The Hotfix Podcast

Every PM now has a team of agents A few months ago, Stefan and I recorded an episode about the future of product management, and at the time we were still debating whether PMs would need to become builders, whether AI would change the shape of the role, and whether the strongest PMs would be the ones who could move much closer to the actual creation of software. Back then, some of that still sound...

A few weeks ago, Stefan and I debated whether PMs need to become builders. We agreed. Then we had a heated WhatsApp argument and realized we disagree on something fundamental: Will agents make the PM role obsolete, or will they create the golden age of product management? Stefan believes the 100-person software company will become a one-person company within three to five years. I think the work c...

A few months ago, we talked about how AI would change the way software gets built, and at the time it still felt like something slightly abstract, interesting to think about but not yet forcing immediate decisions. That has changed. AI-native companies are now shipping faster, with fewer people, and at a fundamentally different cost structure, and they are no longer operating in a separate experim...

Seven months ago, we talked about how product management was changing. We focused on discovery over delivery and outcomes over outputs. These topics felt urgent then. Now they’ve faded into the background. AI has taken center stage. And this shift is justified. Canva disrupted design. Shopify disrupted e-commerce. AI is doing the same to product management. The way product management was done six...

Product management has never been an easy job. But the rise of AI has changed the rules and raised the bar. In this post, we unpack what separates good PMs from great ones today, and why AI will amplify that gap even further. The 6 Core Traits of Great PMs We started the conversation by listing the timeless traits we’ve seen in standout product managers. * They own problems, not features. Great PM...

In our latest Hotfix episode, Stefan and I explored an uncomfortable question:Are we entering an era where a single person can do the job of an entire product team? Today’s standard setup looks like this: One PM, one Designer, a few Engineers. Clear swim lanes. Frequent alignment. But with AI-native tools like V0, Lovable, and Cursor, the lines are starting to blur. You can build, design, and ship...

Roshan is the founder of AmplifyPM. Prev. he served as PM at Meta and as a Group PM at Google. Roshan Gupta had the kind of job most PMs dream of: Group Product Manager at Google, leading a 300-person org. Then, he gave it all up. He moved to Portugal and started a one-person company, betting everything on a single idea: PMs don’t fail because of their strategy—they fail because they can’t tell a...

Nesrine was a Senior PM at Google, Spotify and Microsoft. She’s now a product coach and will be releasing her first book on how to infuse emotional connections into product design by the end of March! In our conversation, Nesrine shared a surprising “failure story” from her time on the Google Meet team. Nesrine’s failure story Nesrine was working on Google Meet as a PM, when COVID broke out. You s...

Trisha is the CPO of Pendo.io, one of the most widely used product experience platforms. Trisha brought us a gem of a failure story. Her team has been working on a powerful machine learning future for a long time. The feature was aimed at answering one question: What are the features that drive user retention? Trisha’s failure story Over the years, Pendo had gathered mountains of product usage dat...

Rewrites are the silver bullet that never hits the target. If you’ve ever worked in SaaS, you’ve likely heard it before: "The tech stack is outdated." "We have too much technical debt." "This architecture won’t scale—we need to start fresh!" At first glance, it makes sense. A cleaner, modern, well-architected system should let the team move faster and deliver more, right? Except, that’s rarely wha...

Tamer is CPO at Project A Ventures. In our latest conversation for the Hotfix Podcast, Stefan and I had a conversation with Tamer El-Hawari. For 12 years, Tamer was CPO at Project A ventures. One of Germany’s most renowned VCs. In this role Tamer has worked for more than 50 companies as a product exec and therefore has a lot of wisdom to share. Tamers failure story In his failure story Tamer talke...

Please just build it, discovery will only slow us down! A common belief among SaaS executives is that thinking in hypotheses and trying to prove or falsify them ultimately costs too much time and therefore money. This also makes sense. Many successful Silicon Valley founders believe that time to market is one of the most important metrics. A recent example is Mark Zuckerberg's quote ‘Velocity wins...

Carlos is CEO & Founder at Product School. Product school is the world's largest product management training provider. Carlos is also the author of the Amazon bestseller "The Product Book" and the organizer behind #ProductCon , the worlds largest Product Conference. In our most recent episode we had a conversation with Carlos González de Villaumbrosia, CEO & Founder of Product School. Carlos share...

Mirela is CPO & Founder at Product People. In this week's episode of the Hotfix podcast, we had a chat with Mirela Mus. Mirela is CPO and founder of Product People. Product People is a product management agency that fills temporary product roles, e.g. due to paternity leaves. This type of PM role has given Mirela a wealth of experience. She has over 12 years of experience in product management, in...

Problems are at the centre of everything product managers do ⤴️ This is one of the first things every PM will learn at the beginning of their career. This mindset is taught in almost every classic PM literature. A few examples: It is my strong belief, and the central concept driving this book, that behind every great product there is someone - usually someone behind the scenes, working tirelessly...

Malte is CPO & Co-Founder at airfocus. In this week we talked with Malte Scholz about his biggest failure story. Malte is the CPO & Co-Founder of airfocus.com . He shared a story about a time, where they decided to build a mobile app for airfocus. They decided to do that not because of customer requests or business reasons, but simply because it was easy to do . “There was this developer who said,...

In this conversation, Stefan Pernek and Christoph Bodenstein discuss the complexities of pushing back in professional settings, particularly in product management. They explore the balance between maintaining relationships and advocating for product integrity, the necessity of context in decision-making, and the importance of strategic insights for effective product management. The dialogue emphas...

🚀 What happens when you empower your team so effectively that they no longer need you? This week on Hotfix , we sat down with Amy Mitchell, a Product Director at Dell, who shared a story about a journey, that changed her. Over the past two years, Amy led the launch of a new managed service offering at Dell. What started as a hands-on role, driving contracts, securing investment, and assembling th...

In this episode of Hotfix, Christoph and Stefan engage with Alex Ciorapciu, exploring his extensive experience in AI and product management. They discuss the evolution of AI, the challenges of usability in product design, and the cultural differences in software development between Europe and the US. Alex shares insights from his journey with AutoRetouch, emphasizing the importance of understandin...

Stefan Pernek & I just recently finished a podcast with Nils Stotz . It was our first episode for The Hotfix Podcast and I would not have thought that I would be learning so much. Framework for Types of Failures: Basic, Complex, and Intelligent When being asked about his failure story, Nils didn't jump right into a story but shared a framework that shows that failure isn't one dimensional. There's...