Product Led Growth Leaders

Hosted by Thomas Watkins

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Episodes

191

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Jul 2026

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About the show

What separates startups that stall from those that dominate their market often comes down to one thing: product experience. This show is built for startup founders who want to move beyond reactive product decisions and build products that win consistently in the market. Through solo episodes and interviews with high-performing SaaS founders, the show explores UX strategy, product decisions, hiring, and how to scale without chaos. It’s built for founders who want to move beyond patching problems and start building products that lead their category. The show is hosted by Thomas Watkins, UX designer and founder of 3Leaf, who has helped series A-C startups build well-structured products, streamline execution from idea to launch, and become preferred choices in their category.

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60 recent

July 16, 2026Episode 19125 min

191 - How AI Stewards Turn Prompts Into Business Outcomes

AI is starting to feel less like a tool you click and more like a coworker you direct and that shift changes everything. We sit down with Evan J. Schwartz, CIO and Chief Innovation Officer at AMCS Group, to unpack what happens as companies move from classic UX to what he calls AX, the agentic experience. If you lived through the early internet era, you will recognize the pattern: the first wave adds new tech on top of old work, and the second wave rewires the work itself. We get specific about what leading an AI initiative actually looks like inside an enterprise: adopting AI across internal functions like HR and finance, building with AI inside product and engineering teams, and shipping enterprise-grade AI to customers in resource-intensive industries like waste, recycling, and sustainability. Evan explains why “AI knows your industry but knows nothing about your business,” and why context, governance, and real use cases matter more than flashy demos. The heart of the conversation is the emerging role of the AI steward. We break down how stewards orchestrate agents, provide the right data and knowledge to reduce hallucinations, set targets and guardrails, and focus human attention on exceptions and strategy. We also explore why LLMs may become the new Excel, how roles compress toward generalists, and why the real upgrade is shifting your identity from output to outcomes. If this sparks new ideas for your team, subscribe, share the episode with a colleague, and leave a review so more product and growth leaders can find it. What role in your org is most ready for AI stewardship?

July 2, 2026Episode 19023 min

190 - What If Leave Policies Felt Like Product Design - with Romy Malviya

Leave of absence sounds like a simple HR checkbox until you’re juggling federal law, 26-plus sets of state rules, and company policies that all overlap. We sit down with Romy Malviya, founder and CEO of PulpStream, to unpack why leave management becomes a paperwork-heavy risk zone and what it takes to make the process feel smooth for real humans at stressful moments like childbirth, surgery, and family care. We get specific about where big HRIS platforms like Workday, UKG, Dayforce, and ADP tend to “lightly touch” leave, and why many teams either attempt to outsource the problem or run it in-house with spreadsheets, email chains, and manual tracking. Romy breaks down the three messages that resonate most with large employers: reducing compliance risk (including serious penalties), saving HR time that can stretch into many hours per leave case, and improving visibility so managers can plan coverage and schedules, especially in shift-based and blue-collar environments. We also explore what AI should and should not do in HR. Romy shares how AI can review submitted medical certifications for completeness, validate provider details, and flag mismatches, while still respecting privacy by keeping medical reasons out of a manager’s view. The goal stays clear throughout: empower HR with better information and faster workflows, without replacing the human conversations that make leave administration compassionate and fair. If you care about HR compliance, employee experience, leave of absence automation, and practical AI in the workplace, listen now, subscribe, and share this with someone who owns leave at your company, then leave a review with your biggest leave-management headache.

June 25, 2026Episode 18925 min

189 - Behavior Patterns That Predict Conversion - with Keith Zubchevich

Funnels are comforting because they look orderly, but buying rarely is. Keith Zubchevich, President and CEO of Conviva, joins us to unpack what most digital analytics misses: the difference between tracking clicks and understanding intent. We dig into why two people can purchase the same product through completely different paths and why forcing everyone into a single “best journey” quietly hurts conversion. We get concrete with examples like the “research shopper” who bounces between reviews and the shopping cart. A review-page visit is just a fact; the looped behavior pattern is the meaning. Keith explains how Conviva collects every session event, computes thousands of consumer behavior patterns in real time, and groups them into archetypes and segments you can actually act on. That shift from top-down questioning to bottom-up pattern surfacing helps teams focus on the changes most likely to move high-intent customers forward, instead of over-investing time and data science effort for marginal gains. We also challenge the hype around agentic AI. Agents do not fix vague data or “AI-washed” dashboards. They get smarter when they can pull from accurate, structured behavioral context and start the conversation where the user actually is. We talk UX personalization, context-aware agents, and where Conviva fits alongside tools like funnels, heatmaps, and session replay as teams push toward hyper-personalized digital experiences. If you care about product-led growth, conversion rate optimization, real-time customer analytics, and building better AI-assisted UX, this one will sharpen how you think. Subscribe, share this with a product or growth friend, and leave us a review with the biggest analytics blind spot you want to fix next.

June 18, 2026Episode 18822 min

188 - ADHD Is A Label But Capacity Is The Problem - with Frankie Berkoben

You can be brilliant, ambitious, and wildly capable and still feel like your follow-through is slipping. That doesn’t automatically mean you’re broken or “not disciplined enough”. It often means your executive functioning is overloaded by context: stress, layoffs, a heavier emotional load, shifting team expectations, or the simple fact that life outside work got bigger. I sit down with executive coach Frankie Berkoben, founder of Frankly Quite ADHD, to unpack a more useful way to think about ADHD and productivity for tech leaders. Frankie explains executive functioning in real terms: planning, working memory, attention, emotional regulation, and adapting when conditions change. We talk about why these skills dip under pressure for many people, and why the diagnostic label can be less helpful than understanding what your brain needs to do its best work. We also go straight at the toughest part for high performers: the gap between potential and performance. When your identity is tied to achievement, that gap can trigger shame and harsh self-talk, which then suppresses the very prefrontal cortex resources you need to plan and execute. Frankie shares patterns she sees across founders, senior ICs, and executives, plus a practical path forward using design thinking: get clear on what’s actually draining you, ask better questions, and run small experiments that reduce friction rather than demanding heroic willpower. If you’re leading teams, building products, or carrying a lot of visibility and you’re feeling “something is off”, this conversation will give you language, frameworks, and next steps. Subscribe for more on product leadership and human performance, share this with a teammate who needs it, and leave a review with the biggest insight you’re taking away.

June 11, 2026Episode 18726 min

187 - Product-Led Growth Meets Agentic Selling - with Channing Ferrer

Your product might be the best salesperson you’ll ever hire, and AI is about to make that idea even more literal. We sit down with Channing Ferrer, Chief Revenue Officer and CEO Americas at Brevo, to get precise about what product-led growth actually means: a path where users discover value, solve problems, and choose to expand without needing a human to nudge them along. We also call out a common trap: slapping a 15- or 30-day free trial on a pricing page and calling it PLG. From there, we explore the new grey zone: autonomous selling. If an AI can answer questions instantly, guide a user past a limit, or even deliver a personalized demo you can interact with, what bucket does that fall into: PLG, sales-led, or something new like agent-led selling? We dig into practical examples like chatbots that function as always-on product experts, shortening time-to-value and quietly increasing conversions by removing friction at the exact moment a user gets stuck. We also zoom into Brevo’s world of omnichannel marketing for high-volume customer bases, where the real challenge is not choosing email vs SMS vs WhatsApp, but stitching together scattered touchpoints into one coherent customer journey. Along the way we talk UX as a differentiator, the shift toward extensibility and agent-friendly systems, and a grounded buy vs build framework for anyone tempted to vibe-code their own CRM or system of record. If you care about product-led growth, SaaS monetisation, AI sales automation, CRM and CDP strategy, and the future of agentic marketing, this conversation will sharpen your mental model. Subscribe, share with a GTM friend, and leave a review. Where do you want automation to help customers, and where do you still insist on a human?

June 4, 2026Episode 18625 min

186 - What If Recognition Worked Like A Viral Product - with Ali Linz

Remote work didn’t erase birthdays, farewells, sympathy moments, and thank-yous it just removed the simple office ritual that made them easy. We sit down with Allie Lenz, co-founder of GroupTogether, to unpack the very real “recognition gap” that shows up when teams go hybrid: people still want to show appreciation, but the old card-and-envelope flow doesn’t work, and asking coworkers to chip in can feel awkward. We walk through how GroupTogether turns that messy process into a self-serve digital group card and group gifting platform that feels surprisingly personal. You pick a card design, share a link in Slack or email, teammates add messages, photos, and GIFs, and optional contributions stay private. The recipient gets a polished reveal experience and a flexible gift card option, which helps employee recognition feel like a keepsake rather than another notification. Then we zoom in on product-led growth: why the product’s inherent virality matters more than heavy integrations, how UX drives the loop (and where friction kills it), and how Allie’s team uses customer conversations, behavioural analytics, and the right metrics instead of vanity stats. We also talk about AI in a human-centred way: using AI to help people find the right words without automating away intention, plus why trust, compliance, and payment safety become key differentiators as volume scales. If you care about PLG, employee engagement, team culture, and building software that delivers real emotion, this one will spark ideas. Subscribe, share the episode with a teammate, and leave a review with your favourite takeaway.

May 28, 2026Episode 18514 min

185 - Stop Drowning In Applicants with Matthew Stewart

Your hiring inbox shouldn’t feel like spam, but that’s where recruiting is heading as AI makes it effortless to generate resumes and apply at scale. We sit down with Matthew Stewart, a software engineer turned founder of Talent Sprout, to unpack what’s breaking in modern recruiting and why the biggest pain shows up right at the start: screening. When you can’t tell who’s real and you’re buried under PDFs, the first phone screen becomes a bottleneck that quietly taxes your entire hiring pipeline. Matthew explains how Talent Sprout uses conversational AI to run that initial screen, moving beyond the old one-way video interview format. We talk through how the AI can ask questions in a more natural flow, evaluate responses in real time, and produce a structured scorecard so recruiters can quickly spot strength instead of watching endless recordings. We also get practical about implementation: pulling context from your company site, generating interview questions from a job description, and sharing smart links with candidates. We dig into the trust and quality side too, including the guardrails that keep candidate experience consistent and scoring reliable across high volume hiring. Then we zoom out to product strategy: why UI/UX still matters in HR tech, how 50+ ATS integrations create real workflow value, and how to avoid building something that feels like a thin “LLM wrapper.” Matthew closes with what’s next, including AI candidate sourcing and a longer-term path toward a more comprehensive recruiting platform.

May 21, 2026Episode 18416 min

184 - If Partnerships Drive Most Revenue, Why Do We Wing It? with Jon Mead

We talk with John Mead, founder and CEO of Partnerbridge.io, about why partnerships drive huge SaaS revenue while most programs still fail from a lack of strategy. We break down partner types, how data and UX shape partner discovery, and how a PLG approach can still include human guidance for better decisions. • the partnership revenue paradox and why failure rates stay high • what partnerships mean in practice: integrations, marketplaces, affiliates, services firms • how to narrow the problem by focusing on technology partners vs solutions partners • how Partner Bridge matches partners using strategic fit levers and filters • who typically owns partnerships across different company stages • what the competitive landscape looks like and why iteration matters • why UX and approachable data presentation can be a real differentiator • onboarding flow, free tier goals, data scraping, and user corrections • combining product-led growth signals with user groups to guide the roadmap

May 14, 2026Episode 18326 min

183 - Verbal identity as the antidote to generic AI content with Ken Marshall

We talk with Ken "Magma" Marshall, co-founder of Meet Sona, about why most leaders struggle to publish consistently and why “sounding human” is now a competitive advantage. We break down an interview-first workflow that turns short voice conversations into platform-ready content without losing your taste, judgment, or stories. • Ken’s path from sales to coding to SEO and agency life, then building Meet Sona • The three constraints behind inconsistent posting: time, confidence, and differentiation • Why conversation pulls out more distinct ideas than writing from a blank page • Verbal identity as the antidote to generic AI content and “AI blindness” • How guided voice interviews become LinkedIn posts, blogs, newsletters, and X posts fast • Pricing trade-offs versus done-for-you content teams and the CAC payback reality • What meaningful analytics should reveal beyond impressions and comment counts • The competitive landscape across chat tools, writing tools, voice notes, and interview-based products Check It Out At Meetsona, S-O-N-A, Meetsona.Ai

May 7, 2026Episode 18222 min

182 - What If Onboarding Let Users Stay In Control? with Karel Papik

We talk with Karel Papik, co-founder of Product Fruits, about why most products lose users in the first minutes and how better onboarding fixes trial drop-off. We dig into AI-powered user journeys that feel like a seamless, human layer inside your app while still giving product teams clearer feedback and faster insights. • why consumer-style impatience now defines B2B SaaS onboarding and activation • how Product Fruits uses discovery conversations to tailor the in-app experience • using an AI copilot for contextual help, tours, arrows and memory • turning chat and survey feedback into “outcomes” that highlight friction points • why bolting on AI often fails and when rebuilding around AI works • keeping AI answers trustworthy with internal checks and tuning • integrating with analytics tools instead of rebuilding full product analytics • when a complex product with many segments benefits most Go to productfruits.com to check it all out.