Products That Count

How Syntheseed CPO Is Rethinking Product Leadership in Real Time

SC Moatti — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 17:08:25 GMT

What if the strategy you just shipped is already obsolete? In this episode of Product Talk hosted by Digitalzone CPO Sonjoy Ganguly, Syntheseed CPO Sam Somashekar speaks on what it means to lead product in an era where the pace of change has outrun the annual planning cycle, AI is generating strategies that all sound the same, and the pressure to experiment is pulling leaders further from the strategic thinking they were hired to do. Sam and Sanjay explore why the human element is more important than ever, how shared KPIs across functions unlock real alignment, and what product leaders need to stop doing right now.

AI solved the build problem. Now what?

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 15:26:27 GMT

Everyone in product is talking about speed right now. AI has compressed what used to take months into days. The build problem feels largely solved, but the bottleneck has moved.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking with CPOs this year, and one theme keeps coming up: the teams pulling ahead are getting to market faster. That’s why GTM speed came up as the #1 concern in our latest CPO Insights Report. Most go-to-market motions were designed for a different era. Traditional marketing channels and many PLG playbooks weren’t built for a world where products can be created and iterated at AI speed.

The companies pulling ahead are using AI-driven workflows to shorten the distance between “we built it” and “customers are using it.” If your team has accelerated how fast it builds, but your go-to-market motion looks largely the same as it did two years ago, that’s worth paying attention to.

And if this sparked something for you, it might do the same for a product leader in your network. Forward it along to someone who inspires your product thinking.

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Check out some of our recent content from top voices in the product space.

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CPO Rising Series: Comcast Product SVP on Rewiring the Entire Product Lifecycle for AI

SC Moatti — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 11:35:27 GMT

What happens when software powers every customer-facing interaction a business has, from the app to the agent interface to the care experience? Everything becomes a product. In this episode of the CPO Rising series, hosted by Products That Count Resident CPO Renee Niemi, Comcast SVP of Connected Living Products Randall Hounsell speaks on what it means to lead product at one of the most complex consumer technology ecosystems in the world. Randall shares why data-driven is misunderstood, how he is rewiring Comcast's entire product lifecycle to be AI-first, and why vision and strategy are the most durable skills a product leader has in a world where everything else is changing fast.

OpenTable Product SVP on The Three Things Great PMs Have That You Cannot Coach

SC Moatti — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 11:14:22 GMT

What separates a good product manager from a great one, and can you actually spot it in an interview? In this episode of the CPO Rising Series hosted by Axiom Law CPO Katrina Benjamin, OpenTable SVP of Product Shayani Roy speaks on the three qualities she hires for above everything else, why the CPO role is fundamentally shifting from people management to doing, and what it means to build products for an industry as creative and relationship-driven as restaurants. With 60,000 restaurants and 1.9 billion diners annually, OpenTable's approach to AI, velocity, and innovation offers a masterclass in how to move fast without losing focus.

Who's setting the standard in product leadership?

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:25:18 GMT

When I started Products That Count, I believed that product leaders were among the most undervalued people in tech, doing the hardest cross-functional work with the least recognition. Years and thousands of conversations later, I’m even more convinced. The best product leaders I meet are heads-down and rarely making the case for themselves.

That’s why we created the Product Leader Awards. They’re designed to recognize the VPs, Sr. Directors, and Heads of Product who are setting the standard for our field. A nomination is a meaningful endorsement for a person and for the discipline. And because this is about recognition, nominating and participating is completely free.

This year’s winners will join me for an in-person VIP celebration this September. It’s an intimate room, full of the kind of people who become each other’s next reference, hire, or friend.

So here’s my ask: take two minutes to nominate a product leader who’s setting the bar. And if that person is you, nominate yourself. Let’s make sure the leaders moving our industry forward actually get seen for it.

Nominate an outstanding product leader

We are currently accepting applications for our Q2 Advisory Councils. If you’re a senior product leader and you’d like to get involved, click the banner above.

Check out some of our recent content from top voices in the product space.

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Kit Switch CEO on Productizing Sustainable Housing with Low-Carbon Interior Design

SC Moatti — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 11:06:58 GMT

What does it actually take to decarbonize the built environment, and can construction be reimagined fast enough to matter? The scale and urgency of the transformation required to fight climate change has never been more clear. Building hardware and software products, acquiring the funding and creating a diverse community to enhance talent capacity and to drive innovation, is essential to tackling this global environmental crisis. In this podcast, host Silicon Valley Bank (a division of First Citizens Bank) Climate Tech & Sustainability SVP Maggie Wong will be interviewing Armelle Coutant, CEO & Co-Founder of Kit Switch, to discuss enabling decarbonization through electrified and low-waste interior systems, productizing construction for speed and scalability, as well as navigating a complex, slow-moving industry through strategic pilots and ecosystem partnerships.

CPO Rising Series: How Planned Parenthood Direct CPO Builds Products Under Pressure

SC Moatti — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 11:49:33 GMT

What does it mean to ship products when a wrong decision does not just hurt conversion rates but puts patients at risk? In this episode of the CPO Rising Series hosted by Products That Count Resident CPO Jay Patel, Planned Parenthood Direct CPO Hannah Park speaks on what it really takes to lead product in one of the most politically volatile and privacy-sensitive environments in healthcare. Hannah shares how she thinks about trust as a non-negotiable design constraint, why her team has deliberately held off on bringing AI into the patient experience, and how she builds teams that can make good decisions without waiting for permission when the regulatory ground shifts overnight.

CPO Rising Series: How Treasure AI CPO Is Rewriting the Rules of Product Leadership

SC Moatti — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 12:36:57 GMT

What if the biggest bottleneck in your product organization is no longer engineering capacity or even go to market speed, but change management? In this episode of the CPO Rising series hosted by Products That Count Resident CPO Jay Patel, Treasure AI CPO Rafa Flores speaks on how the role of product leadership has fundamentally changed, why the "ship perfect" mindset is now a liability, and what it actually looks like to build an AI native product culture that keeps human judgment at the center. From his journey immigrating from Honduras to leading product at a global agentic AI platform, Rafa brings a rare combination of personal conviction and technical fluency to one of the most honest conversations we have had about what great product leadership looks like right now.

The rise of the Product Builder

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 17:19:46 GMT

Last week we shared the 2026 CPO Insights findings. Now, the CPO Rising podcast series is back for year five, and it kicks off with an exciting prediction about where the best product leaders are headed.

This year, Renee Niemi and I are calling the emergence of the product builder: a new kind of product leader doing the work of twelve, with 20x the business impact. The PM title is evolving into something far more powerful. Renee has already spoken to 1,500 CPOs this year, and the best ones are already making the shift.

This conversation is the first episode of the 2026 CPO Rising Series. From there, you’ll hear directly from this year’s CPO award winners, each one showing what great product leadership actually looks like right now. Tune in to our kickoff episode below, and subscribe to Product Talk on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts so you don’t miss any of the insights to come.

Dive into the CPO Rising Podcast Series

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Check out some of our recent content from top voices in the product space.

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CPO Rising Series: How Aliaswire CPO Is Betting on the Future of Payments

SC Moatti — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 11:12:51 GMT

What if the biggest constraint on your product organization is no longer engineering capacity but the speed and quality of your decisions? In this episode of the CPO Rising Series hosted by Products That Count Resident CPO Jay Patel, Aliaswire CPO Nirmal Kumar speaks on how the CPO role has fundamentally shifted in the age of AI, what a disciplined layered bets framework actually looks like in practice, and why the future of payments is invisible, embedded, and intelligent. Drawing on nearly two decades at a Boston fintech he helped found, Nirmal brings a rare combination of engineering depth and product leadership to a conversation about building platforms that multiply, making calculated bets with real kill criteria, and transforming a team without leaving anyone behind.

How AI Is Reshaping Enterprise Product Leadership

SC Moatti — Fri, 29 May 2026 17:40:57 GMT

Is your organization losing 7% of its annual revenue to complexity? In this podcast hosted by Boston New Technology CPO Shweta Agrawal, Freshworks Chief Product Officer Srini Raghavan will be speaking on how AI-native tools are transforming IT and customer service operations, and what it really takes to scale AI responsibly in the enterprise. Drawing on his experience leading product at Freshworks, RingCentral, and Five9, Srini shares the frameworks, real customer stories, and mindset shifts that separate product leaders who scale from those who stall.

CPO Rising Series: The Product Manager Will Cease to Exist by 2030

SC Moatti — Fri, 29 May 2026 11:46:56 GMT

What if the role that has defined a generation of tech careers disappears within five years? In this inaugural episode of the fifth year of the CPO Rising Series, Products That Count Founder & Managing Partner SC Moatti and Resident CPO Renee Niemi make their boldest prediction yet: the product manager as we know it will be replaced by the product builder by 2030. Drawing on conversations with over 1,500 CPOs this year alone, Renee unpacks what is driving the shift, what separates good CPOs from great ones from the best, and why for companies that do not get ahead of this transition, the risk is not just competitive. It is existential.

What 1,500 CPOs say about their future

Wed, 27 May 2026 15:51:02 GMT

Five years ago, we started surveying CPOs to define what it takes to lead product. Today, the answer keeps getting more interesting.

I’m thrilled to share the 2026 CPO Insights Report: From Builder to Investor: The New Product Mandate. It’s the biggest study we’ve ever done, with insights from 1,500+ Chief Product Officers across twelve industries and three continents. And for the first time, we expanded the dataset to include private companies with $1B–$10B in revenue. Because 96% of AI companies are private, and that’s where product innovation is happening right now.

The headline finding is that in 2026, the CPO is going on offense. AI has compressed product cycles from months to days, with traditional PMs down 30% (70% in SaaS) as the Product Builder takes over. The bottleneck has moved downstream to GTM and adoption, and 1 in 3 CPOs now own the M&A agenda, marking the rise of the Chief Product Investor.

This is the most consequential shift in product leadership in a decade. The leaders who understand it will run the next generation of companies, and the ones who don't will get left behind.

Download the 2026 CPO Insights Report

We are currently accepting applications for our Q2 Advisory Councils. If you're a senior product leader and you'd like to get involved, click the banner above.

Check out some of our recent content from top voices in the product space.

Are you enjoying our Product newsletter? We are always striving to elevate our content and provide ample value. Please share your feedback, questions, and comments.

Why your best PMs are burning out

Wed, 20 May 2026 18:23:22 GMT

I’ve been noticing signs of exhaustion in my recent conversations with product leaders. They’re moving faster than ever, but feeling worn down in a way the pace doesn't quite account for.

Exhaustion usually comes from increased productivity that doesn’t translate into net positive gain. You’re doing more, but that extra output isn’t leading to results. AI is accelerating this for product teams. The cost and time required to produce anything has dropped, and the instinct is to convert that capacity straight into greater output.

The product leaders I’m seeing get this right are leveraging AI more intentionally. They're putting weight behind a smaller set of bets, and you can feel the difference when you talk to their teams. There's more clarity about what actually matters and less low-grade churn.

So here’s my question for you: is doing more actually moving the needle for your product, or is it just creating more noise? I'd love to hear your take. Join the conversation on my LinkedIn.

We are currently accepting applications for our Q2 Advisory Councils. If you're a senior product leader and you'd like to get involved, click the banner above.

Check out some of our recent content from top voices in the product space.

Are you enjoying our Product newsletter? We are always striving to elevate our content and provide ample value. Please share your feedback, questions, and comments.

Are You Actually Getting Better at AI? Talent.com CPTO Built a System That Tells You the Truth

SC Moatti — Wed, 20 May 2026 13:35:50 GMT

Everyone is using AI, but almost no one can tell you if they are actually getting better at it. In this episode of Product Talk hosted by Hoda Mehr, Co-founder and CEO of Up My Mojo and Board Member of Products That Count, Talent.com CPTO Navya Rehani Gupta speaks on the self learning system she built to make AI capability development measurable and self improving at the executive level. Navya walks through exactly how she went from using AI as a learning tool to building a full operating system called Synergy that scores her weekly across five dimensions, catches mistake patterns before they compound, and delivers the signal she needs every morning to lead product, engineering, and go to market teams without becoming the bottleneck.

Speed Without Breaking Trust: AI Transformation at Scale

SC Moatti — Mon, 18 May 2026 10:50:21 GMT

What happens when speed and trust collide in fintech? In this episode of Product Talk, hosted by CentralSquare Technologies CPO Denise Hemke, Intuit Director of Product Rosa Gonzalez Welton speaks on how AI is transforming product development inside one of the most high stakes software environments in the world. When you are shipping into payroll, tax, and workforce management, moving fast is only half the equation. Rosa breaks down how Intuit is putting rapid prototyping tools in everyone's hands, raising decision velocity, and still protecting reliability through risk rubrics and controlled rollouts.

How AI Super Analysts Are Changing the Way Product Leaders Think

SC Moatti — Fri, 15 May 2026 19:12:10 GMT

Are your dashboards giving you visibility or understanding? In this episode of Product Talk hosted by Digitalzone CPO Sonjoy Ganguly, AskEnola CEO Piyanka Jain speaks on how AI is transforming the way product leaders interpret data, make decisions, and ultimately build products. This conversation goes beyond tools and demos to focus on something more fundamental: judgment, interpretation, and what it really means to lead with data in an era where insights can be instant but wisdom still has to be earned.

Who's defining product this quarter?

Wed, 13 May 2026 17:31:57 GMT

For eight years, the Product Awards have been built on the same conviction that runs through everything we do at Products That Count. Product people see breakout work before anyone else does, and a community of product people sees it even earlier.

We’re now accepting Q2 nominations in three categories: Fintech, Healthcare, and Cybersecurity. Each of these spaces is shifting fast right now. AI is rewiring credit, compliance, and underwriting in fintech. Product is finally getting traction in healthcare systems that have resisted it for decades. And the cybersecurity threat surface is widening faster than most organizations can model.

We’ve already received over 12,000 nominations this year. That tells you how fast the product function is growing, and how much this community wants to recognize the work being done inside it.

Who in fintech, healthcare, or cybersecurity is doing work that belongs on the Q2 shortlist? Nominate them, and tell us why.

Nominate an outstanding product

A quick note for our New York City community: join us in person next week for a fireside chat on the human side of product leadership. Request your free ticket here.

Check out some of our recent content from top voices in the product space.

Are you enjoying our Product newsletter? We are always striving to elevate our content and provide ample value. Please share your feedback, questions, and comments.

EP 673 - From Game Dev to Google: Agentic AI, Zero to One, and the Future of Product Management

SC Moatti — Wed, 13 May 2026 11:37:57 GMT

What does it actually take to build a product when no one believes it's possible? In this episode of Product Talk, hosted by Thomson Reuters Director of Product Vinay Aradhya, Google Group Product Lead Pawel Siarkiewicz speaks on what zero to one product building really looks like, how agentic AI is rewriting the rules of software development, and what separates great product managers from the rest. Drawing from his journey as a game developer, FinTech CTO, and the lead PM who helped build Google Stadia from scratch, Pawel brings rare perspective on the craft of building and leading in an era where everything is changing fast.

A win for the product community

Wed, 06 May 2026 15:59:24 GMT

Last week, the case for product showed up in the Wall Street Journal. Mighty Capital closed an oversubscribed $91M Fund III, three times the size of our last. Behind it are 6 IPOs and over $1 billion of value created.

These outcomes are the result of a thesis this community has lived for years, which we call the Product Alpha Effect. Early product signals are leading indicators of category-defining companies, and product leaders are uniquely positioned to read them.

I'm proud of what this means for the product community. We have been the ones seeing the future first for a long time. The numbers say we were right, and the WSJ coverage says the rest of the world is catching up.

What does this mean for the future of product? The conversation is already underway on my LinkedIn post. I'd love to hear your perspective.

A quick note for our New York City community: join us in person next week for a fireside chat on the human side of product leadership. Request your free ticket here.

Check out some of our recent content from top voices in the product space.

Are you enjoying our Product newsletter? We are always striving to elevate our content and provide ample value. Please share your feedback, questions, and comments.