How to Become an AI PM

first job out of PhD was basically everybody's dream job that job at Google then you spent some time at meta 8 years in at Google I went to

metas reality labs and it was interesting because I always Lov the metaverse and VR I worked in a team called avatars now back at Google I am a

gen PM we work as part of the Google home team there's a lot we do with LMS like super cool features were going to enable one of the hardest parts of being an aipm and just building AI products in

general is thinking through your product strategy AI doesn't really change the the Strategic thinging we always come down to thinking about the mission what you're trying to achieve why who it's

for and then is AI going to help me get there faster better sooner if I don't adopt AI am I going to stay behind compared to other folks you need to be

100% sure you want adopt Ai and get into this whole process cuz this can change everything welcome to today's episode of the product growth podcast this is one of those guests that I've been thinking

about and talking about since the podcast launched last year I'm really excited to have on somebody who's been an AI product manager at Google at meta

she also is an aipm teacher she's taught at Harvard Business School she teaches an aipm certification on Maven marily NAA welcome to the

podcast thank you thank you so much for having me atash it's uh yeah it's great to be here I think we first chatted about three years ago we actually hopped

on a zoom kind of like today's format to meet so it's very cool three years later to have you on the Pod thank you and I think I was just starting with my courses and I was like oh here's how I'm

thinking about this so it's great to to catch up and see how things have evolved since then yes both of us have stuck in this game I think there were a bunch of people I met in that time period who no

longer do it but here we both are where I want to start is your aipm experience at Google talk to me a little bit about how your rle is evolved and

what you're up to now sounds good so I was always I loved computers and computer science growing up and I said you know what I love it so much um that

I should do I should do a PhD in it so I did the PHD machine learning in 2011 ages ago and I got a scholarship from Google to do it um and because of that I

met a lot of people working there and you know I got mentors so I always you know as I was finishing my PhD I always kind of had Google as kind of you know

the most exciting thing um so yeah I finished my PhD and I joined um the speech team which essentially could translate sound into text and they needed people to kind of help out with

this um whole process and also to figure out what on Earth are we going to do with it and it was a wonderful wonderful experience especially if it's your first job to get into this environment with

amazing smart people and try to figure out you know how to um evolve let's say this amazing piece of tech and Bridge it

with users um pinpoints so you first job out of PhD was basically everybody's dream job that job at Google uh and then you spent some

time at meta yes so eight years in at Google I went to meta's reality labs and it was interesting because I always loved you

know the metaverse and VR and AR and I wanted to see how kind of you know a company that really specializes in this builds products and yeah it was a

wonderful experience I worked in a team called avatars which is our embodied representation in the metaverse and yeah it was it was really really good and

what's your role now at Google and now I'm back at Google I am at gen pm and we work as part of the Google home team and there's a lot we do with llms like super

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SLX a got it so how much what is Google home taking advantage in terms of gen right now because obviously Google home

actually came out in an era before these llms had made a big splash I imagine that the preg gpt3 inner workings of

Google home and post gpt3 really dramatically change the product vision and what's going on in the company yeah essentially making your home Smarter with smarter functionality for example

things like hey which room is my cadat this sort of thing like if you think about it from a technical perspective this is absolutely feasible but um you know on a dayto day you wouldn't consider that oh wait this is something

I can do now so this is the type of thing the team um is enabling so you've been at these two giants of big Tech

working as an aipm how do the two differ it's shocking how different it was um so let's see well also my role was different so at Google I find that I

work way closer with you know the people actually training the model so research scientists and you know we look into the quality and evals and this sort of thing

versus at meta I find um my role was heavier on um product reviews and start strategic decisions and Leadership um so I guess one was way more Hands-On with

the actual okay let's roll up our sleeves and and build versus strategy alignment oh my God so much alignment because there's just so many different

teams so um this whole cross functional collaboration skill set it was it was something I had to I had to learn how to you know I had to to flex it um but yeah

it was both you know wonderful and very rewarding I think I I like more rolling up the sleeves and getting things done side of things um but I'm sure you can get that at my that too it was just that

my role didn't have that as much how technical do you get on a day-to-day basis with the researchers someone was asking me exactly this question and I decided you

know what I'm going to put this very simple graph together so there's different types of aipm number one you can be the AI Builder PM which is what I

just described dayto day you work with a scientist help them build kind of the magic that empowers all these um smart features or you can be an AI experien PM

which is more like okay let's Leverage What the first category of folks are building and mix and match and create an experience that you know it's going to

add value directly to users the Builder may be more backend AI experiences is more you know consumer facing and I added this third category there which is you know no matter what you're doing if

you're in AI or not you got to be AI enhanced it's not um it's not an option anymore it's kind of a a necessity for us to to survive in this um so yeah on

the AI Builder side um things are more technical you need to have some technical background meaning at least familiarity and awareness of you know

the AI life cycle on the AI experiences PM I feel it's easier to get in especially if you already let's say here's an example let's say were in

health Tech before okay PM non Ai and then there is a startup hiring for someone building an AI agent for Diagnostics or something like that it's easier to make the leap from nonte

non-technical to aipm in that domain because you have that expertise already but going straight to the AI Builder is kind of um tougher I will say so AI builder needs a lot of technical

background AI experience is less so um but of course it doesn't mean you can just go directly to AI Builder or experiences so you're currently an AI

Builder PM yes I am and I I realize no matter how many years you've been doing it um I'm still learning like new things are

coming up every single day um and it's I just love it it's challenging I think I I identify more with it um even though you know I've done experiences for like

70 years or so um and the thing is there are some roles where you this is sequential so you may may start as a builder and evolve into experiences or

in the startup you may kind of do Jaga both back and forth but um in bigger Tech I think they're more crisper like the the differences day-to-day how much

are you really getting into the architectural decisions of what a researcher might be doing or the work they do how technical are those conversations it's you know there is the

AI life cycle and you're usually in like three four different products let's say and each of them is in a different part

so according to which part um the the product is at you are needed more or less let's say so if you're still kind of in the early stages where you're scoping things out your work is just

full of meetings and decisions and trade-offs and all these things but if you're more on the okay we've trained our model here's you know what things look like um should we move move forward

should we retrain should we find more data um you know you're it's less more about you it's more about okay the entire team kind of chiming in um but there are Parts where you know during

actual model training you don't you don't do much there because it's more like a waiting game let's say um so yeah it depends on where you're at but I will say it's never boring especially if

you're handle you know multiple products it's kind of like you need to contact switch you know on every single meeting cuz it's like okay wait where are we at what are we doing here and sometimes

even the you know the products themselves is different teams um so yeah there's a lot of uh Contex switching got it so as a PM it sounds

like you might be working with three or four different AI research teams not even just one Squad it depends on how the company is set up um sometimes I see a structure

where you're working directly with a research scientist that's handling two three different you know Junior groups of folks so you only le as with one which is the best case scenario right

you work with them um or you may have different um pairs of Engineers and scientists um to work with or sometimes you Le with an aipm of another team and

they work with a scientist and engineer so it's um it depends on the scale on the company but but on its core it's essentially you a scientist and a software engineer that does the integration and is this kind of

wonderful triangle let's say of tradeoffs and decisions and scoping and a lot of data to go through got it and when it comes to the data how much of that is the research

scientist handling versus you as a product manager handling very good question um well the thing is you need their input when you're scoping out because

you need to understand you know how much data is it going to take in order to to reach a you know a minimum viable quality let's say say and then there may

be a data collection required so usually there's actually a program management team that might take care of that so like I've seen companies that have massive operations where they do the

data collection themselves I've seen companies that Acquire data from thirdparty companies I've seen companies that just synthesize data and you know try things out with the model without

looking into quality in the first place so yeah it's it's about the the strategy of the company the resource say you know are you in a rush to get things going are you just testing things out so

there's different strategies but I will say though I had the student in my aipm boot camp that we had this this exact conversation and he got so excited and he created an agency that does

Collections and he now has contracts with all the big tech companies and he collects data for their models for them and he's he's doing so well so it's interesting how you know if you think

about the ml op side of things there's so much um going on that you need to stay ahead of everything but it doesn't mean that you as a PM is going to do the actual

collection what does a day in your life look like how many meetings do you have what types of meetings are there very good question so I work a lot with East Coast meaning that you know

from 8:30 or 9 there may be some product review there may be some weekly sync with um scientist team um so usually for

you know like a large scale product that may take two three years um you know in the making you are going to have um a sing with leads and then you're going to have a SN with you know the entire team

where you kind of you know communicating the information and answer any questions and things like that but I think it's a mix of weekly sinks and more relaxed

product reviews where you just reach out to leadership and get you know have a discussion reach out um get their opinion um or get input go no goes Etc

so at least I mean there are at least one or two I will say product reviews a week but it's nothing scary I know a lot of people hear about a review and like oh God you know how much do you need to

prep and it's not it's it's more of a conversation rather than an actual test or anything like this um I try to limit my me like I I block my calendar when I

want to do heads down work um I want to say there's at least a 2hour block a day where I actually do you know rides and comment on docs and stuff like that but

the rest on the most part is meetings so it's not fundamentally different from any other product manager job but it's in the domain of AI oh yeah

absolutely absolutely and I guess you meet mostly with you know engineers and scientists versus you know other PMS to align but uh yeah it it just depends on

you know the product you're running and you know the the company as well so you've been aipm longer than most people where a lot of people I

think they might be a year or two in if you were to go back to the version of you a year two in what advice would you give yourself yeah I was doing it before

it was cool that's what I like saying um well the thing is early on again recent grad from a PhD I I jumped into this I I

kind of realized that not all PMS do the same work so you know I was you know there I had mentors and we had like meetups and Community meetups and all these things and I realized wait you

know what you guys are doing sounds different than what I'm doing and you guys are assessed by how many lunches are you know how how much you've lunched versus me where it's more like what did

we learn what Milestone did we hit what progress did we made and and I was kind of trying to understand what was going on and I you know I had asked my monitor at the time and they explained to me hey

it's it's you PM from p.m Can Be Wild different but aipm especially in zero to one it has almost nothing to do with with other functions so I would tell

myself this is different and it's fine that it's different and you can find your identity through it and embrace it and one day you'll you know you'll be teaching about this and you'll be super

happy you've been in this domain for 12 years so I think the researcher segment that's the sort of stakeholder group that you have talked about a few few times which

is pretty different from your average product manager where I think that's often replaced with a product designer

how should PMS better interact with researchers so I used to be a data scientist and I know kind of you know

how to how to protect them how to not waste their time on meetings and all these things so um and how to convince them when it comes to you know new ideas

so I wrap all these things under a skill that I call know technical influence so you want them to partner with you you want them to respect you you want them

to see that okay you're bringing in the table the product thinking that they need so that you as a pair um can create better more impactful products number

two you want to demonstrate you have ai awareness so they can just talk about you know their challenges or demonstrate you know their metrics and how they're progressing and you not understanding

what's going on um what I did in the past that helped is I asked to Shadow them and I literally went for a week and I was just sitting next to them and I saw what they do on their day day what

the challenges are what the conversations that like um and I truly understood what matters and what doesn't matter and I guess the biggest learning is never go to them without having some

conviction about a new feature for example hey let's do this not because it's it's my gut feeling but more like let's do this because here's the conviction here's another product that did and it worked out well and they

understand that okay you have the vision and you're a great leader and they'll help you execute on this and create the magic that that powers um your vision

let's say is there a sense of needing to do that one we Shadow even if you haven't been a data scientist would you recommend that

more PMS do that that's a mistake I made when I joined I think my first job the first days is like okay I'm technical I understand what other people are doing

but you don't understand anything every company is different every team is different they have different processes different tools different every single thing so um I I learned this quickly

that I I know that I know nothing and and actually telling people this is is so great because they realize okay this person is transparent and we're going to

help them um you know learn and they want to learn too instead of having someone cocky that's like hey I know everything um so that's that's the advice I give to people don't be afraid

to to Shadow and people appreciated it so much like it was wonderful they they were like hey do you have any questions um they shared the code with me they

they let me train some of the models um and I realized what it takes in you know big tech company not just doing it in Europe PhD lab right um it was a great

experience I think some people might be wondering how do they explain this to their boss yeah I mean your boss wants you to learn

and up skill and if anything if you tell them they're going to be introducing you to people that you should go ask to Shadow I think it's it's great and it's not like you Shadow and you do nothing

right you Shadow you take noes you improve processes it uh it's part of your job let's say and I mean maybe you don't need to Shadow 40 hours a week and you Shadow I don't know like an hour a

day but I think it's um it's a great thing to do I often recommend that for people that tell me hey how do I transition to aipm and I say just ask an

aipm if you can just Shadow for an hour see what they do and see if you can jump in and add some value at some point because you start you know diing your feet in the water and getting some

experience and um you know eventually decide if it's what you want to do or not cuz it's not for everyone that you know it has a certain factor a certain

uncertainty that is not always great when you're interviewing as an interviewer at these big companies what skills do you look for

inms the first thing is Passion you want to see people that are so excited about what's going on and the potential and you know with Gen Ai and all these things so if you have someone that

really can demonstrate that they they know what's currently happening the AI landscape like you know there's a new model that came out and multimodality and aend and all these things like you

want to see that they're so passionate that they know so that they're aware um and sure I've had people that you know would say I'm excited to learn and I'm

excited to jump in but you want to see that they already have kind of the skill set regardless of interviews so um passion is very important and awareness

about AI so if you ask someone hey what's the what's unique about AI what are the unique challenges and they don't have anything to say versus demonstrating that they have the

awareness to say Hey you know that probabilistic nature of AI can make things tricky and you know we really need to think about you know how to tackle things as Leaders um and then you

know just the hustle like I find that AIP pming needs a lot of hustling and um it's kind of the rise of the senior I era um I see a lot of folks that are

very very senior and you know you're G to go to the scientist and then collect the data and support these people and the tradeoffs and product so you need to see that um there's a lot of people that

you know were very senior in other companies that they see joining as ic's and it's like oh God wait how do we do this how do we roll up our sleeves so you you want you want someone that can

already that already knows how to do this and is excited to do this is there something in particular about AI that makes it more likely to have

super senior icpms than other types of PM um I don't know how to answer this um well sometimes I don't know I find that

some some people don't really understand AI yet especially you know more traditional folks that you know have not had the time to study about Ai and you find people that are more in the weeds

understanding what's going on and what needs to happen so you're kind of the boss of yourself if you will and you want to get the work done rather than

delegating um I don't know what I find is that uh if you think about an average AI product there's less

of a ux component or that comes in later in the process in that life cycle you described where you first have to build the model and you have to get the data

and you have to validate it so all of these things that happened before end up meaning that there's a higher weightage towards research and Engineering

activities then product management and product design activities so that to me is one of the reasons that we're seeing in AI companies and AI groups within big tech companies that they have way more

senior ic's I think you're describing the experimental experimentation culture there's a ton of making a hypothesis testing it out figuring out if you know

it makes sense to move on so um because of this yes the experience part comes towards the end but that's for the AI Builder side of things if you're the AI

experiences I will say if anything ux and uxr is so important to add early on just so that you can have as much conviction as possible to move forward

um in order not to waste resources money and and miniz a race really yeah critical for experiences PMS as someone with a PhD in computer

science specifically AI how important has that been to your Effectiveness as an aipm wow very good question I think it's been a blessing in a curse it's been a

blessing because I felt the confidence that okay I I got I got this and I have the background like I can make it happen but in reality on the day today it's

like I had to forget what I know I had to take my previous identity out and say hey I don't do this part anymore I shouldn't jump in and say oh I will do

this this way or here's what I did as part of my my PhD so I had to tone down that part of my brain let's say and focus more on strategy and vision and

that did not come naturally to me um but I was so luy I had wonderful mentors that helped me and there's so many communities about product management so

I had to to jump into the the pure PM skills in order to be able to balance this things out um but for the most part it has helped me because it helped me start in this field 12 years ago U

without the phdi I wouldn't have been able to do how technical should aspiring aipm be I think I'll I'll flip this question

and say is not about how technical it's about how you shouldn't be afraid to get technical so I can have someone that you know you may show like a Google collab

like something simple and then being like oh God what's this I don't know I don't want it I rejected so you don't have to be technical but you need to be

ready to get in and understand and jump in that's because there's so many new technologies that come out and your partners will will want to investigate and we w your opinion so um you need to

have influence you need to have that awareness and you need to not be afraid to jump in now it doesn't hurt if you've you know built trained the model or if

you know the basics about you know python or something like that but um it's more about how open you are to being trainable rather than what you've already done let's

say you've gotten some really coveted jobs when I talk to PM job Seekers which I do almost every every day they want to be aipm at meta and Google what is your

personal approach to job searching very good question um I think especially now you know 2025 your your

online presence matters um having a LinkedIn profile that really explains who you are and having a narrative for what you've done before is just so

crucial um here's an example I was uh I had a student in my boot camp and he had a three-year Gap in his regime and I asked what that was about and he said

well it's it had nothing that was related to product management and it actually he said I was a sculptor um and I said oh my God you absolutely need to

say you're SC what he said but it's not relevant to it and I convinced him to add it and then I told him you're narrative is you're an artist that understands the users and now you're

bringing in these two things to together and you can actually be an Avatar's product manager or computer game character product manager and and this

this really you it was in a h moment he said oh wait I I do I can say this um or the other thing in this my Cent cohort I have someone that um was working for

medical um devices for hearing aids and he he's like you know how do I switch to aipm I said what do you how do you switch you are a wearables PM M and if

you saw Apple has now you know the airpods um have a specific functionality for um people that don't hear well and it helps them so it's it's about how you position yourself and that online

presence really needs to come through because it's important and last thing I'm going to say um ask for referrals like if you don't get the referral

things are chances are way way lower and sometimes I you know when I was looking I would reach out to on LinkedIn to the hiring manager and say hey here's who I am here's a role I found here's why I

think I'm a fit let me know if industri I already applied but please don't ask for virtual coffees like virtual coffees don't it's just not they don't

work and when you're doing this reach out how do you find the hiring managers and how do you reach out to them do you use inmail personalize invites what's your

approach so LinkedIn has a jobs functionality and you can see the hiring team sometimes it's a recruiter but sometimes especially for smaller companies it's a hiring manager um and I

send an email inail and the title is you know the job title and introduction and trust me if you send 20

even if two people see the message you still have a better shot than not having sending send anything um there's also this wonderful website that not a lot of

people know it's called wellfound it's the old angel list job search tool and they have amazing startup jobs and it's a lot of you know unicorns in there that

are looking for their first head of product it's all AI enabled um and it's just yeah that's a super nice resource but again you got to have your profile put together in a nice

way very cool so the power of LinkedIn is really important to your job searching strategy and you write content on LinkedIn what's your thought about that should aspiring aipm be writing

content to also optimize their LinkedIn I think they should but if anything for me it helps me distill the noise as to how much information there's

out there so I kind of write so that I can it it can make sense to me um because that's how I work I do think it's nice to see someone that's you know

a thought leader that has opinions that is kind of adding in and Prov and giving for the providing to the community I think that's nice but it's not a necessity if anything you know maybe you know X

Twitter um might be a nicer thing because it's easier it's you know shorter messages and longer form content um but you know I have my Sab stack you have your Sab stack it takes so much work so I don't know if I would

recommend it to anyone that's not ready to get consistent with it so the meta process that you went

through a couple years back it's a very structured process they have very specific rounds on product strategy and Sense on execution on leadership and

drive how did you prepare for those um a lot of Mo interviews and it's interesting because it's one thing to

say oh you know I know this question I answered in my head and it's fine and it's another thing to say it out loud and I tell people you're giving it performance like it's literally a

performance um answering interview questions and actually as you're saying this um I actually created a um product

sense GPT like a little custom GPT that helped me um prepare for my interviews I wrote down the perfect answer that I thought in my head is the perfect answer

and then after having gone through all these examples that were online and mock interviews um I wanted to see what the perfect answer looked like for different types of questions so I trained this and

I said okay what types of questions can you answer and it had four like oh create product X for company y or improve product X for company Y how

would you build design this for a startup and if you say let's see design a smart fridge for I don't know Netflix

whatever um and you will see the perfect answer as per my template so you can see first you start with the the framing which is the mission and why that

question fits in the mission what are the uses users what are their use cases the pain points and then you know the

prioritized pain points for a specific user Solutions ET so I did a lot of that because that helped me absorb ideas and

information so that when the actual interviews came I was kind of like okay I got this I did the same for the estimation questions too anyway I shared this on LinkedIn at some point and what's funny is that someone reached out

to me and said hey I tried during a live interview it's not fast enough I'm like this is not meant for a live interview this is meant for you prep like this is not but there's AI tools that can help

you along the way so one is you need to give a performance number two is you need to have being exposed to so many different ideas and solutions so that when someone asks you something you be

like yeah I got this I you know here's my idea um but yeah Mo inters and in the beginning it was horrible I was just so bad it's just the disaster but you know

you get better and eventually it's kind of exponentially like yeah I got this I can I can do it were those mock interviews with friends with coaches how did you manage

those um well some companies are amazing and if you ask the recruiter hey can you give me a mooch interviewer they will set you up with a mooch interviewer internally and it's amazing because it's

exactly the same setup it's someone that is an experienced interviewer for that company that helps and it's great um if in my case I think it was friends from

my network and you know as part of my Academy and my boot camp I'm we have a slack Channel and there is a mocha interview um kind of Channel where you

know people interview each other it happens organically it's such a wonderful thing to do like it's it's no big deal to just reach out on LinkedIn to someone say hey mine's doing a mo

with me it's just I actually have someone that needs a mo later today in like an hour or so so um good that's

awesome so a lot of PMS they're looking at aipm what they're seeing is first of all there's a lot of listings for aipm jobs out there as a percentage of PM

jobs it's increasing where it was like 0% I would say nearly a couple years back now it's already up to six or 7% of all PM of open jobs today and they're

saying that these aipm jobs pay really well like often your AIP PMS are making more than your other PMS at the same level so for those PMS who want to

become aipm what's the right road map to get there the best way to become an aipm if

you're employed is your current company literally go to your manager and say I want to be an aipm but not for the sake of being aipm but because you're excited

about AI because you're you have ideas and reach out to pm and say hey can I Shadow you or do you have anything you don't need like any any feature I'm

happy to take it scope it out push it from end to end and you'll see if it's for you again it's not for everyone and you will get your hands dirty you will

figure out okay here's how it's done so best way is your car and Company and I mean that's what I tell people that are not PMS in the first place if you're TPM

or a program manager and you're doing some PM work push with everything you got to get the F that first PM title in your current company that's the key

because you can't go to another company and say hey I was a program manager but I was doing some product work it does it's not the same as saying you know I was a product manager um and then if

you're from an external company sorry if you're if if you're not employed and you're looking for your first aipm job here's a hack there is a website called Dev cost and they have a list of

hackathons and most hackathons are about Ai and you can join in for free say hey I'm a PM looking for teammates that are Technical and you will get three four

people you guys will build a prototype within a day or two you may win make some money but at the end of the day even if you win or not you will have something to show for you will add

something in your regimen say hey I concepted I Leed um this was a Microsoft hackathon that shows the hustling I was talking about that shows that you really roll up your sleeves and you're not

afraid and and you get to meet some cool people from all over the world in this hackathons that's a great idea hackathons I hadn't really been recommending that to the people so

that's something really unique and new I'm hearing what do you think about other side projects such as you know getting together a group of designer friends and Engineering friends to build

a little side project or even just trying to use one of the I tools out there you know cursor

v0 repet agent even GitHub go pilot even though it's godforsaken tool um and try to build something yourself what do you think about those ways to try to break

in as long as you wrap it so that it becomes an actual product and it has a reason it exists yes but don't use the tool for the sake

of using the tool if that makes sense that makes AI enhance which is great but if you want to be an aipm you need to have concepted something for other people like something silly like that AI

product gbt I put together that I put together an AI product gbt it generates PDS AI for AI that had a nice product Market fit people started using it I had

something to show um so ultimately it's not about being familiar with the tool it's about doing something that might get some adoption in some capacity

that's what I always tell people is it's better to actually try to also if you can monetize the tool because all of a sudden if you say okay I have a tool that has $500 mrr you know then they're

going to say this is a true Hustler this is somebody who truly has knowledge about AI um and starting to hit off those criteria that they're looking for

yeah absolutely how can people who are technical but want to break into aipm

for instance your AI researcher or your software engineer how can they do it again you go in your company well I'm very lucky because Google has a p

rotation program that's great um and you essentially get to be a PM for 6 months and a team and you see if it's for you they see if you for them and then you

figure out the conversion process after but there are I think meta has the RPM program which is outstand ing as well so I see a lot of people that are technical

in AI that apply for the RPM program and then get to kind of retain within teams they don't guarantee everything is going to be about AI but some of it might or you know during the matchmaking process

you can say hey I'm only interested in in AI specific program so that's the best way if there is a rotation program if there is no rotation program recommend a rotation program and say Hey I want to rotate here's companies that

have done it it's very successful there's many many people that would want to do this so you know you may kind of start an unofficial Trend if you will um and then if of course that's not the

case then you go to your manager discuss your career aspirations and I mean if managers are good they care about you and your trajectory and they'll help you carve out an opportunity in their team

or connect you with someone else how did your personal Journey happen so you were a data scientist how did you break into product

I was a scientist and then I joined Google and the there were no aipm the time um but then eventually you know

when we moved away from this pure you know kind of okay let's let's see what kind of quality were're getting with transcriptions and all that stuff um it was kind of like okay now we need

product managers and I think the team hired the first product manager and I I knew about the rotation program and I reached out to the product manager and I

said hey there's this program I've been in this team forever I'd love to you know become a p maner you my Cent manager supported it so I I did it and

you know I had Al I also had to interview which was interesting um and yeah eventually converted and have not regretted it since but that's why I say the best way to start is in your current

team and if you're like oh my team doesn't have PMS amazing you can be the first PM like I don't want people to get stuck in you know such such problems and

blockers just unblock it figure it out don't ask for permission just say hey I can be the first PM here's why we need it put it one sheater together share it with your

leadership High agency tends to work especially during these times where hustling is is so important right so you interviewed a Google for a

PM rooll twice the first time as an internal transfer the second time after you kind of boomeranged back to Google talk about the process of boomeranging

back um I it's the same as everyone else you apply if there's a team that's um has availability they take you in you interview

um yeah and the problem is when I did it it was a time where there were such few jobs so and what's interesting is it used to be the case that all these companies had

kind of the generic PM track where you just get in do the generic payment interviews and you know matchmake within the company whereas now we see these

highly specialized jobs like you know AI platform for this startup or this database PM um so it's interesting because I think I found a role that I

would fit me 100% well 100% like very closely and I was just lucky and very much at the right place at the right time what about people with no work

experience let's say I'm a college student I'm thinking about merily I want to be like her one day I'm thinking oh maybe I could major in computer scien as

undergrad maybe I could also then go pursue a PhD like she did or a master's halfway through that's one path another path I could maybe just go out and try

to get another PM job first and then move into aipm what are the best pads if you are a student to break into aipm

there is this wonderful thing people are not aware of it's called it's it's from venture capital from VC's and it's called entrepreneur in residents there's so many VCS that will say come in we'll

give you some money it's not going to be too much money we'll give you a place to work we will give you um network of people that have founded companies mentors we will matchmake you with a

founder and we will help you create a startup and raise fund that is what I would be doing if I was was just graduating and starting my career cuzz it's amazing it's kind of a safe

environment where you get to really figure out what you want to do and meet people and and at the end of the day even if you don't create a startup or anything you have to show that you are

an entrepreneur in Residence working in AI I think the AI fund um has an ongoing opening about this um but yeah it's a wonderful opportunity so I would

recommend that or the RPM APM type of program programs that look for graduates and they have a limit they say you can't have had more than one or two years of experience in PM so I think it's I mean

they're highly competitive but you know you never know why not apply to all of them so you wouldn't recommend going and getting a Masters or PhD in computer

science if your eventual goal is an aipm role no the PHD if anything it's interesting cuz I got my PhD and then I joined um you know these companies and I

realized oh god um older than a lot of people and I'm way more Junior than a lot of people and it doesn't matter you know age doesn't matter but it was interesting that the years I spent in

the lab could have been spend in me gaining experience becoming a manager getting more senior um that was interesting I don't regret doing it um

but I do appreciate I did it in Europe because in Europe phds are much shorter than in the US so I think like there are some people that phds may take seven

years in the US especially if you have a t taught component in the beginning um but for me it took like two two three years so it wasn't you know that big of

a deal but yeah it's I don't recommend it I I think you should just jump in start learning and get in early on some super cool startup okay so startup experience or

other PM experience over academic experience I think so let's move on to the craft of product

management so every PM whether or not they're building AI features these days they're probably wanting to use AI tools

for your money what tools what AI tools should PMS be using yeah because I created a lot of content online um I

wanted to find ways to optimize the way you know I create the content and make my life easier essentially and I discovered zapier and it's it's a tool that's so

underrated not a lot of people know of it and you know whether it's for product management or you know your day-to-day productivity life it really can change

your life so look you go to zapier and there's this concept of zaps where you can automate processes um so yeah let me show you kind of what that looks like it's a really really really really

interesting um so let me see let me create a new one start from scratch so let's say my use case is I want something that can recommend ideas for

me for my next post every single day so this is the interface where you create a zap they have this little co-pilot that can help you throughout this process but you know I know the process so here's

how it works first you need to have a trigger and the trigger you want is something that can run every single day so you say schedule every single day you

continue um trigger on weekends I say no time of day you can say something like whatever 12:00 p.m. okay you say

continue now here is the interesting part you go to the next thing they have 7,000 apps and tools and what is super

fun is that there is CLA here so this tool goes to CLA every single day to ask you the question without the need for

you to do anything so I can say action event send a message Continue and here is what you're asking Claud so what's automatically going to

be asking Cloud every single day and here's what I did I went to a recent post of mine so I have this post and he was like oh I don't watch YouTube videos

anymore because Gemini does for me and I copy it and I essentially I tell

Claud i product manager creates content on LinkedIn here's my recent post okay I can say this and then here's the fun

part you say in the same style and length and tone come up with something like a new

interesting topic so you write this they ask you which model you want and you can say know the newest one saying

continue um and you can also test the step so that you can see you know if the connections work by the way the first time you set it up there's some you know you need to authenticate Cloud to use

zaper but it's fine um so here I tested it um and you know this is what I provided and then it told me as an output oh I I don't read long research

papers TBT does any know you you can tweak it but what's interesting is the next thing you can do is you can directly [Music]

[Music] all right and the next thing you want to do you can literally connect it with your LinkedIn and have it post on its own but I don't like it posting on its

own right I want to review first so you can say Google dog you go to Google Docs authenticate with your account and you

either append text to a specific document or you create a new document from the text that came in which is what I like doing and then that you have the

document name which can be I don't know zap generated content um and so on so here is the text

whatever you continue you test it so there are simple things things like that that are no they don't require any code that you can literally use and they can

change your life or if you're if you're a head of PM right and you want to have something more fun for your users for your team you can connect this to slack

and it can post like the riddle of the day or something fun to slack or the PM inside of the day and it just you know creates a Channel or it can send a

direct message or public Channel Etc um so yeah I love using this again this is not for um nothing PM specific right um

what's PM specific is the product say gbt I I was talking about and I also created a AI product GPT so at some

point I was at work and I realized you know what I spent a lot of time just making copies of my prds and writing and changing the titles and I realized you know let me try to use this tools see

what happens so I I I have an AI PRD that I uploaded to you know on TBT and I said you know what here's my template

and I want to create something that's specifically for AI part products and I'm going to be providing the ideas and I want you to really flush this out um and I taught it to either say hey

enhance my current product with AI for onet to1 products or brainstorming U AI products for zero to1 so let's see um enhance my current product with AI it's going to ask you okay first of all

what's your product who are you focusing on and then what is your goal for adding Ai and a good example could be something

like I am product manager at Netflix I want to focus on bchw Watchers and I want to increase retention just that so

it's going to take that as an input and then it's going to look into my template it's going to look into AI superpowers that I've already talked to this about and then it came up with three ideas

like look at this AI power personalized bch mode so an a driv bch mode experience that personalizes features like Dynamic skip mood based playlist smart break reminders tells you what

problem it solves social B watch and c-watch suggestions and AI driven predictive content recommendation so then you want

to choose one of these idea okay let's go with one and now it uses my AI PRD template and it's going to generate the whole thing

and it doesn't do a perfect job but if you copy this and paste it it saves so much time especially here in the beginning where it's like here's the

vision and here are the objectives and here's the feature and here's exactly you know what we want to do and why it even creates um you know the audience it

creates a competitor table competitor analysis that you which kpis to focus on um so it's this type of thing that you just spend time once building and then

it just saves so much time look at this with links um yeah so that's uh one other you know use case I have for these AI tools

that are saving my life so writing it seems like is one of the big use cases and then with a tool like zappier potentially taking that

writing whether it's PRD slack mess is LinkedIn posts and Publishing out on kind of an automated fashion exactly yeah and I I love observing all these new tools that come out and see how

people are going about solving their own pain points and I just love that everyone is sharing what they're doing with a community and you know you can use it like people anyone can use the

PRD it has like 10,000 uses or something like that it yeah it's really exciting what's your take on Notebook LM oh my goodness I absolutely amazing

aming I I came across it and I made a post on LinkedIn and it got like three four million impressions cuz it's outstanding that it can generate an AI

generated podcast with two people talking about something and my friend is studying to be a lawyer and she literally uploaded three four books on

it like the PDFs and then it generated the study guide for her and FAQ for her and now they have a cool new feature

which is they allow you to um interfere in the podcast and ask a question and they live answer back as if someone is now calling you and me and you know they're asking a question um yeah it's

just fascinating and you know if you take a step back from a strategic perspective it's you know it's an AI agent that's buil there to be your research fellow your study body and

they've done such a good job it's just phenomenal I love this team it's called it's the labs team team and it's one of the best teams I think at Google do amazing work there's so many different

places Google is building AI we just talked about Labs team there you're in Google home there's obviously the whole deep mine organization building your

foundational models in Gemini there's so many other pockets of it can you just describe to us how what is uh what is it like inside Google as an

aipm um these big th companies are so big and they have internal communities where you know you can Network and you can meet other folks doing your job and

you can create circles and you know support each other and I just absolutely love love it when companies really provide this sort of support um so yeah I think it's great to have a company

where you can just reach out to anyone and say hey let's grab coffee let's discuss what's on top of mine how things gr on your end let's learn let's share resources let's make introductions um I

think successful companies need to have this culture in order to to keep people happy and in order to keep innovating because especially in a fastpaced domain

like you know AI you got to have these strong bonds and connections and network in order to be able to be efficient and and innovate as I say so it's um yeah it's great to be a part of it and all

the companies I've worked for had this strong sense of community is important what's your process for determining when AI is actually the right solution to a given problem what I tell people is that

you shouldn't use AI for the sake of using AI you should only use AI if it's the best possible way to solve a user

paino I was um coaching this um the startup the other day and they essentially have um a travel app that generates an nightray for you based on you know who you are and where you're

going and they told me hey where do we find enough data to train our model and I said said have you validated that this is a good idea in the first place they're like well you know we first want

to train it see how it works I said no no no no no it's a product you have to just hard code The Experience get some feedback make sure this is what people want and then go ahead and worry about

implementation so I mean in the same way I ask people and my students to know how you know what AI can do for you and I

put this little table together so on the left you can see what this superpowers of gen are so learning from massive user content and automated content Generation

all it synthesis distillation Etc on the right you have more you know traditional stuff like smart matching and nlu NLP

automated workflows like the one we saw so if the problem you have in hand for the users um can be solved by anything

else in an okay way you don't need to go through and Implement AI but if AI is the only way to solve this user pain

points and really impacting users then go for it so I think you know to answer the question just to summarize you got to really understand the superpowers AI

brings in the table and only then even consider using AI so let's not use AI for the sake of using AI let's not fall into the shiny object trap cuz you know

this is destined for a disaster seems like a lot of us as consumers have seen that in products where they just shove AI into a product

it's like what this is worse than the other solution you had 100% 100% yeah one of the hardest parts of being

an aipm and just building AI products in general is thinking through your product strategy what is your approach when you're putting together a product strategy how do do you come about it

what is your thinking process and then how do you like to finally present it to people very good question um I mean you know AI doesn't really

change the Strategic thinking right but I think it always we always come down to think about the mission what you're trying to achieve and why who it's for

and then is AI going to help me get there faster better sooner if if I don't adopt AI am I going to stay behind compared to other folks I think there's

a lot of figuring out what's happening in the landscape and looking into the competitors um and you know that question comes up so often which is you

know do you build or do you buy and but I tell people if you want to ask yourself that first you need to be 100% sure you want to adopt Ai and get into this whole process because this can change everything this can kill your

company this can um you know it's just so important so yeah I started with a mission figure out whether it's a good idea or not and my

friend interviewed for um director of aipm at Apple I think it was like a while ago and the first question they asked was okay so what would you do with

AI in our family of UPS like that that was the question that Broad and she had to take a step back and answer in a strategic way and say okay well why are we doing this is this the right time is

this the right way what do competitors do and are there any external factors that should prevent us from getting into a air right now how does our current

stack um look like if you adopt AI do you need to change everything do you have the infrastructure needed do you have the talent needed is it going to be worth it in the end can we sustain any

hits if we don't so it's all these it's kind of a checklist um you have to go through but yeah Mission I think is the number one and making sure you fulfill your mission at the end of the day do

you find yourself having to write a lot of strategy documents on every single thing I write there's always a framing and it's just

so crucial to frame the problem and say here's the problem here's why it matters in the larger picture and you here's how you quantify this you you have to start

like that because if you don't start like that you tend to lose sight you get too much in your weeds and you always need to keep coming back too why

what are the common pitfalls you've seen in AI product development um let's see there's a very interesting concept which is the concept of the mvq which

means the minimum viable quality and you know there's no right or wrong as to when you're ready to take something out there in the wild um but

it peaceful is thinking that you know you be you need to be perfect in order to launch and you know you're going to have spent so much money and effort on

like data and all these things and at the end of the day you need to launch early and get feedback um if people are afraid of the you know the the user experience not being optimal just gate

something tell people hey this is only for a few trusted folks and we need your feedback there's going to be hallucinations I think on the first day of Del they were saying hey be careful

there's hallucinations give us feedback I'm now using chbt Sora to generate videos and Open the eyes soras and you know it's it's great to see there's no

more significant hallucinations but um yeah it's definitely a strategy to open it up gradually to the the public how do you see the role of product management evolving with AI so I we're talking

about the AI enhanced PM now and what is great is that you can it's it's like having something that helps you jump faster and higher and then you do more

of the work then so your you spend more of your actual brain on things that matter versus doing the tedious things so I think we're going to have way more hacks like the ones I showed you and we

all have our own constellation of personalized tools and hacks that help us in our day today and it's going to help us move faster be more productive and I know I think that they have more

fun let's say I also love you know new ways to collaborate with other folks and um I I don't think I've seen a lot of tools that can help folks collaborate with each other I know the notion had

some little functionality so I'm excited to see more agentic tools that can help me collaborate better with other people and get alignment but um yeah I'm

excited about the future of En hun PMS the agentic part of it I feel like is the one that we keep getting sold like dares talking about agents will be the future even I think Mark Benny off

recently talking about agents will be the future but I personally haven't been using too much of those agents yet is the technology just not there is that coming or have you been using them at

all the technology is there and I feel companies can finally fulfill the the chatbot Vision that they once had because Hardware is there software is

there and I just think you know companies are still trying to figure out what an agent means for them but you know if you're using grammarly and suddenly there's a little pop up and you

go and it's like hey I think you should do this that is an agent in a way or if you know you drive A tes line and has the self-driving and it's like hey I I stopped or I'm turning right because you

know I want to go faster or something like that that is an agent so I think atending AI is already around it's just not as obvious cuz people you know in people's minds an agent is something

that talks to you and you know has this like voice at all times but it doesn't have to be that so we already have a gingi but we don't have multi-agents yet

like different agents collaborating with each other a good example is I was trying to call my Wi-Fi um you know company the other day and there was a a

wait time and I had to wait on the phone and I waited for an hour until someone picked up and I didn't say hi immediately and they hung up so I'd love if they had an agent and I had an agent

and the Agents can talk to each other and say yep someone is ready is is marily ready yes okay let's go so I'm excited for the multi-agent era as well

oh gosh soon we're going to have agentic instructors and agentic newsletter writers too yeah yeah let's see maybe someone can teach my courses instead of me I

don't know what skills do you feel like product managers should focus on developing to stay relevant explore and experiment 2025 is

the year of experimentation like try out all these new tools adapt them on your day-to-day don't be afraid to change your workflows and your processes you know it's rough

being in a job for 10 years and doing things a certain way and then suddenly you're asked either by your company or um you know you on your own want to change something that's a very big part

of yourself so yeah don't worry about change adapted and don't worry about admitting that you know you don't know everything and you don't understand and everything and just ask for help from your community and go shadow people and

do all these things we were talking about what excites you the most about the future of AI and product development how fast it is and how

unpredictable it is because you know it's been such a long time since I saw something and I said oh my God what just happen you these are H

moment I think notebook Alm is something that really created that for me um or you know Gemini the new multimodal functionality where it can see what you

can see as you walk with it and it says oh you know here's what you're looking for or if you write a math equation it's like yeah this is you know some crazy math you can doly so um I think it's you

know how it surprises me and inspires me um very often so I want to talk about merily for a little bit now we've been talking so

much about AI product management so you are a mom you have a full-time job at Google which most people know it's not

usually a 40-hour a week job and you have courses how do you manage it all I Rely a lot on these AI tools

um I find that for my courses specifically I put together the content and the curriculum of what I wanted to teach and I think it was that very first

push that took a while but then after it was kind of more um you know it came more organically like students would recommend little tweaks so I would change them it wouldn't take that long

um also I now have a team that helps me there's um you know I founded the AI product Academy I have a community manager I have an admissions manager I have a strategist some like growth so I

I delegate a lot and it's it's a wonderful yeah it's a side business that works well and I do what I like most which is they um appear on the live

sessions and answer questions and yeah it it works well but AI tools definitely have helped me so much so much what's your approach to building

out this side business when did you first decide okay I'm going to do this as a side thing and then when did you decide okay I'm even going to hire a team and really Double Down triple down

on this it's interesting I always loved education like when I was doing my PhD I thought I legitimately thought I could

get in Academia um I I did an experiment my MVP was I went on invent bright I created a technical product management

webinar for like two hours and I charged I don't know like $20 per person or something and I shared it somewhere I didn't have any following them and it

got sold out within I a few minutes you know I went live it was the first time I was running something live with so many people and it was just so am the energy

and that interactivity with people that are there for the same purpose which is to learn was just so mesmerizing that I said okay I got to have more and I

treated it like a product and I realized okay so what would it take um and then I switched from technical product management to AI product management which is my Niche and I put together

maiden's very first AI product management certification and it was so nice to find this platform because you know it kind of handles a lot in the and like you know stripe connections and the

syllables and all that stuff and it it made life so easy so I did my first cohort January 2022 um it was like a month before I had

my baby it was very interesting um and it was just wonderful it was a cohort-based class and you know I had set an upper limit so it wasn't many people was like

20 30 people and then I realized okay my priority is to maintain quality and us your experience and in order to maintain these both things I can do it

alone so interestingly enough from that cohort there was this person that said hey I love what you're doing can I can I help you I said actually yes so that's

how I found team members and it's people that are passionate about Ai and I realized that you know we're better together um you just can't do it all and

you know took a Le Leap of Faith with them and they've been with me for like three years or at this point it's it's been great wow that's awesome yeah the average small business does not have

that type of tenure yeah yeah so no it's it's great and I'm learning as I go and it's it's been the most rewarding you know thing I've I've done honestly how do you balance and I've

noticed you do this very tactfully by the way how do you balance having this side business with your full-time job how do you handle the conversations at Google how do you handle drawing the

right boundary lines oh um well I schedule a lot of my post like I will spend in the weekend I'll stay like for two hours and I will

schedule things for like two months ahead type of thing sometimes I I LinkedIn posts and I forgot what I had written and people start you know my phone starts getting comments I'm like

wait what is this for I don't remember um so scheduling is a very important one my newsletter on sapac I schedule a lot

there um and and I only teach um outside work hours of course or you know there is this acing component for my courses that happen during work hours but it's

it's all automated like I don't do anything so I just work smart as they say and or when I can't work because I'm at work um my team is active on slack

and responds to messages and all things so there's a lot of planning like a lot of planning Logistics and operations but once you streamline it I think it's it's

kind of working and and cly is the best tool that exists ever because I use it a lot for you know um it somehow sync to

my work calendar as well and um it it blocks the calendar when I work but yeah it really helps me be better at operations yeah and is there anything

else you try to take in mind with the types of social media posts you're writing about or the types of topics you talk about I I I am an educator as I say I

like educating like today I was thinking you know what that Rice framework for prizing features I don't think it includes AI so maybe we should change it

a bit and add an A in there um just for the AI complexity and I just come up with little ideas like this and it really helps me because I can you know I

create a little graph I write a little blur and post it so all my thing is about education and it's not about comment think oh what's happening out there it's more like hey I like teaching

here's what's in my head and I like distilling it for you um and I think you know if anyone is starting their creator journey I think you got to find your identity and you shouldn't get

influenced by what other people are doing um so my identity is teaching educating is not pitching you know commenting on you know what's happening

in the world and yeah I found my it's good would you ever consider going full-time as a

Creator um I had tried it for 2 months I think and I it was good it was great but I will

say Bay Area two kids and all that stuff I needed some stability in my life so so I don't think I was ready for you know young kids and doing that um but maybe

when they're a bit older I will do it if somebody is an aspiring course creator would you recommend Maven to them oh absolutely it's uh they minimize

the work and the effort that you need to do and it's this wonderful community of instructors you get access to it's yeah it's a fantastic fantastic platform how would you think about somebody who wanted to create a course

what would you recommend to them how they should think about you know packaging a course and creating the content for it experimenting literally opening something for 20 people

the very first thing you want to do is create a form and post on your network and say hey why would you like to learn from me like just that you will get so many responses and you will say okay

here's you know what people would likely be interested in here's I can talk about this um and then ask them um do you want something like two hours do you want a

two we thing three week thing um I have a six- we course and certification um and the reason it's long is because it has a Capstone uh project portion where

people can create their own you know product and Pitch it to VCS like a demo day um but some people do two days like sheay has is amazing he does a do day course that's wildly successful on the

weekends um but yeah you have to experiment and see what your um audience wants treat it like a product it is it

absolutely is yes how do you suggest Market a course it sounds like LinkedIn and suback might be important marketing lovers for you is Maven itself one with its lightning

lessons how are you thinking about getting students the first thing is making sure you have something that has good quality

like that's number one if you're like okay I'm ready to open it up get 20 people 30 people to see what they have improve it then get these people to

recommend and refer other people um so that you can get like a little first deegree network of some sort to start with um there are so many growth tactics

and strategies um Maven for sure has a Marketplace and they have like a training courses page that um I was a part of um there are Partnerships you

know with um folks like Lenny had a partnership with Maven and you know they he featured a lot of courses um but yeah I I just like posting on LinkedIn and on

saback and people find me through that and then they find a course and then they they sign up eventually um yeah that's kind of my my funnel but I don't I don't think I'm doing as much as I

could um and I I'm kind of guilty of it but um yeah I think I'm doing as much as I want and can handle right now while having a full-time job Indeed

I feel like you're doing amazing stuff it's cons it's very fun to see those things come across my feet and I made great creators right that's the best part like I met you I've met so many so

many amazing posts when it comes to being a Creator you know there's courses there's newsletters there's

YouTube there's podcasts there's so many millions of options how did you land on courses because I always wanted to be in education like it's something I always

loved and it comes naturally to me um I tried the Tik Tok you know sort of thing it didn't work out for me I tried Instagram and I think you and I were talking about Instagram once yes um it

just doesn't come naturally to me to create the reals but um writing does come naturally and I'm actually um writing a book as well right now on this

topic and you know LinkedIn is a wonderful way to express yourself and um yeah I that's that's where I developed an audience so I I do this and

then and then I moved to sapst and I'm still growing it's actually I have 30,000 people which is shocking so I'm uh I'm going to continue with LinkedIn

and sapac that's my my combination let's say the LinkedIn economy is so powerful there are so many people on this podcast that we've talked about that have

created their entire businesses some of them gone fulltime others like you supplementing their income off of LinkedIn I think it's it's probably unheralded just how much economic value

it's creating oh yeah absolutely absolutely what are your tips for creators on LinkedIn don't copy other people's Styles don't

copy other people's need just find who you are and there's it's just so easy to get FAL on LinkedIn because of like the the

titles that are massive and you know how people are positioning certain things um just get in do your thing figure out you

know what your is and be authentic um yeah I I definitely follow like the Trap like many years ago of like going on linked thing and looking at you know people's profil I was like oh my God and

I realized you know what it's you know you have to bring your own identity there and create your own narrative and ever since I I did this I you know I never had that that fomo again but it's

it's so easy to fall into this trap so that's it find your own Niche oh and also it's not going to gum like on the single day like if you post every day a

week you're going to get 10 likes or 12 likes um what two new followers but you really need to stick through it to see

any result and and even then you shouldn't do it because of the audience you should do it because it gives pleasure to you CU if it doesn't at the end of the day like there's no there's

no reason doing it and it's going to come across in new post as well so it's um yeah it's interesting how this works so consistency very important and have

no expectation that's I had I had no expectations that anything would happen and if anything I was saying oh my God I'm so late in this and there's so many people and what am I going to do it's

all saturated and I realized you know what at the end of the day you know I just want to write and I don't care if you know one or two or 10 or 100 people are going to respond and but yeah I met

amazing people and it's been it's been amazing for let's move on to the lightning round what is your favorite interview question of product

managers very silly what's your favorite product and how would you improve it people get people prepare for all these very complicated things so when they hear this it's kind of like wait I don't

I feel people don't prepare for this question so that's yeah really I really like this question what's your favorite book with lessons for product

people I really like Lenny's book he took all his learnings from his newsletter and he put together that wonderful orange book I think I have it somewhere actually yeah and he donated the proceeds to

charity so you can feel good about buying it too yeah what's a newsletter you anticipate hitting your inbox tldr product It's a Wonderful

newsletter I absolutely love it what's a new product you've started using in enjoy I need to send you a link there's a

discount code um it's a trash can that's smart and you put in all the food scraps and it compost them into D that you can use in your backyard and there's no

fruit flies and there's no smell and I no longer take trash out cuz you know it lasts four weeks worth of food scraps it's unbelievable so that's my my thing

that's amazing I hadn't heard that one before what product feature or product are you most proud of shipping very good question um I think if you use this um you know

the Google home devices there's so many speech features in there I was a part of so I think you know that the speech recognition Ono is just um fantastic and it still amazes me how well it um it

works but yeah I was a part of a massive team so I can get credit but that's what I'm most proud about what's one particularly memorable

product failure that you learned from I think it was something that I really wanted to do it was some like a clubhouse type of thing and I just

couldn't find a product Market fit so it you know it never launched I had created a little prototype it was it was for my own startup um and I'm glad I didn't launch it because it didn't make sense

it was before Clubhouse became a thing and then when Clubhouse came out during Co I was like oh this is this is they did a good job there but um I'm glad I didn't launch it at the

time where can people find you online and how can they help yes I am on LinkedIn I'm on Twitter and I have my own sap stack m.p stack.com and I have

my bocam AI product management certifications on on Maven um and yeah we out I always love meeting people and giving talks and or I'm looking for

instructors that are willing to come give guest talks to my um to my course and yeah let's let's talk about aipm anytime awesome and if you guys haven't

seen it we wrote a newsletter piece together last year it's some like five or 6,000 words it's one of my most popular newsletter posts of all time merily had a bunch of amazing insights

for instance she mentioned that there are all these domain specific types of apms we walk through her taxonomy of all of those types of aipm in the piece and there's much more so check that out

merily thank you so much for being here thank you for having me that was so much fun thank you so much for listening if you found this valuable you can

subscribe to the show on Apple podcast Spotify or your favorite podcast app also please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find out about the

podcast you can find all the past episodes or learn more about the show at product- growth.com see you in the next episode