Hard Calls with Trisha Price

Six months of work. Ninety percent of the code thrown away. Not because it failed, but because the technology moved faster than the roadmap. Chris Butler , Director of Product Operations at GitHub , made that call without hesitation and it set the tone for everything he shared on the Mind the Product stage at Pendomonium 2026. Most product teams are asking the wrong question right now. It is not h...

AI has made it easier than ever to build fast. What it hasn't done is tell anyone what to build. Christian Idiodi , partner at Silicon Valley Product Group and one of the most respected voices in product leadership, came off the Pendomonium 2026 stage with a message that every product team needs to hear: the fastest way to accelerate your misery is to use AI to build the wrong things faster. R...

Most pivots fail not because the idea was wrong, but because the leader waited too long for everyone to agree. Steve Sewell, CEO of Builder.io, didn't wait. He told his team the decision was made, the conversation was over, and they were burning the boats. It worked and it resulted in two products now growing simultaneously. The inflection point for Builder.io was the same one every product co...

Too many companies are treating AI like a checkbox. Board pressure, competitive anxiety, and a fear of being left behind are driving product teams to ship AI features before they've defined the problem they're solving. Louise Allen, Chief Product Officer at Planview, has seen this movie before and it ends the same way Agile did when it became the goal instead of the means. Recorded live at...

A year-long project. Two months. A small team, a few back-end engineers, and a QA resource. Ed Case, Director of Product Design and UX at Vantaca, didn't set out to become an engineer. He set out to ship faster and figured out that the fastest path ran straight through the codebase. The shift happening in product teams right now isn't just that AI writes code. It's that the walls betwe...

Many product teams still prioritize shipping features rather than driving outcomes. They've become feature factories, run by what amounts to a ‘Chief Backlog Officer’. That approach worked when cycles were long and mistakes were expensive to fix. However, with AI compressing the product lifecycle, it’s possible to ship software the same day it's built. But speed creates a new danger: it’s also pos...

Leyla Seka is a product and tech legend; as a former Salesforce leader, she built and scaled Salesforce's AppExchange and led the company through one of its most pivotal moments. In this episode of Hard Calls , Leyla describes the similarities between adopting Salesforce’s AppExchange and the adoption challenges companies face when shipping AI tools and features today. The adoption curves are iden...

In this episode of Hard Calls , Jeff Lash, VP of Product Management at Insperity, joins Trisha Price to explore the framework separating good product managers from great ones. He calls it thinking in one-way doors versus two-way doors: reversible decisions versus irreversible ones. But here's what matters: in an era where AI can vibe-code anything in minutes, product sense and customer judgment ma...

In this episode of Hard Calls , host Trisha Price and Dave Killeen, EMEA Field CPO at Pendo, explore how Dave’s curiosity about AI became an obsession and why every product leader needs to get hands-on with AI tools today. But here's the twist: Dave is adamant that AI isn't here to replace your taste or judgment; it's here to amplify it. Dave shares his personal experiences using AI and how it has...

In this episode of Hard Calls, CSI’s Senior Vice President of Product Management, Daniel Haisley, and host Trisha Price explore the hard calls that define product leadership, not just the ones on a product roadmap, but the ones about people. They then dig into how banks are deepening customer relationships through digital banking services. Here’s a hint: It has everything to do with data. Here's w...

" Technology doesn't replace service; it helps it scale." - Anuar Chapur Most product leaders build software. Anuar Chapur, Chief Product and Technology Officer at The Palace Company, builds memorable experiences for guests staying at his family’s luxury resorts across Mexico, the Caribbean, Italy, and the Maldives. In this episode of Hard Calls, hosted by Trisha Price, Anuar shares how he applies...

It's the first week of a new year. You're looking at your roadmap, your team, your strategy - and you're realizing something: You need to make some hard decisions. The thing is, the hardest calls aren’t deciding what features to build. Rather, it's likely determining who on the team comes with you on the journey. Or deciding which products to sunset, even if they're generating revenue. Or it's mak...

"And I tell all my clients, you all are in transformation. If you are not transforming, you are dying." Gabrielle Bufrem In this episode of Hard Calls , Gabrielle Bufrem and host Trisha Price explore what transformation truly means, why trust is the currency that unlocks everything else, and how focus, fewer products, and AI work together to build products customers will love. Gabi didn't set out...

"In AI, speed matters—but trust compounds." Naomi Lariviere, Chief Product Owner and VP of Product Management at ADP, leads product strategy for a company that processes payroll for millions of people. When even the smallest error can mean someone doesn't get paid on time, there's no room for " move fast and break things. " In this episode of Hard Calls , Naomi and host Trisha Price dig into the d...

Noa Ginsberg, SVP, Product Management Excellence at FactSet, faced a challenge that would make most product leaders nervous: transform how a 40-year-old financial data company builds products. Not a single team or feature, but the entire product organization. In this episode of Hard Calls , Noa and host Trisha Price dig into what it truly takes to introduce modern product thinking to build a Produ...

What’s it really like to make a hard call inside a global bank? Peter Bailey, Product Director at J.P. Morgan Payments, joins Trisha to unpack the decision that nearly “ got me fired ” - calling off a launch when the data vendor wasn’t the right fit, but then won the trust of his peers and leaders by making the right call. In this episode of Hard Calls , he and host Trisha Price reconnect as past...

“ At the end of the day, your job is to build enterprise value as a CPO. ” - Jodi McDermott In this episode of Hard Calls , three-time CPO turned product and board advisor, Jodi McDermott at Switchback Advisory, talks with host Trisha Price. Together, they explore how to navigate the tough decisions product leaders face and what it takes to be a successful product leader today. Here's what you'll...

Remember the SaaS playbook that built today’s tech giants? Well, it’s officially dead. The AI revolution is rewriting the rules, leaving companies without a roadmap for what comes next.  However, Pendo CEO and co-founder, Todd Olson, is mapping out a new playbook using insights from customers, other founders, and his own team, all of whom are either beginning and in the midst of their AI transform...

What do you do when a customer asks for a feature that isn’t on your roadmap? In this episode of Hard Calls, Trisha Price and Mark Mitchell , Chief Product Officer at Morgan Stanley at Work , share personal, candid stories of the hardest calls Mark has made - starting with knowing when to walk away from a big prospect that just isn’t the right fit.  Mark breaks down how he weighs effort, impact, a...

Vantaca is bringing AI innovation to an industry in desperate need of disruption - community management or HOAs. Vantaca CEO, Ben Currin joins Trisha Price in this episode of Hard Calls and talks about how Vantaca is wrapping AI and agentic workflows into traditional SaaS software to improve the way we work with each other and agents. Product leaders from any industry will gain great insights into...

In this episode of Hard Calls , host Trisha Price sits down with Jessica Soroky, product operations leader turned Chief of Staff to the CEO at Engine. The two discuss the symbiotic relationship between product operations and a successful product organization. Their conversation offers an inside look at what operational excellence really looks like and the hard calls it takes to achieve it in your...

In this episode of Hard Calls , host Trisha Price sits down with legendary product thinker Marty Cagan, partner at Silicon Valley Product Group and author of Inspired , Empowered , and his latest book, Transformed . Marty shares one of the hardest calls of his career and the lessons it taught him about how users respond to change. From there, Trisha and Marty explore what it means to truly transfo...

In the premiere episode of Hard Calls, host Trisha Price sits down with her longtime mentor, Founding CEO and Executive Chairman of the Board for nCino, Pierre Naudé, for a deeply personal and practical conversation about what it really takes to make hard decisions as a product and business leader. Trisha and Pierre share their lived experience scaling nCino from a scrappy startup to a public comp...

Every product leader has to make them: the high-stakes decisions that define outcomes, shape careers, and don't come with easy answers. The Hard Calls podcast, hosted by Trisha Price , features candid conversations with product and tech leaders about the pivotal decisions that drive great products and the pressure that comes with it. From conflicting priorities and unclear success metrics to align...