatre’: Pretendi...
1What does it mean to build world-class products in the age of AI? In this episode, Randy Silver talks to Ezinne and Oji Udezue, co-authors of Building Rocketships, a playbook for building high-growth companies in today’s fast-evolving tech landscape. Together, they unpack what product looks like now, how AI changes collaboration, and why ambition, clarity, and disciplined execution matter more than ever. Key takeaways — Building world-class products starts with clear ambition and choosing bi...
This week on The Product Experience, we revisit a great conversation with Todd Green, now President of King – the studio behind Candy Crush. Todd shares how he thinks about building products that are not only globally successful but enduringly fun. Todd takes us behind the curtain on what it really takes to build for mass audiences, create fun at scale, and grow empowered product teams. Key takeaways Fun can’t be optimised: Building successful games (or products) requires capturing some...
AI has changed the way developers work—and Stack Overflow is right at the centre of that shift. In this episode, Jody Bailey, CPTO at Stack Overflow, shares how the platform is adapting to AI, protecting its community, and embracing new revenue streams. We explore how LLMs are reshaping developer behaviour, why canonical answers still matter, and what it takes to keep trust, quality and community alive in the age of instant AI-generated code. If you’re working on dev tools, building with AI, ...
Intercom’s CPO Paul Adams joins The Product Experience to talk about how the company has radically transformed its approach in the wake of AI's acceleration. From ripping up roadmaps and reorganising teams to reinventing pricing models, Paul shares what it really takes to adapt—fast. Key takeaways "You’re not selling users anymore. You’re selling work."AI has shifted Intercom’s business model from seat-based to outcome-based pricing—charging per resolution, not per person."We ripped up our st...
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amazing book. Comes highly recommended.