Product Rebels

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Latest episode

Sep 2026

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EN-US

About the show

Twice monthly, Vidya Dinamani and Heather Samarin talk to battle-hardened product leaders about building phenomenal products. Their guests are industry experts, people who have pioneered remarkable careers at companies like Netflix, Intuit, Khan Academy and Infusionsoft. Making customer-driven product choices is the right move. But it’s not always the popular one. If advocating for your customers has you feeling like a lone wolf, hosts Vidya and Heather—product rebels in their own right, with 20 combined years of experience—are here to help you learn from the best, so you can pave your way confidently.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

September 24, 2026Episode 7240 min

From Navigation to Delegation: Brian Crofts on Building AI at BambooHR

Brian Crofts started his career in corporate finance before moving into product at Intuit, where he spent more than a decade leading product for QuickBooks and TurboTax. Today he's Chief Product Officer at BambooHR, where his team launched Bamboo AI this July. He's the first guest in our new AI Product Leader series, where we talk with leaders who are in the thick of building AI products. We get into how Bamboo AI started and the bet behind it: moving customers from clicking through software to bringing a problem to AI and working through it together. Brian describes SaaS UX as moving from navigation to collaboration to delegation, and he's clear that we have to meet customers where they are. One customer recently told his team, "Our AI strategy is your roadmap." Brian is also candid about what didn't go smoothly. To move fast on the launch, the team left some of their usual process behind, and it turned into the Wild West for a while. They're bringing the fundamentals back. Since launch, they've tracked sentiment alongside usage, including a bucket for what Brian calls AI anxiety: about 10% of feedback comes from people who don't want AI in the product at all. A big thread in our conversation is why AI makes product fundamentals more important. When building gets fast and easy, it also gets easier to build the wrong thing. Brian thinks we've hit a new definition of lazy, and that we have to recover the art of great insights. He also has a sharp take on leadership. CPOs no longer have the pattern recognition that years of experience used to give them, so their own curiosity and tinkering is how they give direction to teams who are learning too. In this episode: Navigation, collaboration, and delegation in SaaS UX What happened when the team dropped process to ship Bamboo AI fast Tracking usage, sentiment, and AI anxiety after launch Why fast building makes customer insight more important How the CPO role has changed, and what Brian spends his time on now High curiosity plus high agency in PMs, designers, and engineers

September 10, 2026Episode 7118 min

Context Is the New PRD: AI Roundtable Insights

We're back with a special host-only episode! Vidya Dinamani and Heather Samarin step out of the guest chair to unpack what they're hearing across nearly twenty AI roundtables they ran with CPOs, VPs, and product leaders across the industry. Why the PRD is giving way to context, how the PM-to-engineer ratio is flipping, the pull toward a shared context layer, and why there's still no one-size-fits-all for AI. If you're a product leader silently wondering whether you're behind on all this, the genuine answer from the room is that everyone is, and that should bring you some comfort. Plus the persona skill one leader built to stop the slop.

August 6, 2026Episode 7033 min

Product Is Not a Playbook

Why do so many product transformations fail? Because leaders treat product like a science when it's mostly art. Vidya Dinamani and Heather Samarin sit down with Chris Herring, Head of Product at Stride , the edtech company serving K-12 students through virtual public schools. Chris has been building AI products for over a decade — well before it was fashionable — including StoryStudio and MathBee, the math game that helped kids find out math doesn't suck. From refusing to imitate what worked elsewhere, to piloting change with four teams before scaling to forty, to why trust is the currency that buys you permission to rebel, Chris shows what it takes to drive transformation from the inside.

July 9, 2026Episode 6936 min

From 1,000 Interns to One Day Sprints

What does it actually look like to run a one-day sprint cycle? To have agents building product overnight? To compress months of work into days — and still ship things that matter? Kris Kaneta, Chief Product & Innovation Officer at Norstella — one of fast company's most innovative companies of 2025 — is doing it. And in this episode, he shares how with hosts Heather Samarin and Vidya Dinamani. From the premium on clarity in an AI-led pdlc, to the difference between building to learn and building to earn, to why ai is exposing — not hiding — weak product thinking, Kris gives one of the most operationally grounded views of AI-first product leadership we've heard.

June 25, 2026Episode 6837 min

Making AI Work In Product Teams: Roundtable Insights

What happens when product leaders stop talking about AI theory and start sharing what’s actually working? In this special Product Rebels episode, Vidya Dinamani and Heather Samarin unpack insights from four AI roundtables with CPOs, VPs, and product leaders. They explore AI slop, ROI challenges, role anxiety, rapid prototyping, and why judgment, customer insight, and product fundamentals matter more than ever in an AI-driven world. The future of product management may be changing, but its core purpose remains the same.

June 11, 2026Episode 6729 min

Building Product-led Teams with Conviction

What does it take to turn a struggling edtech platform into a mission-driven product powerhouse — in under a year? Vidya Dinamani and Heather Samarin sit down with Jared Harless , Chief Product and Technology Officer at BookNook, as he talks about his early days bootstrapping digital products inside a billion-dollar publishing company, to leading a turnaround that grew revenue 25% year over year and pulled customer retention from 27% to 70%...but the work is far from over. Jared gets real about the kind of conviction it takes to build before you have permission — and how going straight to the market before writing a line of code is still the most powerful move a product leader can make.

May 28, 202636 min

[REPLAY] Tinder, TripAdvisor, and more: Universal Product Lessons

Hey there Product Rebels! If you're a product leader right now, chances are someone in your org has asked you some version of "what's our AI strategy?" in the last month. And chances are, the answer is still murky. We're hearing this from product leaders constantly — there's pressure to ship AI features, but not a lot of clarity on how to move from boardroom excitement to actual product impact. That's why we're resurfacing this conversation with Ravi Mehta. His Inspire, Validate, Structure, and Ship framework is one of the most practical takes we've heard on turning AI ambition into real outcomes. If anything, it's more relevant now than when we first aired it. Enjoy the re-listen.

May 7, 202632 min

[REPLAY] Think Financial, Act Customer

Hey there Product Rebels! We've had a lot of conversations with product leaders lately, and one thing that keeps coming up is how much financial guesswork is involved in incorporating AI into their product orgs. From forecasting costs to proving ROI, it's a challenge that really comes down to something more fundamental — do PMs actually understand the economics of the products they're building? That's exactly what Nat Kunes digs into in this episode. While the conversation isn't specifically about AI, the financial fluency he talks about is the exact muscle product leaders need right now. Enjoy the re-listen. In this episode, Heather Samarin and Vidya Dinamani sit down with Nat Kunes, Chief Product Officer at Ontra. He shares his insights on redefining pricing strategies, replacing assumptions with validated hypotheses, and the impactful strategy he uses to empower his team to balance goals with true user value. Nat digs into financial fluency for PMs, market validation practices, and shifting org culture to view product as an asset, not a liability.

April 23, 2026Episode 9234 min

Product Leadership in the AI Era

What does it mean to be a true product rebel in the age of AI? Heather Samarin and Vidya Dinamani sit down with Raviv Levi, former Chief Product & Technology Officer at Sift, as they unpack how product leaders can stay focused on what really matters—amid constant noise, data overload, and accelerating change. From building alignment across competing teams to rethinking experimentation in an AI-first world, this conversation explores how faster prototyping, sharper problem focus, and stronger conviction are redefining product leadership.

April 9, 2026Episode 9130 min

Why Product Investment Matters

What happens when product leaders prioritize profit over long-term value? In this episode, Michael Nierstedt shares lessons from more than a decade building payroll and HR technology across companies like Gusto and Paylocity. He explains why product investment drives competitive advantage, why product managers must think like sellers inside their organizations, and how real influence comes from delivering value in production. The conversation also explores customer research, the realities of building AI-driven products, and why the next generation of product leaders must learn to delegate, coach, and empower their teams.