The Product Experience

Building the right thing is hard. Building the wrong thing is easy and costly. In this episode, Jason Sparks, Principal Product Manager at ReUp Education, dives deep into the discipline of continuous validation inside enterprise environments. From managing stakeholder pressure to proactively engaging customers in discovery, Jason shares battle-tested approaches for avoiding the classic trap of sol...

Why do great product ideas fail to gain traction? According to Elena Luna, it’s rarely about the strategy and more often about the storytelling. In this episode of The Product Experience, Elena Luneva, a seasoned CPO, GM, and Maven instructor, joins Randy Silver live from INDUSTRY 2025 to explore how product leaders can better communicate the why behind their product decisions. What we learned fro...

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily and Randy speak with Dan Dalton (Director of Product Management at Sage) about the current state of product management, and how the role must evolve in today’s climate. Chapters 0:00 Introduction: product management at a crossroads 1:00 Dan Dalton’s background and path into product 3:00 The evolution of product management: 2010 to today 8:15 Framewor...

You can’t build great products on gut instinct, and yet, according to IBM’s global study of 1,000 enterprises, 77% of organisations using generative AI aren’t seeing any financial benefit. In this episode on The Product Experience podcast, Lily Smith sits down with Matthew Certner, Digital Product Engineering and Design Partner at IBM, to unpack the four key traits that drive ROI in AI-powered pro...

Christian Idiodi, Partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, and Co-author of the valuable product book Transformed, dismantles some of the most persistent myths in product leadership.  Drawing from his global perspective and work across Africa’s fast-emerging tech ecosystem, Christian makes the case for a new kind of leadership, one grounded in clarity, context, and radical trust. Chapters 00:00 —...

In this episode of The Product Experience , Lily Smith speaks with Sahil Jain , co-founder and CEO of Samepage.ai, about one of product management’s hardest challenges: keeping teams aligned.  From his early career at Yahoo and AOL to founding multiple startups, Sahil shares lessons on building products that tackle “unsolvable” problems like communication and alignment. He explains why shared unde...

In this episode of The Product Experience, hosts Lily Smith and Randy Silver speak with Damilola Adelekan, Lead Product Manager at Remedial Health, who discusses building pragmatic, people-centred solutions in Africa’s fragmented and under-resourced healthcare system.  Chapters 05:30 – Early Lessons from Volunteering and Nonprofits 07:00 – Why Digitising a Broken System Isn’t Enough 10:00 – Tackli...

In this episode of The Product Experience, Patrick Ndjientcheu, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Irembo, shares how his team transitioned from delivering projects for government to building a portfolio of scalable products.  Patrick talks about shifting mindsets from execution to strategy, spinning out payments and identity into independent products, and the challenges of balancing internal...

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith speaks with Sally Foote, a seasoned product leader whose journey from product roles to C-suite commercial leadership spans Carwow, Go Compare, and The Guardian. They unpack the increasingly vital intersection between product, marketing, and sales. Sally explains why growth is a shared responsibility, how product managers can become commercially...

Product decisions built on daily-active metrics fall apart when your customers show up once a year, or once a decade. In this episode, Randy Silver talks to Vivek Kumar about building and growing low-frequency products, from property and tax to jobs and dating. Chapters 04:25 — What makes a product “infrequent”? Episodic use and recall decay 07:05 — Rethinking PMF: penetration and market share ove...

In this episode of The Product Experience , Randy Silver and Lily Smith sit down with Katja Forbes, Executive Director at Standard Chartered Bank, design leader, and lecturer, to explore the fast-approaching world of machine customers. Katja shares why businesses must prepare for a future where AI agents, autonomous vehicles, and procurement bots act as customers, and what this means for product m...

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith and Randy Silver are joined by Kirsten Mann, former CPO at Prospection and now startup founder and board member, to discuss how product leaders can play a vital role on company boards. Drawing from her own board experience and a research series interviewing founders and directors, Kirsten explains why product, culture, and customer insight must...

In this episode of The Product Experience, Randy Silver speaks with Dariusz Dziuk, Product Lead for Music Expression at Spotify, about the origins and evolution of Canvas, the looping visuals that accompany music tracks. From early assumptions and first principles thinking to scaling and measuring marketplace success, he shares how a bold experiment turned into one of Spotify’s most engaging featu...

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily and Randy dive into the nuanced world of team collaboration with Jenny Wanger, product ops consultant. Jenny challenges the overuse of RACI matrices in product teams, arguing they often obscure deeper organisational issues rather than solve them. They discuss better alternatives, the root causes behind requests for RACI, and the value of prioritising...

We revisit our conversation with Frances Ibe, Chief Experience Officer at Tide. Frances shares invaluable insights on her journey from developer to product leadership and how to avoid common pitfalls during the discovery process. Chapters 01:07 – Meet Frances Ibe 02:05 – Common Discovery Pitfalls 03:34 – Embedding Continuous Discovery 04:51 – The Myth of Talking to 20 Customers 06:38 – What is a D...

Erica Wass, Principal Product Consultant at Brainmates, joins the Product Experience podcast to share pragmatic tools for building strategic foresight into your roadmap. From horizon scanning to backcasting, this episode explores how product teams can harness future-focused techniques—bolstered by generative AI—to improve decision-making, resilience, and impact. Chapters: 0:00 – Why foresight matt...

Featured Links: Follow Brigitte on LinkedIn | DrDoctor | European Commission Public Health 'Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare' feature Our Hosts Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry work...

In this episode of The Product Experience , Lily Smith and Randy Silver speak with Dee Miller, Director of Product Strategy and Insights for Product Equity at Adobe. Dee shares her personal journey into inclusive design, and discusses how Adobe is moving beyond accessibility compliance to build genuinely usable, inclusive, and emotionally accessible products.  Featured Links: Follow Dee on LinkedI...

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily and Randy speak with Faith Forster about the art of aligning product work with commercial outcomes. From redefining velocity as a function of customer value to implementing impact models that quantify ROI, Faith outlines practical frameworks to help product teams think commercially without compromising user value.  She also explores the evolving role...

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily and Randy sit down with Moshe Mikanovsky—product coach, educator, and host of the Product for Product podcast—to explore what makes an effective product management toolkit. From identifying the real problems in your workflow to choosing and implementing tools that stick, Moshe outlines a pragmatic, user-centric approach to tool selection. Chapters: 2...

Transformations are hard, and too often, they fail to deliver on their promise. In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily and Randy speak with Jen Swanson, CEO of Tuckpoint Advisory Group, to unpack why transformation initiatives falter and what it truly takes to succeed. Key Takeaways — Transformation requires intentionality: Real transformation isn't accidental or surface-level; it mu...

What does it mean to build world-class products in the age of AI? In this episode, Randy Silver talks to Ezinne and Oji Udezue, co-authors of Building Rocketships, a playbook for building high-growth companies in today’s fast-evolving tech landscape. Together, they unpack what product looks like now, how AI changes collaboration, and why ambition, clarity, and disciplined execution matter more tha...

This week on The Product Experience, we revisit a great conversation with Todd Green, now President of King – the studio behind Candy Crush. Todd shares how he thinks about building products that are not only globally successful but enduringly fun.  Todd takes us behind the curtain on what it really takes to build for mass audiences, create fun at scale, and grow empowered product teams. Key takea...

AI has changed the way developers work—and Stack Overflow is right at the centre of that shift. In this episode, Jody Bailey, CPTO at Stack Overflow, shares how the platform is adapting to AI, protecting its community, and embracing new revenue streams. We explore how LLMs are reshaping developer behaviour, why canonical answers still matter, and what it takes to keep trust, quality and community...

Intercom’s CPO Paul Adams joins The Product Experience to talk about how the company has radically transformed its approach in the wake of AI's acceleration. From ripping up roadmaps and reorganising teams to reinventing pricing models, Paul shares what it really takes to adapt—fast. Key takeaways "You’re not selling users anymore. You’re selling work." AI has shifted Intercom’s bus...