LaunchPod | Product Management Podcast

Hosted by LogRocket

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Episodes

126

Latest episode

Aug 2026

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EN-US

About the show

LaunchPod is a product management podcast hosted by LogRocket's CEO, Matt Arbesfeld, and VP of Marketing, Jeff Wharton, where they talk to product leaders about the issues they faced in their careers, how they found solutions to those issues, and how you can apply these solutions in your own day-to-day product role.

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August 18, 202622 min

This Product Leader Built Her Own PM OS with Claude Code: LIVE Demo | Parul Goel (ex-Indeed/PayPal)

We’ve got something different today: a live demo and walkthrough of how an actual product leader built a real, PM-focused tool with AI. Our guest today put her proverbial money where her mouth is when she got sick of the AI hype and anxiety and grew tired of writing the same status update five different ways for five different audiences. So she decided to build her way out of the never-ending loop of draft, then repackage again and again and again. And today, she’s going to demo it for us and show how she and a team of collaborators built an entire AI PM operating system to help with the myriad of similar, repetitive tasks that product leaders face! Parul Goel has spent nearly 20 years in product, including almost nine at PayPal building a zero-to-one payments platform for marketplaces, and her recent stint as Senior Director of Product at Indeed.com, leading the payments and billing platform through a major scaling challenge. In this episode, Parul shows: A live demo of the PM operating system she built with 3 fellow product leaders and the four-layered architecture behind it Why the "context library" and codifying company identity, stakeholders, and voice is the layer most people skip, BUT the one that matters most And how the system handles core PM workflows like exec updates, cross-functional communication, customer interview synthesis, and PRD drafts Links Parul's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pg2121/ PM OS GitHub project: https://github.com/goelparul-cyber/AI-PM-OS Parul's collaborators: Vidya Sarangapan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vsara/ Priyank C.: https://www.linkedin.com/in/priyankachaturvedimit/ Bhagyashree Prabhakar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhagya-prabhakar/ Chapters 00:00 Introcution 02:58 The inspiration behind Parul's PM OS tool 07:26 Live Demo: Exec update (Video version on YouTube!) 12:54 Other PM OS skills 13:55 Why building the context library is the most important part of the process 20:48 The future of PM with AI 21:57 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: Parul Goel.

August 11, 202624 min

Speedrunning $0 to $180M: The Intrapreneur's Playbook | Gaurav Jaiswal, VP Product (ex-Pearson, SAP)

Everyone loves to romanticize the founder who starts from zero. But most successful product and digital leaders will likely find themselves using a slightly different flavor of that skill: intrapreneurship — building something new inside an established company...whether it be a business unit, go-to-market approach, product, or other. Gaurav Jaiswal has done exactly this several times. At SAP, he co-founded SAP Digital, a B2B2C business built to let anyone in the world discover, try, and buy SAP products — taking it from zero to $180 million in just a couple of years. Most recently, as VP of Digital Product at Pearson, he did it again, launching a subscription e-textbook product from idea to market in six months, and scaling to $65 million in just about 2 years. In this episode, Gaurav shares: How he got SAP's board to approve an entirely new business unit in just six months, and the framework he used to get market traction just as quickly How he took those lessons to Pearson, a 150-year-old publishing company, and helped turn it into one that runs like a software business And why building inside a public company is a trade — you get the brand and customer base built in, but you’re on the hook for the full legacy culture and scrutiny that comes from operating in a larger, established company Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gauravjaiswal/ Chapters 00:00 Introduction 02:30 Gaurav's digital product origin story 05:43 Scaling to 180M ARR 06:52 Gaurav's four P's framework 14:54 Launching Pearson+ and scaling 19:46 The importance of intraprenuership 23:31 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: Gaurav Jaiswal.

August 4, 202619 min

How DoorDash Turned Food Delivery into a Local Commerce Platform | Vassili Samolis, VP of Product

To most people, DoorDash is an easy fix when you just need food. Our guest today would argue that's the least interesting thing they do. Vassili Samolis has been VP of Product at DoorDash for 5 years and counting, leveraging lessons from Instagram & Pinterest to help turn a simple food delivery app into a high-trust local commerce platform for the more than one million merchants who use it to help drive their businesses. In this episode, Vassili shares: How DoorDash built a successful local commerce platform based on extreme alignment - they only get paid when a business gets a customer and a consumer finds the food that they want Why he thinks there's never been a better time to be a PM - not in spite of code getting cheaper but because of it And how a crowded field of a million restaurants, bodegas, and local shops taught him that the best products often start with a single, very specific customer story Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vassilisamolis/ DoorDash: https://www.doordash.com/ Chapters 00:00: Introducing Vassili and DoorDash's mission to empower local businesses 02:29 Why local restaurants struggle to survive and grow 04:27: TL;DR into Vassili's product background: From Instagram and Pinterest to DoorDash 05:39: Turning a delivery app into a full local commerce platform 07:23: Product lessons and first principles thinking 12:00: The most unexpected customer insight Vassili and his team discovered 14:10: AI and the future of product teams 17:52: What AI deployment looks like on Vassili's team 18:50: 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: Vassili Samolis.

July 2, 202633 min

Beyond AI Theater: How a Real AI Product Team Looks Now | Eric Anderson, SVP Product (Datasite)

We’ve all been witness to how AI collapses the org chart: leaders are back to doing IC work, ICs are shedding the busy work, and teams are shipping features in two-week sprints that used to take a year. Our guest today is Eric Anderson, SVP of Product at Datasite, the virtual data room platform where billion-dollar M&A deals get done. He walks us through how a real-life, AI-first team has made progress in adoption and the difficulties along the way. In this episode, Eric shares: How the contract has changed as the PM role has evolved. It’s not a layoff story - but product has collapsed back to subject-matter expertise, judgment, and taste Inside their “iteration zero” process: where PRDs are written live in the meeting, prototypes are wired to real data, and what the new bottleneck is now that building is fast Plus how you build trust in your AI product when a billion dollars is on the line: citations for everything, correlation, not imperative statements, and why nobody lets the computer decide Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-anderson-pr0ductexec/ Datasite: https://www.datasite.com/ Chapters 00:00 Introduction 03:04 AI is flattening the org chart (and why that's a good thing) 07:32 "The contract has changed": PRDs written live, ideas to code in minutes 14:42 Rise of the hyper creator: Blurring roles on the product team 17:53 Shipping fast isn't enough: Why taste and focus are the new bottleneck 21:35 Inside the virtual data room (VDR) 26:52 How Datasite builds trust in AI insights 31:59 Wrapping up 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: Eric Anderson.

June 23, 202632 min

Feedback Is Just the Start: How Acting on It Increased Zipcar’s NPS by Over 50% | Nishaat Vasi, CPO

We’ve all been witness to how AI collapses the org chart: leaders are back to doing IC work, ICs are shedding the busy work, and teams are shipping features in two-week sprints that used to take a year. Our guest today is Eric Anderson, SVP of Product at Datasite, the virtual data room platform where billion-dollar M&A deals get done. He walks us through how a real-life, AI-first team has made progress in adoption and the difficulties along the way. In this episode, Eric shares: How the "The contract has changed" as the PM role has evolved. It’s not a layoff story - but product has collapsed back to subject-matter expertise, judgment, and taste Inside their “iteration zero” process: where PRDs are written live in the meeting, prototypes are wired to real data, and what the new bottleneck is now that building is fast Plus how you build trust in your AI product when a billion dollars is on the line: citations for everything, correlation, not imperative statements, and why nobody lets the computer decide Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nishaat-vasi/ Zipcar: https://www.zipcar.com/ Resources The Right Kind of Wrong by Amy Edmondson: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Right-Kind-of-Wrong/Amy-C-Edmondson/9781982195069 Chapters 00:00 Intro 03:37 Zipcar and the customer experience wake-up call 05:27 Ditching the email survey for real-time feedback 09:55 Turning NPS into OKRs 13:13 The top 3 priorities: Cleanliness, damage, and maintenance 16:51 The zero-cost pilot that now saves millions of dollars 25:42 The issue with "AI theater" 27:43 How genAI spotted a hidden fuel card problem 32:13 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: Nishaat Vasi.

June 16, 202628 min

From Hostile to Rewired: How Descript's CEO Drives AI Adoption | Laura Burkhauser

Our guest today is Laura Burkhauser, CEO of Descript, the video editor that’s been AI-native long before “AI-native” was something you put in a pitch deck. Laura's route to the CEO seat started as a customer. She loved the product enough to knock on founder Andrew Mason's door and ask to work on it. She joined to lead product, but only three years later she's succeeded the well-known founder and is running the company. Today, Laura is here to talk about both sides of that journey: finding peers and mentors when you're suddenly the most senior person in any room, and driving AI adoption across an org already known for AI in its product. In this episode, Laura shares: Her "tech acceptance framework" — the 4 stages from outright hostility to "rewired" — and how to figure out where YOUR team actually sits Why telling IC PMs that AI means 2x productivity just sounds like they’re doing twice the work — and her “find the dream” reframe that actually gets real buy-in How Laura built Descript's AI philosophy around one principle: "Struggle with your art, not with your tools" and why she doesn't want anyone one-shotting their videos Plus the trap most companies are falling into right now: AI systems that walk out the door when the person who built them leaves, and how to make progress durable across your org Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/burkhauser/ Descript: https://www.descript.com/ Resources What Got You Here Won't Get You There: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/what-got-you-here-wont-get-you-there-marshall-goldsmith/1112274786 Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:07: Laura's career journey: From fashion startups to finding her path to product 03:26: The "what got you here won't get you there" moment 4:05: Finding peers and mentors when you're the most senior person in the room 12:06: "Struggle with your art, not with your tools" — Descript's AI philosophy 15:04: AI as a derivative technology and the democratization of creativity 17:59: The tech acceptance framework: From hostile to rewired 18:50: Running AI hackathons and reimagining company systems 22:40: Pitfalls of AI adoption: Cost, durability, and automating broken systems 24:42: The two-by-two framework for getting your team AI-pilled 27:49: Conclusion Follow LaunchPod on YouTube We have a 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: Laura Burkhauser.

May 12, 202625 min

How AI Helped Me Ship 9 Months of Product in 5 Days | Sriram Iyer, SVP of Product (ex-Salesforce)

A program manager told Sriram Iyer it would take 6 to 9 months to ship the first slice of their new product. Sriram challenged the team to do it in just five days. At first, they laughed. Then he rolled his sleeves up, dug in with the team, and they did it. 5 days, from Monday to Friday. Sriram has spent his career walking into companies like Salesforce, Adobe, and Freshworks, and pulling timelines apart. He calls himself the simplifier in chief, and the secret isn't the AI tooling. It's everything underneath the AI tooling that most leaders won't actually do. That's what make teams trust, and follow, him. In this episode, Sriram breaks down exactly how that five-day sprint worked, including: The "thinnest slice of pizza" principle that kills scope creep before it starts Why AI made it possible — but isn't really the point How to find the team members in any org who are actually ready to just make stuff happen — and why mindset matters more than tooling And why none of this works without trust, prioritization, taste, and an executive willing to get in the weeds and take personal responsibility for the outcome Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sriramviyer/ 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: Sriram Iyer.

May 5, 202627 min

AI Agents Fail for 2 Reasons. Crowdsourcing Solved Both. | Julia Dalton, SVP Product (Capacity)

Long before “AI Agent” was the buzzword in every product discussion, Julia Dalton was already deep into solving the problems of coordinating thousands of worker agents, creating clear instruction prompts, and evaluating output quality. Julia is SVP of Product at the AI-support automation platform, Capacity. Previously, she helped scale workflow orchestration at OneSpace, formerly known as Crowdsource, where thousands of freelancers executed microtasks for major retailers. As it turns out, managing humans at scale and managing AI agents have a lot more in common than most people realize. In this episode, Julia shares: The two failure modes that kill every AI agent before the model ever runs Why running a crowdsourced work platform gave her incredible insights into building effective agentic AI products How Julia and her team built an AI system to triage and prioritize product feedback, automating low-complexity builds and helping make better decisions on high-stakes tradeoffs Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliadalton/ Capacity: https://capacity.com/ Chapters 00:00 Intro 00:52 Julia's startup roots at OneSpace 02:00 Transitioning from the human API to AI agents 02:47 Microtasking workflow chains 06:54 Routing rules and AI orchestration 11:55 Validating prompts with simulations 15:08 Recursive prompting in practice 17:46 Data and knowledge orchestration 20:57 PRP triage app for product requests 26:56 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 .

April 28, 202636 min

April Dunford’s 1 Killer Question to Expose Weak AI Product Positioning [Repeat]

In this week's repeat episode, 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 Resources (Ethically) cheat your way to $250M+ | Mikal Lewis, Product Exec. (Whole Foods, Nordstrom): https://youtu.be/5txeT2U_YQo 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.

April 15, 202629 min

AI Isn't Breaking PM Teams. Overload is. Explained by Stanford PhD & CPO Jen Wang (Framework)

Our guest today, Jen Wang, holds a PhD from Stanford in behavior sciences, judgment, and decision-making. She built her product career at ThredUp, and now serves as Chief Product Officer and go-to-market lead at Framework. That combination — behavioral scientist plus operating CPO — gives her a rare lens into the most urgent question in product leadership right now: how do you lead and build when the ground is shifting faster than anyone can follow? In this episode, we talk about: The decision-making behind why Framework scrapped their roadmap Why iteration, not technical proficiency, has been the most important skill to drive AI adoption in teams There’s actually a scientific reason why everyone’s so overwhelmed, and it’s called the “Zone of Absorption” Links Jen's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wangjennifer/ Framework: https://frame.work/ Resources ThredUp: https://www.thredup.com/ Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/ Leadership Without Easy Answers by Ronald A. Heifetz: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674518582 The engineer's ring: https://www.nspe.org/career-growth/pe-magazine/july-2009/called-order Chapters 00:00 Introduction 03:50: Why everyone thinks they’re behind on AI 06:29: “The zone of absorption”: The science behind AI overwhelm 10:10: Why Framework scrapped their 2026 roadmap in February 12:31: Choosing your AI toolset: When to experiment vs. When to commit 14:25: Rethinking engineering resourcing to make room for “process debt” 15:43: The A/B testing parallel: Is AI history repeating itself? 18:27: AI prototyping: Productive or underbaked ideas? 25:08: The learning possibilities that AI opens up 26:56: Should product leaders take a Hippocratic oath? 28:21: 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: Jen Wang.