Becoming an AI PM | Aman Khan (Arize AI, ex-Spotify, Apple, Cruise)

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/df5ed99e8bb5c561

What if the product manager came to the meeting with prototypes? What if you come to the design team and instead of a PRD, you actually already have your mocks. With AI, it's super feasible for a product manager to come to a meeting and say, hey, I already have some ideas here. I wanted to mock them up this way. They're probably wrong, but at least the starting point now looks a little bit higher.
resolution for people that want to say pivot their career to be an AIPM, what
Help you move in that direction? It's almost counterintuitive, but I actually think it's probably easier now to break into AI product management than it was before. There are these incredible videos that are being put out right now on YouTube on how to build an app in like an hour. That would not have been possible even a year ago.
Before you actually probably needed to have more of a foundation and background in machine learning to get a shot at one of these companies building AI products. What have you seen separates the typical AI product manager from, say, the top five percent? Really the question you have to ask yourself is.

Today, my guest is Aman Khan. Aman is director of product at Arise AI.
And over the course of his PM career, he's focused on building products in the AI space.
Including at Spotify on the ML platform team.
And rolls a cruise, zipline, and apple.
He's also very intentionally stayed an individual contributor, which feels like a trend, especially with the rise of AI tooling making PMs much more productive.
And companies cutting back on management layers.
And so in our conversation, we go deep on these two topics.
how to get into AI and how to become an AI product manager.
what the different types of AI product managers are, how to thrive as an AI PM.
And what Amon has learned about how to be successful and continue his career as an individual contributor long term.
When asked people on Twitter and LinkedIn who their favorite individual contributor product manager is, Amon was near the very top of the list, and so I was really excited to get him on the podcast and to learn from his experience.
If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously.
With that, I bring you a monster.
Khan.

Amon, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.
Amazing. Thank you so much for having me, Lenny. It is truly an honor to be here.
So let me give a little context on this conversation.
I put out a call on Twitter and LinkedIn asking people for their favorite IC product managers.
And you came up near the top of the list across both Twitter and LinkedIn. So I knew that I needed to meet you.
And you're
Super interesting in in a couple of ways. One is if I think about the Venn diagram of some of the most interesting trends in product right now.
Uh you're kind of at the center of
AI
And stay in I C, an individual contributor for a long time.
And
My sense is a lot of
PMs or thinking about how do I get into
AI and how do I do more AI work?
Two
There's a trend of just like ICs, super ICs, less managers.
And
You've been doing AI for a long time. You've been in I C for basically your whole career, very intentionally.
So
With that, there's a few things I wanna spend our time on.
One is how to get into
AI how to become an AI PM, essentially.
Two is how to thrive as an AIPM.
And three is how to
Thrive as an I C.
Outside of AI, but I know AI.
Plays into that.
Broadly, how does that?
So
Yeah, that sounds great. I mean
I think that was like a crazy moment of just seeing how many people piled on to that to those posts and then
You know, so our discussion back and forth on on this threat and
I
I thought it was like super interesting. It was like this combination of
You know, product and AI where I I
just happens to be like I think where the space is headed or you know what what seems to be
catching so much attention. So yeah, I'm I'm super excited to dive into into that and try and share a little bit what you know that I've learned along the way as well.
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Let's start with
getting into AIPM, becoming an AIPM
There's this term that we hear a lot in AIPM. There's like boot camp certifications become an AIPM.
What's the simplest way for people to understand what that means other than just it's a PM that works with AI? Is there something more concrete that you think about when you see that title?
So product manager is responsible.
for bringing together, you know, design, engineering.
The Pizdev people, operation sales.
What have you at the organization and going and shipping impact. So you're responsible for representing the customer.
And ultimately getting to a solution to solve their problems.
I think in addition to that, the AI component is I really break it down into maybe
Three flavors of AI product management.
So the first is
AI
uh platform PMs.
And that's kind of where I find myself.
Uh these are
People who are building tools for AI engineers.
Uh so for context, you know, I work at a company called Arise.
Uh, we're a observability and evaluation platform for
Artificial intelligence. We've been around for a few years. We started with machine learning.
uh and you know sort of ranking, regression, classification models basically
Any recommender system or black box you might find in an application.
And we've slowly been translating and pivoting over into
Broadly speaking, any type of AI. These days it's a lot of large language models.
And so I think that, you know, with the rise of
All of these tools that are being built on top of
you know, open AIs APIs or anthropic APIs.
Basically any tools on top of the large language model providers.
There's it's actually pretty clunky. Like these these interfaces are pretty new.
We've only really had people building on top of large language models for a couple of years.
And so the whole space is really nascent.
And the tools that you would use to build on top of and understand
Is my app doing the thing I expect it to do?
Is is really, really early.
So that's sort of the space I'm I'm focused on around
you know, enabling AI engineers to understand the
impact and you know, if you're an AIPM at another company, one of our customer companies
You understand that, you know, when you go to leadership
that my my app is actually doing something and do doing what I expect it to do.
on the end business.
I think on top of that there's
Also AI product PMs.
And AirPod PMs are really the flavor of PM where
The core product is centered around
Yeah.
And an example of that would actually be something like a chat GPT.
Uh so the core kind of tech, or actually a another good example would be, you know, you you had Riz on and Notebook LM is a really great example of that too.
And what I mean by that is the core experience is enabled by
the model underneath the hood.
That's sort of the secret sauce. It's like
You know.
You you have these researchers and engineers really pushing the boundaries of technology forward.
in AI and then your job is really to
Package that technology.
and make it consumable for either a business or enterprise
or a consumer
to really utilize that tech in some way.
So that's sort of the AI powered PM role.
Where
The core competency, the core tack.
is really the uh you know that what what you're packaging in.
and distributing.
I think the the third type of PM here is really, you know, the one we were talking about a little bit earlier, which is
Uh this concept of like you're an AI
Power PM.
Uh, and to that end, I think that you're going to be enabled by AI technology across the entire stack of the role you might already be doing as a product manager. And we'll get into like a little bit what that means as well.
Uh, have some ideas and thoughts around that.
But um really what what an AI
How our product manager in my mind does is
You're not really responsible for building the core model from the ground up.
Maybe you don't
Hab the access to
the resources or research teams that you might have at like a Google or Open AI.
But you can still utilize
uh large language models or models of any kind really
to build an experience that is best for your customers.
And that's really, I think, where a lot of PMs will also start trending towards
As AI becomes more pervasive from a technology standpoint.
It almost feels a little bit like AI will be as common as the database to some degree for SaaS applications.
And so I think that's really where
Yeah. If you really break it down.
I kinda see in the future, you know, in the near future
Most PMs are probably gonna be one flavor of an AI product manager. Either building tools for other PMs or other other companies that are deploying AI. Maybe you're behind one of
you know, the cutting edge models that's
going to go and, you know, be the next notebook outline.
Or you're building around, you know, a transformer of some kind or a GPT model.
that's doing some part of the work that you would want to do to solve a pro customer's problem.
Let's actually make it even more.
Real. What are some tools you use in your
PM work to be more efficient and productive.
I'm obsessed with
Cursor, I'm obsessed with Replet.
These are tools I use all the time to just really build a prototype and
try to understand myself what's possible.
That kind of is is super enabling for a product manager to show up with
A functional prototype.
The thing you go and ship in production.
But at least the buttons work.
And maybe it's like wired up.
You know, reasonably correctly to tell to tell a story.
There's
A really uh great tool. A lot of folks might be familiar with Vercel if you're trying to create a landing page.
So Vercelle now has uh a sort of
starting point called V Zero, which allows you to type in a prompt and get a really beautiful landing page on top of that.
And so I and doesn't have to be just a landing page. If you prompt it correctly and iterate with it.
You could actually get a pretty good working UI as well. So I think that kind of gives you a good starting point for some of those.
initial mock ups you might be having with
The design team.
I also think if you're designing interfaces
You might want to use
A I for graphic design.
Perhaps you're trying to come up with a logo or you're trying to come up with
Something that
R you know, resembles almost like the user story you want to tell in some way and make it like a visual user story.
I think that becomes so much more approachable with tools like mid journey.
Or even Dolly.
Uh and it's really at at your fingertips to how well can you prompt this thing to get you the output that you want.
So to me it really depends. I think if you're an experienced company
You're a little you're you you might trend a little bit more visual.
Tools like image generation might be really powerful too.
Um, so that's one example. And then I think even for like three D modeling
You know.
There's some emerging tools there.
I'm definitely not the expert on that domain, but
There's a lot in terms of you know, if you're building physical products, that's gotten a lot easier as well.
Okay, awesome. I wanna come back to kinda where we started here. So
You've sharp AI product managers.
We've been focusing on the third, which I wanted to get to and I love that we went there, which is just how to be more productive efficient.
better as a PM using all these amazing tools that now exist.
The first two are
Just to refresh folks' memory, one is becoming kind of basically an infrastructure PM. That's something that you're doing, basically building like the base models and
Tools.
And then the other is
building uh the UX and actual like consumer experience of a product that happens to integrate AI to make it better.
So
I'm guessing when people think AIPM that's probably where they're like, I wanna build
Products that deeply integrate AI.
For people that want to say pivot their career to be an AIPM.
What helped you move in that direction?
Slash what
Would you recommend folks try to do and learn?
to be able to get a job.
In one of those two buckets.
Yeah, I f I feel a little bit like an outsider on the space myself. So I I say
You know, I wasn't related at all to you know, the field I studied was mechanical engineering.
I didn't really take computer science courses or
Uh, you know, have to learn a lot of that on my own.
And I did I didn't take like machine learning or AI courses either. I don't have a PhD or masters in the subject.
But
Coming back to the to to both types of product managers you just described, there's
The AI
PM who's building infrastructure for other AI engineers.
And there's the AI
you know, powered product manager who's building AI.
On it's really.
And I think in both cases you care about the end customer.
At the end of the day
You really want to be in love with the problem. I know Yuri said that. That was like a great great great quote in my mind as well.
Oh
If you're in love with the problem
You're trying to push the boundaries of what's possible with technology to solve that problem.
And for me, I just I I really became kind of obsessed with trying to help.
Really technical users.
AI engineers, data scientists.
With problems that I thought were
you know, not super challenging. Like how do I build a dashboard to understand
how my model is working. That can't be that hard to do, right?
And then as you get deeper
the complexity sort of starts to emerge in that part of the stack.
And you have to realize you're you're pushing, you're pushing, you're actually responsible for pushing technology forward in some ways. You're trying to
S what's possible.
And keep pushing the space forward to solve that customer problem.
I think the same thing is true for
AI product.
you know, product managers meaning
You know, you're really trying to design the best customer experience.
Really solve your customers' problems.
And
I think if you are obsessed with that.
And you spend time just trying to realize what would an ideal experience look like that I'm trying to solve.
You'll kind of find tools along the way to help.
uh you know un unbox that really that that problem. So
I think if we like take take an example of that, like let's imagine that you're you know, you're working for a company
that um you might might be having customers that have like customer support problems or people coming in with complaints.
And when you think about like the surface area of
Customer support. It's it's not that great. Like you usually have to
you know, type in some questions with a chat bot that's like right routing, you know, perhaps incorrectly
You know, you to some document to go solve a problem.
Or if you're trying to call in
You have to like describe your problem, but you're not really sure if you're being heard correctly.
Uh, you you there might be super long wait times.
And if you're the product manager of that experience
I think an ideal
product experience really looks like.
A customer reaches you
With a problem.
And you're able to really
you know, solve that problem for them.
And it doesn't really matter what's in between.
You you kind of want to reduce the friction of that as much as possible.
And so now when you think, okay, let's assume that I'm starting with
Uh A phone call.
There's a ton of tools that it that are starting to emerge. And I think a really cutting edge one from the last couple of weeks has been
OpenAI releasing a real time API.
And the real time API is basically a voice API.
Where you can provide some text and
Almost have this real time experience with the bot that
is actually AI generated.
And if you use and if you're a consumer, you could even try that out in the application yourself. You can open up ChatGPT.
And if you're a plus subscriber, you can try this uh cutting edge sort of voice chat bot experience.
And why is this interesting? Because
If you're a consumer and you're and and you're trying out technology and you're trying out AI technology and trying to push
The boundaries of what's possible.
I think you can kinda have that like light bulb aha moment of
I can take this thing that
Kind of feels like it's like early, but it's
Could be something here.
And go take it to my team and say
You know, maybe it's possible for us to use this thing.
And so I think that's really what
Uh the this whole space is about
I wanna underscore that
It's really a you know.
You're really driven by your own curiosity.
And your curiosity
can push you in a lot of different directions in terms of the types of tools you might want to pick up.
Or uh you know, for yourself or even implement in your own product.
So
I think like it it truly is this opportunity for
For people to
you know, see what drives them and try and find the tools that that really help.
you know, make that experience possible.
To pull on this thread a little bit more.
Say someone wants to like apply. I wanna be an I A I P M
There's kinda two questions here. One is
What
Do you
recommend they specifically learn
skill wise, technical wise
to have some chance at becoming an AIPM.
If that's like a thing versus just like, hey, just your PM, build
awesome products and they happen to integrate AI, that might be the best solution, like if that's your advice.
Uh definitely say that.
I th I think you're you're hitting on something on on a point that's
super relevant to today, which is it almost feels
you know, really competitive now to be in tech and to be a product manager.
And
The struggle is, you know.
Really
To your point.
What are the skills I should have?
In the to you know, to really
kind of even apply for this role in the first place.
And then how do I stand out as an applicant? I kind of feel like these are maybe two distinct things.
It's you kind of want to start with the foundation of what is what is machine learning, what is AI, what's the
The the
The knowledge that has really powered this
Evolution in technology.
And you kind of want to keep driving in that direction with what are your interests. So if there's really two dimensions.
You're trying to understand okay.
What are the things I need to know?
And then how can I use that in the the problems I'm trying to solve or the the industries that interest me.
So
I think there's like this propensity of you want to be driven by that curiosity. So start you could start with your fundamentals of.
looking at uh videos on YouTube of
you know, Andre Carpathi talking about the foundation of Alliance. It's this great amazing resource.
He put out this video uh you know a little while ago.
Yeah, it's about an hour long.
Uh, but you know, you could put it into notebook L and maybe get like a more succinct version. But the idea is that you can, you know, really understand the technology in terms of what how it works and what the boundaries are.
And then I think that the other dimension is just trying to use the tools to figure out yourself.
How can I push the boundaries of what's possible?
So I think the combination of those two things are really what drive the skill level here.
Uh
There's no maybe maybe to bring this back to an earlier point, there's
There is no program, you know, there's no college degree on product management.
So there definitely isn't a college degree on AI product management.
And so I think the way that you stand out is through
showing interest in the space and and building your own skill set.
And skilled stack.
Around
What is the foundation of AI and how do I apply it to the industry I'm interested in?
And
That's actually related to the second point of
How do I stand out as an applicant?
And it kind of feels like this moment where
You can actually go and have a you know almost like a portfolio of products that you've tried to build and maybe they're just prototypes.
But they really help you stand out to a hiring manager.
They might be deciding, you know, who's the person I want to bring on board.
And maybe like you know, to zoom out for a sec.
As someone who's been a part of the like hiring process for
AI PMs before.
I think the hiring process is really designed to
Understand sort of three things about a person.
And that's
Can this person do the job I'm hiring them to do?
Are they excited to do the work that we do here?
And do I like to work with them?
And so I think by having this portfolio where you've you know, if you have that foundation of
of AI and ML.
uh of at least being able to describe what the technology can do.
And then you have this portfolio of products to actually
Answering
Both of those questions for the hiring manager even before they talk to the
So you're kind of shortcutting the process.
By showing them
how you think and how you like to spend time and what your interests are and hobbies are.
And then all you have to do is really nail that phone interview.
Uh and you know, as long as you're, you know, like kind of match the culture of the company.
I think you've actually shortcut it part one and part two, which is what most interview processes are designed to do.
Which is why they're like this sort of
You know, you have to go talk to like three different people to see can you do marketing, can you do engineering, can you do
Yeah, like for product management.
And so
I that's really my advice is really
You could start with building your skill stack.
And
You know, starting with the foundation. Up.
Леті дrive you.
And then turn that into a portfolio that you can use as an applicant to stand out.
So what it I love about this is basically
But
I wouldn't say the the hack to get hired as an AIPM, but
Just like the way you will
come across as clearly this person
Uh is worth.
paying attention to is you have actually built things with AI, like actual products.
Especially now that it's much easier to do.
As a yeah, you can use tools like the ones you mentioned.
Cursor, V0, Replit.
You can uh storyboard out your ideas using the stuff you mentioned, mid journey and dolly and things like that.
So I love that. It's super tactical. So it's almost like if you're applying for an AIPM role.
And you don't have a products that you have.
Built.
And ideally like put out into the world, you're not gonna have a good time.
I actually think it's
probably easier now to break into
AI product management than it was before.
So let me kinda hit on that point a little bit more, which is
Before you actually probably needed to have more of a foundation and background in machine learning to get a shot at one of these companies.
Building AI products.
They require
a depth of knowledge in machine learning and
you know, types of models and you were probably more deeply involved in like
what should this the training data look like and the split of the data and how do I launch this thing and all of this infrastructure
But really now an AI product manager is someone who's building experiences
around or for other AI product people.
And so
I'll I'll kinda you know, an example there would be
There are these incredible videos that are being put out right now on YouTube on uh how to build an app in like an hour.
And uh and and you know
I I credit Greg Eisenberg, he's really kind of like pioneered some of this format.
Uh
You know, he'll he'll show up and just say, Here's how I built a product within like forty five minutes and kinda how you use the same tools we just described.
And I kinda have this like
Tongue in cheek example a little bit too. That's that's pretty relevant, which was
I was trying to describe
rapplet to someone to to a friend of mine.
Who actually uh you know, was basically saying
I don't really have time to learn another tool right now. There's it feels like there's so much in the space.
And I think there's really nothing better than just showing someone what's possible. So I open up my phone
And Replit you can just go to as a URL on your on your phone.
And what you can do is type in a prompt to their replet agent.
And it will literally build a website for you and host it.
Within a matter of seconds.
And
What's really funny is I just kinda built this like example of like build me a sign up page for this newsletter.
And it did an actually pretty reasonable job on first pass, but there's things you want to do to keep iterating on it. So then it kind of prompted again, Oh, make it.
Look a little bit nicer, use these colours.
And within five minutes
I had a working prototype for a sign up page that I built on my phone.
That would not have been possible.
Even a year ago.
And I think the way that the technology is trending is things will keep getting easier.
And as a product manager, your curiosity is gonna keep pushing you forward.
So that you can be the person out there saying, Hey, did you see this cool thing that I try, you know, that I that I just pulled up and
You know, you're the really the one that's almost the expert on
Uh what's the cool new thing that you can go and apply to your company?
So
I think that's really part of the role too, is like being interested, genuinely curio curious of the space too.
I'm really happy you shared that. And that's
Reminds me, I'm just gonna go on a tangent here, I wanna get your take on this.
I had this kind of hot take a month ago or so that
There's the sense that as AI tooling emerged.
that product managers are screwed.
Why do you need product managers?
When you could just
build things, engineers could use all these tools, designers, like what's the point of a PM?
In a world where yeah, I can just build things for you.
And
I've realized it's exactly the opposite.
that you may not need any other function
If you have a PM.
Because if you think about it.
What are these AI tools amazing at? They're amazing at building things. You tell'em what to build, they build them.
The hardest part becomes knowing what to build.
Finding opportunities, problems people need solved.
And then articulating it very clearly.
to an AI tool what to build.
And then having the taste.
And a sense of what
is good and great and what will work in the market. And that's like exactly the job of a product manager.
So
I'm curious to hear your take if you agree with that. Basically that PMs are the best positioned
function to thrive in this world.
Yeah, I t I totally believe that. I think that
There's a sort of like feeling that executives might have or like VPs of companies might have of like we need to get into AI.
But the challenge is that, you know, there's this
uh inclination towards, you know, doing the same thing that's working so far.
And so I think the role of an AI pre
PM in this type of organization.
It is really to be the representative of how can we use these tools to their highest leverage.
And so if you kind of combine the earlier notes of like
You know, you know, what this technology is capable of.
You know the customer problems deply.
You're the representative of the customer at the company.
You're really in the best position to get the point across of what should go and get built.
And
I think that's that's a really powerful
you know, position to be in a company.
And then I'll kinda actually build on like
One of the core product skill sets that you know people uh you mentioned on your podcast too, which is
Influence.
And what this these tools really allow you to do is like up level, like max out that influence.
Meaning you can now communicate ideas kind of coming back to the prototype note to design, you can communicate ideas to engineering.
And you can communicate ideas to
the higher ups of the company
around what should go and get built. So I think
You know, when you can when you're able to translate
the idea to the person that you're trying to communicate it to.
These tools are really incredible at that and I think it
It allows an AI product manager to be super high leverage.
So
To me it's like
I I totally agree. Like being an AI product manager feels like the highest leverage position you could be in at the company.
Right now.
Especially in the age of AI.
Awesome. Okay.
I'm glad we agree there.
And
Which you just mentioned, we were talking about Mejica before we started recording and
One of her superpowers, and we'll link to her episode, is that she
is designer engineer PM. She can just do a lot of all of it.
And
that partly has been why she was has been so successful at
Figma and influencing leadership to build these products that they were like, I don't know if we need a slice product.
And so now everyone can be a Mexica, basically, but you can
Build and design.
As a PM. So anyway.
I think we
Gone down that road far enough.
I wanna shift a little bit to
Talking about how to thrive as an I AIPM. Say
You got into this role.
You're building with AI tools.
Or you're building platforms for folks to build on.
Let me ask kind of this let me try it this way.
What have you seen separates the typical
AI product manager from say the top five.
percent.
AI product managers.
We kinda talked about like
What are AI product managers? You know, how do you build AI powered products around
What the fundamental technology is.
I think there was this really interesting moment where
Um
You know, about two years ago, actually almost
Roughly to this time.
Chat GPT launches.
And I think
Everyone who kinda tried it out.
You know was
was pretty impressed by a couple of things. There was the the interface
Super easy to use. It felt really intuitive.
The model was pretty capable. It felt almost like human like.
Of course, that was actually an earlier model than what's even available today. And
When you look back on it, it's almost like looking at like the old iPhone or something, like
You kind of have to like have this moment of
Wow, that was really impressive at the time, but now if you try to use it, you're like, this thing sucks. You know, like it's like it doesn't even do half the stuff I get. You know you get kind of conditioned to
You know, it's technology continuing to get better.
But
When that moment happened
And it it did kind of feel like this iPhone moment around
AI products.
It was really interesting to see what happened next.
And what I mean by that is
You know, we're sitting at at um in sort of in the landscape at a place where
We get to see where a lot of other companies are building. So we have c you know, customers that are
Super well known household brands.
Um, Spotify and Instacard and these sorts of companies that
Yeah, people love and use every single day.
And what ended up happening was
You know, we we talked to a lot of folks of like well what are you what are you doing around you know building around this technology.
This really game changing
sort of shift.
Uh N A I.
And the first thing that everyone seemed to build
Was
Actually another chat GPT.
But on top of their own data.
And for some reason, every everyone gravitated towards this particular use case as all the AI product managers I knew were like, Oh, we're building like an internal chatbot.
On top of our knowledge base.
And it's gonna be able to answer questions and it's gonna be great.
And when you kinda look at like
The the products that were built.
Like
How much usage do they really have is is pretty I think like not very well understood. Like
Was that the right thing to do?
So
Coming back to your earlier question, like
How do you how do you kind of
Don't thrive as a you know, be of top five percent AI PM.
versus, you know, maybe an AIPM that
Isn't as stellar.
I actually think it's kinda coming back to that to that earlier point of don't do what everyone else is doing.
Just because it feels intuitive to go and like replicate this interface that
Feels really great and feels yeah.
Everyone's bought in because they're familiar with it.
Like it you really have to think.
Is this the thing our business needs right now?
Is this the problem that we need to go and solve?
And I think if you look deeper at that.
You actually find
That the interface for AI might look really different.
It won't necessarily look like a chat bot. It might look like you're trying to optimize or speed up a part of the process.
That humans have to do today.
that you can make their life easier.
And for us that was data analysis. We have to look at a lot of data.
To make decisions within our own company.
And so we decided to try to automate that. There is there's sort of, you know, we we did also ship a small chatbot just to understand how the tech worked.
But on top of that, our interface around AI looks so, so different.
And I think that a lot of the cutting edge sort of experiences around AI kind of look like that too.
They don't really always resemble
chat bots and and I think that that's
Really the question you have to ask yourself is what's the right interface?
when I'm designing a c a product like this. So what I'm hearing is if you're
Team.
is building something that's very similar to some other to a foundational models product, for example.
Probably a red flag, probably not gonna be a huge opportunity.
So optimize for things that feel different and new.
Anything else you want to add there,'cause I have a question. Yeah.
I think there's uh there's like
So that that's that's almost like a point of like
What did people do for the last two years? And now there's this moment of

Actually kind of happening again.
And uh
This moment is sort of happening around the term of like AI agents.
And I think again like
Yeah. I I think if you really look at it, um
Like
I aga I I actually bring up like Yuri's point again because I was listening to that episode. I thought that was so insightful of like
He gets so many emails every single day of like
We're AI for this, we're building an AI agent for that. But again, you're sort of
Trying to fit this technology.
To solve a problem that
You know, you're not really describing the problem, you're describing the solution, an AI agent to do something.
So
If you look at it, you know, does it really I'd really ask yourself, does it make sense to build an AI agent within our company?
Or
Is it just better to allow the foundation model companies to build this agentic layer within their technology?
А не є job is to make that experience.
So amazingly seamless in your existing product.
That it doesn't even feel like AI in the first place.
And I think that's really powerful. That's the area where
product managers can truly innovate because let's be honest
You're probably not gonna have those these cutting edge researchers that can go and design a model from the ground up.
Or maybe design some new technique to build a next agent, you know, framework.
But what you can do is take that technology.
and find a way to apply it in your organization.
And that's where I think the role of the AIPM really stands out.
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I imagine a lot of product leaders are hearing this and be like, Thank God, I need everyone on my team to hear this because
I am guessing every PM and every company is like
wants is like looking and proposing all these ideas, all these AI based ideas just because it's like, oh we gotta do AI.
Here's an idea, here's an idea, and there's all these people chasing
Yeah products.
And so I think this advice is really important is
And this has come out a number of times. People just
try to keep reminding folks, focus on the problem you're solving and AI is a tool to solve it, not
A I for blank just because
How have you found ways to find really interesting
actually good ideas for how to leverage AI within your company or companies you've seen as like hackathons.
Is it like
Here's we have our goals and just like make sure there's AI
parts to a solution.
Is there anything that would
practically that you find helpful in
Finding good ideas that are AI oriented.
There's sort of like
Three things you could do in
your company that I think will really
Yeah, if if you try to implement this tomorrow, you'd probably see start seeing those ideas coming back.
So
The first one is I you you actually brought up an earlier point of uh
How do I measure, you know, what what what should I be measuring? And I think that
PMs kind of gravitate towards metrics.
And I actually think that you know every AI PM actually needs a metric.
And
Every PM within a business is tasked with moving some business metric, but there actually isn't one for building prototypes with AI.
Which is really interesting. I've like talked to so many companies and I'm like, How do you measure
what the impact is of AI within your business. They're like, oh well, we're not expecting it to like move a business metric, not moving revenue.
So then how do you really measure if what you're doing is working?
And I think that's where you kinda need a metric of like how many shots are you taking in the first place.
And that kinda ties into like the the next point, which is
I think hackathons are great. I think that getting people to be hands on in the first place.
It really removes that.
feeling that this this technology is not approachable.
So the goal is really to get everyone in the organization to try to use this thing.
And I think that's really actually a great position for an AI PM to be in as well.
So yeah, oftentimes
You know.
I think I think I think there's like this aversion sometimes to hackathons'cause like take away taking away from company time.
But what you can do is try to come with some ideas of problems to be solved and then see like how can I use AI to actually solve those problems.
What you're gonna come out with
Is
Maybe a list of ten problems
And nine of them you try to apply AI towards and it doesn't work.
It's like this thing doesn't work as well.
as I thought it would or it's like
You know, you're trying to get a very specific answer.
But it doesn't actually lead to, you know, like
I actually have an example here of
We actually did our own hackathon a couple weeks ago.
And uh the engineering team had all these ideas in one of them.
Was the slack bot.
That
Actually alerted a person that was on call for a problem.
So we thought it was gonna be so simple. Like if someone posts in like a support channel
Hey I'm having a problem with this thing.
The Slack bot would take that question and actually ping the right person.
We thought oh this gonna be great. This is a perfect use case for AI and we'll kinda give access to this table and we'll
Look at problems, classify them and then
Ping the right person. Turns out
Uh that's actually a really hard problem to do.
Because there's so much context that is missing in
You know, well this
This person was working on this problem two weeks ago, but now they're working on this other project and some other team took over.
And I think the challenge there is really
Like
identifying the right problems to solve.
Uh in the first place.
And a good intuition to build around that is
through hackathons through coming with problems and then seeing where
The ideas actually stick.
Versus
Where they actually, you know, aren't aren't super great.
And then I think the last kind of point here.
Is
really obsessing about the details of the user experience in the first place.
And yeah, you were looking for problems to go and be solved with with AI, but
I think
Part of that is
Really looking in like what are successful
A I products today.
And you can probably you know, try a few, name a few, but
Yeah, a good example of that might be and and really like
If if I kinda zoom out, like the goal is really to find
Experiences where
AI is actually magical.
And what did they get right?
So like an example of that might be like there's this like fun like funny anecdote of
What what a lot of people are trying to do with AI is like automate the job away entirely.
And there's
There's this
Story of you know
Betty Crocker, like actually, you know, launching this the this cake mix.
Where all you have to do is like mix water.
And uh the the all you have to do is mix water and you could, you know, kind of bake a cake with just like one ingredient. All you needed was this cake mix.
It turns out that I actually like tanked their sales.
So all I have to do is basically change the instruction so that
All you have to do is add eggs.
And that one thing kind of created this effect where their scale their sale skyrocketed because they realized that
The customer actually wants to have a little bit of bit of control over the experience.
And you can kinda see that even now if you've like taken you know, if you've been if you've been able to like take a Wamo or a self driving car, like
The car is fully self driving, but
You can still control the air conditioning, you can still control the music.
And so you want to kind of leave some knobs and levers for
Your customer to feel like they're still in control of the experience.
That's kinda like the I IKEA effect applied to AI, like
People feel more empowered.
when they can and when they actually have an impact on the end experience versus everything being taken care of. So that's just like
One insight we realized from
looking at successful AI products versus ones that try to automate everything away.
I think if you're like looking at the space, you're gonna find so many more examples like that.
That's such an important point that
Even if you can build a product that is fully automated, you may not want to. And that Betty Crocker example is really interesting.
It reminds me of like Blue Apron and all these
Food alert food making. I have I have a friend who's like
Tell who told me that he cooks he's cooking a lot these days and just like finding all his time to cook and then it turns out he's m using blue apron.
And it
It feels to you like you're cooking and you can tell people, Hey, I'm cooking a lot, but
Uh
But it's not, you know, it's it's not quite the same.
Yeah.
I should if you were mine, I could like probe on that like that that's a really interesting point with like
Blue Avery because like
If you look at that product, what's the problem that they're trying to solve?
Is it are they trying to get people to
Be fed or like
Yeah. Eat food.
I don't think so, actually. Like I think if you're really trying to solve that particular problem, you probably build something closer to like DoorDash, which is just you press a button and food shows up.
And Blue Apron, on the other hand, is trying to get people
to feel like they're getting closer to cooking or feeling closer to the experience of making something.
And I think that's that's sort of what, you know, really
Amazing AI products.
Do as well.
They're making your experience or the the product, you know, AI makes your product easier to use.
And it brings the barrier to creation down.
And I think that's really what it's good at, not necessarily just trying to automate the the problem.
Okay.
Such an important point. Again, coming back to your main
Point here is just
Focus on the problem you're solving and AI could help you solve it may.
May not.
Okay.
We went on a tangent from
advice you were sharing on
What separates typical AIPMs from five percent.
Top five percent PMs.
And
What else you what else you got? What else you got on that list?
Oh actually I'll kinda steal this one a little bit from uh our friend uh Kevin Yin, um, who uh I I think he had this advice when he was on on uh your pod, which really resonated with me, actually, uh personal level.
Which is
You have to be able to walk and chew gum.
So as an AIPM, you're
Your job is
is not to go and ship AI products.
It's to go solve.
Customers' problems. I think we've come back to that a little bit.
But you're constantly going to be
You know, pushed by your team and your company.
to go and solve a business metric, you know, move a business metric in some way.
The goal though is to make space
For the other things we were kind of talking about, which is
prototyping you trying the tools firsthand yourself.
making space for your team to
You know.
have hackathons and try the tools themselves as well.
Breaking down product experiences that are really great. So
As an example, like
We did a tear down of the notebook L M product just yesterday as part of our company, so
We like live streamed it.
And we're gonna do this, you know, probably every week or two, where we'll take a cutting edge AI product.
And have a webinar around it and try to break down how it works.
And the goals there are are
You know, to really understand the space better ourselves. But
By the way, none of those three things are going to move.
your KPI or business metric, right? So
I think you come back to that point of
You have to be able to walk and shoot gum, you have to continuously
deliver customer value while also creating space to iterate and fail and find that
The experiment that you tried to launch and people really excited about.
May not work, but
You know, in the process you learn something.
And that's I think like a really powerful takeaway, which is
To really stand out as an AIPM, you you have to accept this technology.
is changing really fast.
Yes.
you know, you might think it's gonna do something great, or maybe you have a bad product experience. It's like
Uh I think you had a point earlier as well, which was like
Yeah.
Yeah, you have to have a lot you know, occasionally gonna have a bad meal.
I think that's gonna have this that's gonna be the same thing here with your AI product diet.
You're gonna try some bad experiences, you're gonna have some some failures, but
The goal is to keep iterating.
And that's how AI gets better. I think that's how
Companies can deploy AI better too. So
Don't give up on the North Star.
Just find ways to make space
To
have AI sort of propagate within your organization. And that's I think really stellar
Yeah, just do that.
I feel like this metaphor of walking and chewing gum doesn't communicate the difficulty of what you're
Of Kevin's uh now that I think about it, of what he's trying to describe.
Doesn't feel hard to walk and show go. I wonder what a better metaphor would be.
Yeah. Well I think it's
Yeah.
And bubbles, maybe gum bubbles and dance. Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know why that is the like that's the expression that it's always meant to like describe something hard that you realize like
You can do more than one thing.
Anyway.
We don't need to solve it right now.

Um
Okay, so be f I wanna talk about being an I C, being successful as an I C before we get to that, is there anything else
Along these lines that you think would be really
valuable to share or get into
About how to be successful as an
A I PM specifically that we haven't touched on. I know we've
Talked about a lot of things now.
Your organization might want to do something and you're you're trying to get them to do something else, and that's really
the the challenge in this type of role is there is so much buzz, there is so much excitement around AI.
That
Knowing what
the right thing to build is really what this job needs to
Kind of convey. So
I think when you take all of that signal and try and put it together
And solve that customer problem, that's really what being a successful A IPM is at the end.
So
That's really I think that's that's the
The hard part about the job, but also maybe the most important.
Impactful part of it.
I love that.
Okay.
So let's put it AI to the side for a moment.
Uh, but not totally off to the side. We're I imagine we're gonna touch on it.
In this next
area and
So next area is talking about how to be a really successful IC.
You've
Very
uh consciously decided to stay an individual contributor and not move up the ladder.
of product management and director and VP and all these things.
And there's a specific skill set that it takes to be
successful and to thrive is an I C PM. Most people
either can't move up the chain and become really successful ICs long term.
Or they don't want to and they or they don't even think it's an option.
So
Here's my question here.
What are some of the biggest
Habits, mindsets, lessons you've learned about how to be
really successful as an IC long term.
When I think about my own like
career journey here.
It's
So much of that comes down to like what drives you personally and
Uh I'm just obsessed with solving that.
you know, customers' problems and so to do that, you know.
That might mean I have to spend a lot more time trying to get into the weeds and get into the details.
So
I think that there's
Kind of really three
areas, yeah, kind of like three things that
Come back to me of like
What
the hard part about being an I CPM is and how you can kind of break through that.
So
I first wanna like
set the tone a little bit, which is
Being I CPM is really hard.
It's it's uh you know, I I made a point earlier of like it's
become easier to break into product management to some degree if you can use these tools and
Now you have all these tools at your disposal to go build an S prototype.
But I think the bar just got higher for product managers within a company and what the impact needs to be.
And by the way, that's always gonna compete with your
You know
being able to like jump on a quick call last minute or try to unblock someone.
Or you know, have some like internal stakeholder discussion to figure out what to go do next.
And so I think
The challenge is uh you know, you have a really hard job.
There's constant signal, things are constantly changing. How do you really power through that?
So I think that there's
Really three things I think about there, which are
Uh energy.
Waiting versus wandering and then amplifying the signal to make a decision. Ooh. So
Yeah, so so maybe to even just kick off like
Energy can I I really think about this like
This was maybe you know
the one of the most important things I realized like working from our with our CEO a little bit over a year ago.
Which was energy can count a lot when you're not sure which direction.
If you kind of show up to a meeting and you're you bring a little bit more of that energy, you'll find that like a lot of friction tends to go away. Versus if you show up and you're
A little bit yeah, a little bit down or
A little bit, you know, not as enthused of about an idea.
Like people pick up on that.
And we're still dealing with people today, and I think that
Yeah, even if you just change that mindset a little bit of bringing a little bit of that extra energy, you'll find that that can actually break down barriers and people like that.
The conversation feels like it's like
Flowing feels like a dinner table conversation versus a hard conversation.
Even if it might be something about something tough.
So
I think to me,
There's this concept of like
When you're y you know, you might still be chased you know, faced with this challenge of
I'm not sure.
What the right decision is.
And I'm you know, I'm struggling to really kind of you know, do this analysis and really get something going and
I think that I think accepting that that happens to
Everyone
It sort of feels like a
product block as opposed to like a writer's block, if that makes sense.
Where like, you know, as a as a writer, you might be trying to get to that like next paragraph and
And as a product manager
You're really trying to get to that next idea or that next milestone.
So I can give you an example like an example there as well, which is
Yeah. Um
You know, we have this moment uh a little over a year ago where we were
Not sure which direction to take a product feature and
We were we were kind of faced with this decision that felt pretty existential, which is like how much do we wanna
you know, invest in
L L's and like
the sort of new wave of large language model tech versus
our what our existing customer base was.
And it wasn't immediately clear what the decision should be.
And so the energy I kinda just brought was
You know, I'm just gonna be our like outbound salesperson and just start writing LinkedIn messages to people that have the title AI in their LinkedIn uh profile.
So I just went on it on LinkedIn. I literally just started like finding ways to get them on a phone call. So I'd like
you know, write some copy and iterate on it. I I had to like sit with our
sales team to like understand how do you how do you do this? Like I max out my like five LinkedIn messages a day like
What are you trying to do here?
And I think what what that really accomplished was sort of two things.
One, you know, I did kind of learn a little bit of like what goes into this role in terms of
you know, how to message our problem and product more
You know, in in a way that actually got people engaged.
But two.
It also demonstrated to the team that I was like willing to get into the details with them. I was willing to spend time
You know even when I was like
trying to push on our day job of you know building a product and keeping it growing.
And I think that counts for a lot.
when the team is already feeling, you know.
Like they're not sure which direction to take something and so
Just being that like player coach and just having that mentality of show up.
Bringing the energy.
Can move the bar so much higher for the whole team to operate. So
That's kind of the the example I give of like
Yeah, you're kind of like being LeBron James, like
You're telling you coaching people, you're kind of like drawing up the play.
But you're also just trying to be, you know, like as involved in
uh, you know, all of the tough stuff as well.
And and I see that happen. I think that that really comes from leadership.
From our CEO as well, like
You'll be tired, I I can tell.
But it's just
When he shows up to a meeting like
It just doesn't show it. You just have to kinda bring that energy.
So what I'm hearing is there's kinda two things you're sharing here, which is awesome. So one is
There's like actual energy in a meeting.
of staying positive and
Energetic.
And then two is actually just doing the thing to figure help solve the problem. Like
getting into sales, like becoming the salesperson potentially.
Reaching out, doing customer development on your own, kinda going rogue a little bit.
In that first book, what does it look like to bring the energy? Is it just like
volume, is it just like being bright?
I actually think this depends a lot on the person. Like I think that's actually like a personal personal thing. So
Uh what I mean by that is like you know
Yeah, I'm I for me that might mean like
I'm showing up. I'm super enthused. I'm really like
you know, I'm bringing my version of energy, but to other people
That might mean, you know, smaller things like just
Asking how someone is doing trying to
Kind of keep
keep the tone of the meeting more like positive, I think, to some degree.
So
To different people that might resemble different things.
But
I I actually think this comes.
Back a little bit to an earlier point of
Humans are really good at picking up on these like subtle signals with other people.
And you kind of want to just be putting out this like subtle like energy where people
feel like you are engaged, you're in it.
You know a hundred percent. So
I think that's part of it. I think it's like
The
The ideas, you know, for other people to feel like
You know.
Uh y you you're bringing the energy level of the room up versus bringing it down.
I have a I I had a PM I was working with at one point that is the epitome that every meeting he walks into he's just like
Solve some problems.
Oh, let's do this. Like he comes in
Just positive and
And energized.
And that just changes the whole feeling.
I remember this like early lifting. I have some friends from like the earlier days at Lyft.
And uh I think this may have been in the self driving car division, but like
They would literally
I'm not even kidding this was like their ritual, uh where they would actually end the meetings with like
The phrase
Make it happen.
And I thought that was so powerful because it it's so simple, but it's like all right, we're gonna do this as like one of their values and
We're gonna you know, we walk away from a decision and we're we're gonna make it happen.
And I think even just a something as small as that could be like
a contribution back to the culture for your team.
And maybe there's like a point there of like building culture too. Like you get to determine the culture of the people around you.
Uh, you get to build a culture of the team and that can really work its way up. Like there there's top down culture, there's values, but
You get to kinda drive what you know people in the room are feeling.
And and I think that's really, really powerful, as especially in the role of a PM where everyone
kinda looks to the PM for making a decision or
Solving a problem.
Even if it's a tough one to make, but you know, you get to kinda drive
The energy that that you're bringing to that. So
Absolutely.
So okay, so your first piece of advice for
doing well and doing and thriving as an I C PM is
Essentially that energy can count for a lot.
that if things aren't actually going smoothly
You can
Pull people through that.
By bringing energy
Which is both like meetings and being positive and bringing energy you know, energizing folks in the
in discussions and also just like doing the work yourself to like get
to the core problem and helping people
See that you're actually putting in
Your own effort and time.
Two.
Solve the problem.
Yeah, and and I'm like
Even just to riff on that like second point, like
You're
Yeah, I think that uh there's a there's a
There's this component of like when you are
doing the thing with someone and you pair with them on a problem.
You have a lot more empathy for what they do as well.
Because they'll describe to you like what's challenging or what's hard about that job.
And
I I think that there's this like feeling that at least at you know
Uh seems I've been a part of where like
There there is no job that uh isn't important.
Right. And so
You kind of
You know, as a PM you're you're
I think I think if you're like spending that time with with someone like
That that also.
That means that you're learning something from them and you're learning you're learning
you know, having empathy for
What they might be doing day in and day out.
But you're also pushing back and contributing and trying to make, you know, the the whole team kind of
push along better as well.
Awesome. So let's keep talking about other things you found helpful in helping you be uh really successful I in ICPM. You mentioned this term wandering versus waiting.
Maybe we go in that direction, or if there's anything else.
I actually I think this one is so so powerful.
Um which is like the concept of waiting versus wandering. And like
To me, this is this is super relatable again from
the the standpoint of
trying to figure out what to go do next. So we kinda talked about like energy, bringing energy.
But
That still doesn't actually solve the problem of where should we go.
That's just the the latent like energy you're gonna bring to solving a problem.
But like at the end of the day.
You as a product manager.

Where do things go?
What's the problem to be solved?
And how do we solve it really for a customer?
And I I like
There's this like thought exercise that's like
Zoom out of
It
You know, it kinda feels a little bit like, you know, if you're you're all kind of like
at a camp where you're trying to figure out okay
Where do we go send the scouts to go like
take the rest of the camp and like move things along and like
There's definitely this
This uh
Yeah, inclination towards executives and companies like
Especially broader companies to sort of do what's been working so far.
And that can often mean the like
Let's just wait and see.
And I think that's super
Interesting from the concept of AI.
Right. There is this feeling of
Should we wait and see where things go?
Or do we go and try and figure out what direction to move?
our our team.
And m most companies will
maybe wait you know, might lean towards waiting to see
how things pan out. And we're seeing that even with AI. They're like
Oh, we'll just wait for the next open AI model to come and then we'll go like build a product around that. Like this one I keep hearing that there's like this rumor of like some other model or
We're gonna wait and see like
But I think at the end of the day, um
There's times when waiting might make sense.
to see what technologies get built initially.
But then there's also this component of
wandering and trying to figure out
Where should they where should we go? Where should we take the team?
And to me
I actually think the role of a PM
Is
To be that wanderer.
And I have this like story of like
We
Yeah, there was this moment in the in the company's history where
I I was like I was like grabbing a beer with one of my our engineering managers and
He was like look man like
I I'd kinda show up and I'm like I maybe I wasn't bringing a hundred percent of my energy, you know, at this end end of the work day and I was like
I like just I'm just not sure where to take things and like
What we're doing right now.
And it was so interesting to hear his perspective of
In in his world, everything was actually going pretty reasonably well. It was like
We kinda knew like he had his roadmap, he knew what to go build, he had the next feature, you know, the next like
Three weeks of sprints planned out or something like this. And he was
He was like, Oh, the team's actually doing really great. The morale's really high.
And yet on the product side we were
We were like confused. We were not we were really unsure about what to do.
And I think it's it can be hard to be that wanderer. It felt it felt really
tough to be like out there in the unknown just trying to like
Find any sort of signal.
that we could bring back and say, Okay, here's where we need to go and take.
you know, the the next features and next comp next part of the company.
And
That that part was
was really tough, but I actually think that's where
Yeah, I kind of to your to an earlier kind of like part of the discussion where where an AI PM can really stand out.
is in being a natural wanderer and naturally
Feeling a little bit like their role is to
push the boundaries.
Yeah.
What the company thinks is even possible.
And to do that, you sometimes have to be in the space that feels
Really squishy.
And
I remember like talking to our founders of
I'm not sure what we should be going and doing next.
And it was actually really uh reassuring to hear from them, like
The I remember having this conversation and and a Parna, our our chief product officer
Was like
That's what building zero to one really feels like.
It kind of feels like you're not sure what the right decision
is or where the right decision, you know, where the right direction to go is.
But at the same time you kinda know when you get there.
And so you just have to keep wandering and iterating until you you feel that drag of like the product pulling you in that direction.
And
So I think there's just this like feeling comfortable.
with not being sure what the right decision is and just wandering and trying to figure things out.
Uh while the rest of the camp might have to wait and and see what that next move is. So
That to me I I thought was like
This this really visceral feeling of
Of uh
You know, like where where do we go? Where do we go?
So my takeaway here is this if you're feeling like you have no idea where your product
Is gonna go.
Maybe
Be okay with that.
And in your experience you eventually find
Find the path as you wander.
And with AI tools making it much easier to prototype and design and ideate.
theory makes that a little less stressful because you can actually just try stuff.
Yeah, and I I think that's like the amplifying the signal with like through the noise with AI, like the signal can be super sparse, you get back at times too, and then
What you can do is like
You know, there's really powerful tools like we use.
gong uh for instance to like understand like
what are maybe prospects or or really engineers to me it's like
Potential customers, what are they talking about? What is their pain point?
And I can't go eat in like a hundred meetings, right? Like every single week.
But what I can do is take those transcripts.
And we literally did this. We fed them into some of these large language models that have super long context windows now.
And what you can do is actually pull out what's the most common problems that come up.
You know, ask having a conversation around that.
can be really powerful too. Now you can do it with voice too. So you can like
Pull all of that in.
Maybe you want to turn it into a notebook LM episode.
Uh but what you can do is actually just
Find ways to find signal through the noise.
And that kinda gives you uh an ability to almost have like a superpower.
Because you can be in so many places at once.
uh and and kind of use technology to your advantage to
Get that signal back. So
I would really
Trying to find ways to
Scale yourself up with AI.
And
Come back with that signal.
Anything else along these lines of things that have helped you be really successful?
Uh as we wrap up.
And approach
Our very exciting lightning round.
Product management can kind of feel pretty serious to like
There's some big decisions that sort of weigh on your shoulder, but
I honestly I I remember having this discussion with
One of uh one of our board members actually. And who's he's a serial entrepreneur, he's doing companies public.
And I was like, What advice do you have for me as like PM, you know, early in this company?
And I was so surprised.
by the feedback he had, which was just have fun.
And I think if you let that drive you and you keep learning and
You know, you're kind of keeping this curiosity and building products for customers that you care about.
It's just gonna help you go so much further.
And I just think it's just more fun to have
Uh yeah, to to be the
To to be like
high energy. It's it's just more fun to
you know, like really care about the thing that you're working on.
Uh, and I think if you're constantly learning and having fun, you're gonna iterate so much faster too. So that's really my my note is like
Just just have fun along the way. It really is about that journey. And yeah, sometimes you're wandering, but
Have fun with that too.
Oh, I love that so much and it resonates so deeply with me, as I've shared a couple of times on this podcast to folks that listen.
probably have heard this, but I have this little post it that I
put right in front of me.
As I do podcasts that just says have fun.
Yeah.
And it's like the lamest little post it. Is it like really tore it up at this point from or is it like uh you know, I just bent a post it in half?
And just rode have fun on the edge, and then it just sits here.
I don't know, post-its are meant to like, you know, stick to stuff, but
Yeah, this is how he decided to use it.
This also came up recently in this episode that I think is gonna come out right before this.
Around public speaking.
This course that I took all ultra speaking.
The biggest piece of advice they have is
Speaking should be fun.
So just
Think about how do you have fun while you're doing this, even though it feels really scary.
And that works really well.
So I really love that.
It's just more fun than not having fun. Yeah. It is. And
And even if it's n like very stressful and scary, just
reframing it too, how do I have fun?
in most cases the end of the world, the end of my career, the end of
something really serious. Most of the time you can
Have fun.
Totally. Yeah. Awesome. Great.
Well, Amon, with that, we reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready?
Ding ding ding. Ding ding ding. There's a ding that comes that we overlay. I know. So I always have to resist not saying ding ding ding. I know. Yeah. Oh, I'm ready. Let's do it.
First question, what are two or three books you've recommended most to other people?
I really love uh Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
I don't know if if that's uh yeah.
That that book to me is so is so interesting because
I'm a bit of a nerd around like science. I used to read a lot of like fiction growing up too. And I think
Weirdly enough.
Bill kinda tells this like story of the history of
Science really and how we know the things that we know.
And he kinda tells it from the perspective of
Learning
about the scientists that discovered these things. So for instance you learn that like
Newton was kind of an asshole to like the the co workers he had or
You know, or like Darwin wasn't maybe perceived as like such a amazing scientist at the time, like
Uh and so a lot of and a lot of these scientists like their discoveries don't become famous. It's almost like being an artist.
Where like you realize the relevance of a scientist's discovery.
Uh years later at times. And
People don't get credit for things that they discovered, so
To me it was really interesting to hear to one, listen to read more about
The scale of
the universe and how long we've been here. And I think I think it just puts a lot of things into perspective.
of like our time here
How we spend it.
And even the age we're living in now with AI, like it's such a blip in the cosmic scale.
And then you also get this like these really fun anecdotes from scientists along the way. So that one I I recommend to like
Almost everyone, uh'cause it's pretty easy read as well. Um
And then
I think another one which is maybe like a little bit more in the like career lens.
Is this book called Designing Your Life.
Which is written by uh these actually um you know one of the founders of IDO and these
These folks are uh Stanford professors in the design lab.
And
What's really powerful about this for me is it's actually pretty practical. So it comes with exercises.
And I remember I did myself as well when I wasn't sure
Which direction to go in my career.
Then help me really figure out, you know, the most powerful exercise and like takeaway from this book for me was
Basically in like the first or second chapter, I think.
You write out one page on the meaning of work to you and like what does work mean?
Is it a way for me to make money? Is it a way for me to feel fulfilled with what I do or
How I spend my time.
And then you write out one page on the meaning of life.
And what's really powerful is it's really, really hard to do those two things.
And then you have to find the overlap between the two.
And I think that exercise is so clarifying.
And I recommend it to anyone when they feel like stuck in their career.
Because it can at least kinda coming back to like the energy point.
Can give you like a direction to go even if you're not sure how to get there just yet.
And so I I I just I love both of those books'cause they're
They're really like shifting in from a perspective.
I love that second book. I read it and it was really meaningful to me, but it's been long ago and I forgot it now. But I remember it was really great.
And so I'm glad you brought that up.
Uh, next question. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you really enjoyed?
I I don't usually binge watch TV.
I gotta be honest, like I I'm not a new watcher, but
been a little rainy in New York lately, so we've had a little bit more time inside on weekends and I've been obsessed with
The Tour de France uh documentary on Netflix. I don't know if if uh
I don't even know if it gets like pushed up that highly.
in the Netflix algos, but uh I I think it's super cool, like
One, I love cycling. So for me it's like you really realize that
competitive level of cycling is just such another level than I even realized or gave credit to.
And then two kind of coming back to like
The characters in the story.
I think they're all just so
Interesting to hear like what motivates them to be at this like extremely high level.
It's actually the same.
Producers as Drive to Survive, which I know people really got into as well around like F one.
But uh yeah, highly recommend it.
Uh and it's it's intense. I'm I'm gonna kinda start there like
I didn't realize what I was gonna get to, but it just ramped up in more and more intensity and um yeah, really.
Is there a favorite product you recently discovered that you love? Maybe an AI product? Maybe not.
I so I think we talked a little bit about like AI products that help you prototype.
Uh Replit is incredible. It's so easy to use. Um, you know.
V Zero and and these are all like
really like I think they create really polished products at the end of the day.
Yeah.
Uh the product that really that I've been like using and having a ton of fun with is Webson. I think it it creates this like
Almost
waitful version of the prototype in the first place you might be trying to build, or just something so crazy and wacky and zeni that
You're not even sure it is possible and
And it's so hard to describe. I remember even uh you know, we I used to show a presentation
from some of the founders at WebSem at uh you know an AI meetup here.
And even they
When they were like showing how to use the product, they literally just went on Reddit.
And they were just looking at the at the web sim subreddit that has like so many posts on it.
The presentation was just them.
Like looking at the top like three or four and trying to describe what they saw.
So I I I thought I was like super I I've just been obsessed with it lately, just to like push the boundaries of what's possible.
I I also do have uh another product as well. I like
I
Initially when I thought about this question, I was like, What's like the product I've been using the most lately? And
This is this one's gonna sound
Kinda kinda weird.
Uh but I'm I'm a little bit old school and I I actually like to like you, I like to like
Right uh no notes in like physical notebooks. And so I was, you know, like I I'm always looking for like
Oh, what's like a fun, you know, like a a really practical notebook to use.
And this was this was really weird, but I was recently given a notebook from
Uh actually like an AI meetup here.
And I opened it and it's made from recycled apples.
And
When you open the notebook
They it smells like apples.
Which is really interesting because like I didn't think that that would like
impact me as much as it did, but it created this interesting feedback loop.
Where I just really love using the notebook because when I open it
I like have this like positive experience immediately sensory experience immediately that it's like just smells so great. And then
you like want to keep using it and you know coming back to it. So I thought that was really interesting to create this like
feedback we've in my head of like I
I enjoy like using that notebook now. I'm not sure
uh what that means if when I run out of papers in this one if I'm gonna buy another, but that was that was really funny. I didn't expect it like that one as much.
You're making me hungry. Uh I can almost smell it.
Uh what is the brand of this notebook in case folks wanna look it up.
Up heel.
Uh A T P E E E L.

Yeah.
I need it.
I need that.
Two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to find useful in work or in life?
Feel like you're gonna have a good one.
There is
specifically one that I ended this essay that I wrote a while back with called
Yeah, I read a bunch of self help books if you don't have to, and I like share it with my friends. So they just call that.
that you know are not sure where what to do when they're in that next phase of their career as well.
And the quote is
From Steve Jobs, um
Which is
Your time is limited.
So don't waste it living someone else's life.
And I thought that was so powerful because
When you think about it, like there's
There's always this
I feel like there's a lot of like career pressure for some people to like
Get that next job or
start a company or like
do something, you know, super crazy and and at the same time
I think
What's been really powerful for me has been to look reassess what
My goals are
And but
What life I want to live.
And not feeling
The
sort of feeling of
what other people's projections of that life are.
And so that that quote in particular has always been something I've come back to, which is like what do you what sort of life do you want to live?
And
Thinking about that really deeply and making decisions.
I truly love that sentiment. And it came up recently in another
Conversation with Jam Nichols.
But
Let's move on. Actual question.
So
As I was researching you, I was Googling your name.
And uh
When I Google your name, there's a a cricket player very prominently comes up
Curious how much that bothers you, that there's this player that is number one on Google in many ways.
Oh my god.
Tell us about how that feels.
Yesterday.
It's it's gonna sound crazy.'Cause I I I was like
Oh like the immediate thought that came to mind was
My parents really didn't optimize my name for SEO.
And
The only thing I'm gonna do now when I think about if when I when I have kids, like
They're gonna have some unique names'cause uh it gets so much harder. Like you have to type in like a mod card San Francisco or Berkeley or something to like get that to pop up. So
Yeah.
So it does bother. We'll we'll iterate on that for the next one. Or it's uh it's this is a goal. I feel like you have the chance to beat beat this guy.
Totally right. Or you know, maybe another way to look at it is like
If I uh if we still keep using search engines
Uh and it's funny'cause my partner works at Google.
Uh, the future might look like what if we you know, what if we're using LLMs more? Kinda gives me a second shot here to like.
be part of the training data set in a way. So yeah.
Amazing. I love the silver lining there.
Amon, this was amazing. I think this is gonna be helpful to so many people trying to get into AI, trying to thrive.
as an AIPM
Or just wanting to stay down the I C track?
Uh we went through so many things. I uh there's like my notes were very long and we touched on basically everything.
So
Thank you so much for being here. Two final questions.
Where can folks find you if they want to reach out and maybe follow up on some of the stuff?
And how can listeners be useful to you?
LinkedIn is probably the best way. I'm I'm not super active on X, though you know, might might spend a little bit more time there, but LinkedIn easily. Um
And then to that note, yeah, how can listeners be helpful? I
I think like my my goal is to try to be as helpful for folks that are trying to figure out how to get to this next part of their career, whether it's involving AI.
Or they wanna dip it into it or they wanna thrive as an AI product manager. So love to hear stories of people that are
interested in this in this part of their career or this career path.
And I think like the thought I'll leave people with is I'll I'll respond to
Anyone that messages me and and uh
But I I do have one condition there, which is like if you're cold cold emailing, cold messaging
Kind of coming back to like how to stand out.
I think
Uh there was you know, this this note from John Dory.
Spoke at uh the college I went to
And he put his email up on the board and is like no was
I'll email anyone who emailed me, uh as long as you send me your
Three top three.
Favorite.
Books, movies.
Podcasts or
You or like videos that impacted you in some way?
And I'll do the same for you. So
I actually did that and emailed him and got back uh his top three as well.
Uh so I I I wanna kinda carry that forward and yeah, would love to hear from folks.
Send me your top three, whatever pieces of content they might be, and I'll do the same
That's an amazing collection you're gonna build.
Uh, I'm I wanna see all these things too.
Uh I love that idea. It's almost like a mini lightning round.
What a clever idea.
Uh I'm on.
Thank you so much.
For being here.
Thank you so much, Lany. This has been awesome. Really really had fun with this one.
Same for me.
Bye everyone.
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