Becoming an AI PM | Aman Khan (Arize AI, ex-Spotify, Apple, Cruise) | Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

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 helped 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 P .M.

career, he's focused on building products in the AI space, including at Spotify on the ML platform team and roles at 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 P .M.

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 product managers are, how to thrive as an AI P .M.

And what Aman has learned about how to be successful and continue his career as an individual contributor P .M.

When I asked people on Twitter and LinkedIn who their favorite individual contributor product manager is, Aman 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.

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With that, I bring you Aman Khan.

Aman, 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 I .C.

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 a couple of ways.

One is, if I think about the Venn diagram of some of the most interesting trends in product right now, you're kind of at the center of A .I.

and staying in I .C., an individual contributor for a long time.

And my sense is a lot of PMs are thinking about how do I get into A .I.

and how do I do more A .I.

work. Two, there's a trend of just like I .C.'s, super I .C.'s, less managers, and you've been doing A .I.

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 want to spend our time on.

One is how to get into A .I., how to become an A .I.

PM, essentially. Two is how to thrive as an A .I.

PM. And three is how to thrive as an I .C., outside of A .I., but I know A .I.

plays into that broadly.

How does that sound?

Yeah, that sounds great.

I mean, I think that was like a crazy moment of just seeing how many people piled onto that, to those posts.

And then some of our discussion back and forth on this thread.

And I thought it was like super interesting.

It was like this combination of product and A .I.

where I just happens to be like I think where the space is headed or what seems to be catching so much attention.

So, yeah, I'm super excited to dive into that and try and share a little bit what I've learned along the way as well.

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AIPM Let's start with getting into AIPM, becoming an AIPM.

There's this term that we hear a lot in AIPM.

There's like bootcamp 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 design, engineering, the biz dev 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 platform PMs.

And that's kind of where I find myself.

These are people who are building tools for AI engineers.

So for context, I work at a company called Arise.

We're an observability and evaluation platform for artificial intelligence.

We've been around for a few years.

We started with machine learning and 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 with the rise of all of these tools that are being built on top of OpenAI APIs or anthropic APIs, and basically any tools on top of the large language model providers, it's actually pretty clunky.

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 expected to do is really, really early.

So that's sort of the space I'm focused on around enabling AI engineers to understand the impact.

And if you're an AI PM at another company, one of our customer companies, you understand that when you go to leadership, that my app is actually doing something and doing what I expect it to do on the business.

And then on top of that, there's also AI product PMs.

And AI product PMs are really the flavor of PM where the core product is centered around AI.

And an example of that would actually be something like a chat GPT.

So the core kind of tech or actually, another good example would be, you know, you had Rise 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 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 tech is really the, you know, what you're packaging and distributing.

I think the third type of PM here is really, you know, the one we were talking about a little bit earlier, which is this concept of like, you're an AI powered PM.

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 of what that means as well.

I have some ideas and thoughts around that.

But really what what an AI powered 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 have the access to the resources or research teams that you might have it like a Google or open AI, but you can still utilize 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, you know, if you really break it down, I kind of see in the future, you know, in the near future, most PMs are probably going to 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 LM, or you're building around, you know, a transformer of some kind or GPT model that's doing some part of the work that you would want to do to solve a 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 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 super enabling for a product manager to show up with a functional prototype, it's not going to be 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 a story.

There's a really great tool, a lot of folks might be familiar with Vercel if you're trying to create a landing page.

So Vercel now has 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, and doesn't have to be just a landing page.

If you prompted correctly and iterate with it, you can 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 mockups you might be having with the design team.

I also think if you're designing interfaces, you might want to use AI for graphic design, perhaps you're trying to come up with a logo, or you're trying to come up with something that 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 Midjourney, or even Dolly.

And it's really 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 experiences company, you're a little you're you might trend a little bit more visual tools like image generation might be really powerful, too.

So that's one example.

And then I think even for like 3d 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 want to come back to kind of where we started here.

So you shared three types of 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 a 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 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 a IPM, that's probably where they're like, I want to build products that deeply integrate AI.

For people that want to, say, pivot their career to be an a IPM, 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 feel a little bit like an outsider on the space myself.

So I said, you know, I wasn't related at all, you know, the field I studied was mechanical engineering.

I didn't really take computer science courses, or I had to learn a lot of that on my own.

And I didn't take like machine learning or AI courses either.

I don't have a PhD or master's in the subject.

But coming back to the two 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, power product manager who's building AI products, 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 you already said that I was like a great, great, great quote in my mind as well of, 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 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 pushing, you're pushing, you're actually responsible for pushing technology forward in some ways, you're trying to see what's possible, and keep pushing the space forward to solve that customer problem.

I think the same thing is true for AI products, you know, product managers, meaning, you know, you're really trying to design the best customer experience and 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 unbox that really, 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, you know, 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 not that great, like you usually have to, you know, type in some questions with a chatbot that's like writing 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.

You 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 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 a phone call, there's a ton of tools that are starting to emerge.

And I think a really cutting edge one from the last couple weeks has been open AI 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 can even try that out in the application yourself, you can open up chat GPT.

And if you're a plus subscriber, you can try this cutting edge sort of voice chat bot experience.

And why is this interesting?

Because if you're consumer and you're 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 kind of 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 this whole space is about.

I want to underscore that it's really, 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 might want to pick up, or, you know, for yourself, or even implement in your own product.

So I think like 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 want to be an AI PM.

There's kind of two questions here.

One is, what do you recommend they specifically learn skill wise, technical wise, to have some chance at becoming an AI PM?

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, definitely say that.

I think you're hitting on something 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, 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's 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 problems I'm trying to solve or 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 videos on YouTube of, you know, Andre Carpathi talking about the foundation of LLMs.

It's this great, amazing resource.

He put out this video, you know, a little while ago, it's about an hour long.

But you could put it into notebook LM, maybe get like a more succinct version, but the idea is that you can really understand the technology in terms of 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.

There's no maybe maybe to bring this back to an earlier point, 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 building your own skill set and skill 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 that 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 AI and ML of at least being able to describe what the technology can do.

And then you have this portfolio of products, you're actually answering both of those questions for the hiring manager, even before they talk to them.

So you're kind of short cutting the process by showing them how you think and how you like to spend time and what your interests are, hobbies are.

And then all you have to do is really nail that phone interview.

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 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, you know, like core product management?

And so that's really my advice is really, you could start with building your skill stack.

And, you know, starting with the foundation up, let your curiosity drive you and then turn that into a portfolio that you can use as an applicant to stand out.

So what I love about this is basically the I wouldn't say the hack to get hired as an AIPM, but just like the way you will come across as clearly this person is worth paying attention to as you've actually built things with AI like actual products, especially now that it's much easier to do as a you

know, you can use tools like the ones you mentioned cursor v zero replet.

You can 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 products that you have built, and ideally like put out into the world, you're not going to 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 kind of 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 required a depth of knowledge in machine learning and, you know, types

of models and you are probably more deeply involved and like, what should this the training data look like and the split of the data and how do I launch this thing and all 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 kind of, you know, an example there would be, there are these incredible videos that are being put out right now on YouTube on how to build an app in like an hour.

And, you know, I credit Greg Eisenberg, he's really kind of like pioneered some of this format of, you know, he'll show up and just like, here's how I built a product within like 45 minutes and kind of how you use the same tools we just described.

And I kind of have this like tongue in cheek example a little bit too.

That's pretty relevant, which was, I was trying to describe replit to someone to a friend of mine, who actually, you know, was basically saying, I like, I don't really have time to learn another tool right now.

There's 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 opened 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 replit 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 kind of built this like example of like, build me a signup page for this newsletter.

And it did actually a pretty reasonable job on first pass, but there's things you want to do to keep iterating on it.

So they kind of prompted again, I'll make it look a little bit nicer, use these colors.

And within five minutes, I had a working prototype for a signup 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 going to keep pushing you forward, so that you can be the person out there saying, hey, did you see this cool thing that I tried, you know, that I just pulled up?

And, you know, you're really the one that's almost the expert on 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 curious of a space too.

I'm really happy you shared that.

And it's reminds me, I'm just gonna go on a tangent here, I want to get your take on this.

I had this kind of hot take a month ago or so that there's this 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 AI 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 them 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 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 totally believe that I think that there's a sort of like feeling that executives might have or like, VPs and companies might have like, we need to get into AI.

But the challenge is that, you know, there's this inclination towards, you know, doing the same thing that's working so far.

And so I think the role of an AI PM in this type of organization 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 deeply, 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 kind of actually build on like, one of the core product skill sets that you know, people, you mentioned on your podcast too, which is influence.

And what this 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 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 allows an AI product manager to be super high leverage.

So to me, it's like, 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 what you just mentioned, we were talking about Mahika before we started recording and one of her superpowers and willing 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 slides product.

And so now everyone can be a Mahika, basically, that you can build and design as a PM.

So anyway, I think we've gone down that road far enough.

I want to shift a little bit to talking about how to thrive as an AI PM, 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 5 % AI product managers?

We kind of talked about like, what are AI product managers?

You know, how do you build AI power products around what the fundamental technology is?

I think there was this really interesting moment where, you know, about two years ago, actually, almost roughly to this time, chat GPT launches.

And I think everyone who kind of tried it out, you know, was was pretty impressed by a couple of things.

There was 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 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 can get kind of conditioned to, you know, this technology continuing to get better.

But when that moment happened, and 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 we set it 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, you know, customers that are super well known, household brands, Spotify and Instacart and these sorts of companies that people love and use every single day.

And what ended up happening was, you know, we talked to a lot of folks of like, well, what are you doing around, you know, building around this technology, this really game changing sort of shift in AI.

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, everyone gravitated towards this particular use cases, all the AI product managers anywhere, like we're building like an internal chat bot on top of our knowledge base, and it's going to be able to answer questions, and it's going to be great.

And when you kind of look at like, the the products that were built, like, how much usage that they really have 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 go thrive as a, you know, be of top 5 % a IPM versus, you know, maybe an a IPM that isn't as stellar.

I actually think it's kind of 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, you know, everyone's bought in because they're familiar with it.

Like, 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'll 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 did also ship a small chat bot just to understand how the tech work.

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 I think that that's really the question you have to ask yourself is what's the right interface when I'm designing a product like this.

So what I'm hearing is if your team is building something that's very similar to some other to a foundational models product, for example, probably red flag, probably not going to be a huge opportunity.

So optimized for things that feel different than new.

Anything else you want to have there because I have a question.

Yeah, I think there's, there's like, so that that's, that's almost like a point of like, what do people do for the last two years?

And now there's this moment of this actually kind of happening again.

And this moment is sort of happening around the term of like, AI agents.

And I think again, like, you know, I think if you really look at it, like, I get 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 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?

And then your 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 going to 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 AI PM really stands out.

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I imagine a lot of product leaders are hearing this and be like, thank God, I need every one 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 got to do AI.

Here's an idea. Here's an idea.

And there's all these people chasing AI 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 and not AI 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 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, you know, if you try to implement this tomorrow, you probably see start seeing those ideas coming back.

So the first one is you actually brought up an earlier point of how do I measure, you know, what should I be measuring here?

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 metrics, not moving revenue.

So how do you really measure if what you're doing is working.

And I think that's where you kind of need a metric of like, how many shots are you taking in the first place?

And that kind of ties into like 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 oftentimes, you know, I think I think there's like this aversion sometimes to hackathons, because 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 see like, how can I use AI to actually solve those problems?

What you're going to come out with is maybe a list of 10 problems.

And nine of them, you try to apply AI towards and 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, AI doesn't actually do a good job with that.

I actually have an example here of we actually did our own hackathon a couple weeks ago.

And the engineering team had all these ideas.

And one of them was the Slackbot that actually alerted a person that was on call for a problem.

So we thought it was going to be so simple, like if someone posted like a support channel, hey, I'm having a problem with this thing, the Slackbot would take that question and actually ping the right person.

We thought, oh, this is gonna be great.

This is a perfect use case for AI.

And we'll kind of give access to this table.

And we'll look at problems, classify them and then ping the right person.

It turns out, that's actually a really hard problem to do, because there's so much context that is missing in, you know, well, 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 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 super great.

And I think the last kind of point here is really obsessing about the details of the user experience in the first place.

And, you know, you're looking for problems to go and be solved with AI, but I think part of that is really looking at, like, what are successful AI products today?

And you can probably, you know, try a few and name a few, but, you know, a good example of that might be, and AI is actually magical.

And what do they get right?

So, like, an example of that might be, like, there's this, like, funny anecdote of what a lot of people are trying to do with AI is, like, automate the Java way entirely.

And there's this story of, you know, Betty Crocker, like, actually, you know, launching this cake mix, where all you have to do is, like, mix water, and 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.

And it turns out that actually, like, tank their sales.

So all they have to do is, you know, basically change the instructions so that all you have to do is add eggs.

And that one thing kind of created this effect where their sales skyrocketed, because they realized that the customer actually wants to have a little bit of control over the experience.

And you can kind of see that even now if you've, like, taken, you know, if you've been, if you've been able to, like, take a Waymo or self driving car, like, the car is fully self driving, but you can still control the air condition, 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.

And that's kind of like the Ikea effect applied to AI, like, people feel more empowered when they can, 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.

And I think if you're, like, looking at the space, you're going to 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 delivery food making 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 this time to cook.

And then it turns out he's using Blue Apron.

And it feels to you like you're cooking and you can tell people, hey, I'm cooking a lot but it's not, you know, it's it's not quite the same.

Yeah, but actually, if you're in line, I could like problem that, like, that's a really interesting point with like Blue Apron 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, you know, 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 like DoorDash, which is just the person buttoning 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 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 problem away.

So it's an important point.

And 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 tangent from advice you're sharing on what separates typical AIPMs from 5 % top 5 % PMs.

And what else you what else you got?

What else you got on that list?

Oh, actually, I'll kind of steal this one a little bit from our friend, Kevin Yin, who, I think he had this advice when he was on on your part, which really resonated with me actually, at a personal level, which is you have to be able to walk and chew gum.

So as an AIPM, your 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 teardown of the notebook LM product just yesterday as part of our company.

So we like live streamed it.

And we're going to 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 trying to break down how it works.

And the goals there 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 I come back to that point of, you have to be able to walk and chew 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 might 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 ATM, you have to accept this technology is changing really fast.

It's, you know, you might think it's going to do something great, or maybe you have a bad product experience.

It's like, I think you had a point earlier as well, which is like, you know, to be a really great chef, you have to, you know, you have to have a lot, you know, occasionally, you're going to have a bad meal.

I think that's going to have this, that's going to be the same thing here with your AI product diet, you're going to try some bad experiences, you're going to 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 with the organization.

And that's, I think really stellar.

AI teams do that. I feel like this metaphor of walking chewing gum doesn't communicate the difficulty of what you're of Kevin's, now that I think about it, what he's trying to describe doesn't feel hard to walk and chew gum.

I wonder what a better metaphor.

Yeah, well, I think it's and Oh, this is 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 read to, like, describe something hard that you realize, like, doesn't make sense more than one thing.

Anyway, we don't want to solve it right now.

Okay, so I want to talk about being an IC being successful as an IC 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 AI 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 trying to get them to do something else.

And that's really 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 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 AI PM is at the end of the day.

So that's really, I think that's that's the hard part about the job.

But also maybe the most important impactful part of it.

I love that. Okay, so let's put AI to the side for a moment.

But not totally off to the side, or imagine we're going to touch on it in this next area.

And next area is talking about how to be a really successful IC.

You've very 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 as an AI 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 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 I'm just obsessed with solving that, you know, customer's 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 kind of like three things that come back to me of like, what the hard part about being an ICPM is and how you can kind of break through that.

So I first want to like, set the tone a little bit, which is being an ICPM is really hard.

It's, it's, you know, I made a point earlier, 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 going to 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 to next.

And so I think the challenge is, 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 energy, waiting versus wandering, and then amplifying the signal to make a decision.

Yeah, so so maybe even just kick off like, energy can 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 to

go. If you kind of show up to a meeting, and you're you're bringing 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, you know, a little bit down or a little bit, you know, not as in booze of about an idea, like

people pick up on that.

And we're still dealing with people today.

And I think that, you know, 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 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, you know, you might still be chaser, 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.

We're like, you know, 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 for that next milestone.

So I can give you an example, like an example there as well, which is, you know, we had this moment, 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 want to, you know, invest in LLMs 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 kind of just brought was, you know, I'm just going to be our like outbound salesperson and just start writing LinkedIn messages to people that have the title AI in their LinkedIn profile.

So I just went 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.

And 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 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 showing up, bringing the energy can move the bar so much higher for the whole team to operate.

So that's kind of the example I give of like, you know, 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, you know, all of the tough stuff as well.

And I see that happen.

I think that that really comes from leadership from our CEO as well, like, he'll be tired, I can tell, but it's just when he shows up to a meeting, like, he just doesn't show it, you just have to kind of bring that energy.

So what I'm hearing is there's kind of 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 in a row and kind of go in rogue a little bit.

In that first bucket, 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 what I mean by that is like, you know, yeah, 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 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, 100%.

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, you're bringing the energy level of the room up versus bringing it down.

I had a PM I was working with at one point that is the epitome of that every meeting he walks into, he's just like, solve some problems.

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 out, I have some friends from like the earlier days at Lyft.

And I think this might have been in a self driving car division, but like, they would literally, I'm not kidding, this was like the ritual, where they would actually end the meetings with like, the phrase, make it happen.

And I thought that was so powerful, because it's so simple.

But it's like, all right, we're gonna do this was like one of their values, and we're gonna, you know, we walk away from a decision, we're gonna make it happen.

And I think even just as 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 to like, you get to determine the culture of the people around you.

You get to build a culture of the team, and that can really work its way out.

Like there's top down culture, there's values, but you get to kind of drive what you know, people in the room are feeling.

And and I think that's really, really powerful, especially in the role of the PM, where everyone kind of 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 kind of drive the energy 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 ICPM 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,

you know, energizing folks 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 to solve the problem.

Yeah, and I'll like even just to riff on that, like second point, like, you're, you know, I think that 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 think that there's this like feeling that at least that, you know, teams, I've been a part of where like, there, there is no job that isn't important, right.

And so you kind of, you know, as a PM, you're, you're, 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 whole team kind of pushed along better as well.

Awesome. So let's keep talking about other things you found helpful in helping you be really successful.

I and I CPM, you mentioned this term wandering versus waiting, maybe a good met direction, or if there's anything else.

I actually I think this one is so so powerful, which is like the concept of waiting versus monitoring.

And like, to me, this is this super relatable, again, from the standpoint of trying to figure out what to go do next.

So we kind of 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 going to bring to solving a problem.

But like at the end of the day, you as the product manager have to figure out where do things go?

What's the problem to be solved?

And how do we solve it really, for a customer?

And I like, there's this like thought exercise is like zoom out of it, you know, it kind of 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 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 was 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 team?

And 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, 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 a story of like, we, you know, there was this moment in the company's history where I was like, I was like grabbing a beer with one of my our engineering managers.

And he was like, Look, man, like, I kind of show up and I'm like, I maybe I wasn't bringing 100 % of my energy, you know, at this end of the workday.

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 his world, everything was actually going pretty reasonably well.

It was like, we kind of 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 is actually doing really great, the morale is 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 next features and next, next part of the company.

And that that part was, was really tough.

But I actually think that's where, you know, kind of tier to an earlier kind of like part of the discussion, where where an AIPM can really stand out is in being a natural wanderer and naturally feeling a little bit like their role is to push the boundaries of what the company thinks is even possible.

And to do that, you sometimes have to be in this 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 reassuring to hear from them like they I remember having this conversation and a part of our chief product officer was like, that's what buildings year 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 kind of know when you get there.

And so you just have to keep wandering and iterating until 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, while the rest of the camp might have to wait and see what that next move is.

So that to me, I thought was like, this this really visceral feeling of, of, you know, like, where do we go?

Where do you go from here?

So my takeaway here is if you're feeling like you have no idea where your product is going to 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 an ideate theory makes that a little less stressful because you can actually just try stuff.

Yeah, and I think that's like that amplifying the signal with like through the noise with AI, like the signal can be super sparse, you get back at times two.

And then what you can do is like, you know, there's really powerful tools like we use gong, 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 100 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.

But what you can do is actually just find ways to find signal through the noise.

And that kind of gives you an ability to almost have like a superpower, because you can be in so many places at once.

And you kind of use technology or advantage to get that signal back.

So I would really try 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, as we wrap up and approach our very exciting lightning round, product management can kind of feel pretty serious, who like

there's some big decisions that sort of weigh on your shoulder.

But I honestly, I remember having this discussion with one of one of our board members, actually, and who's he's a serial entrepreneur, he's taking companies public.

And I was like, What advice do you have for me as like a 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 kind of keeping this curiosity and building products for customers that you care about, it's just going to help you go so much further.

And I just think it's just more fun to have, you know, to be the to be like, high energy, it's just more fun to, you know, like really care about the thing that you're working on.

And I think if you're constantly learning and having fun, you're going to 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 wondering, but have fun with that too.

I love that so much.

And it resonates so deeply with me, as I've shared a couple times on this podcast, 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. It's like the lamest little post it just.

Is it like really tore it up at this point from where is it like, you know, I just bent a post it in half and wrote have fun on the edge.

And then it just sits here.

I don't know, post it are meant to like, you know, stick to stuff.

But this is how he decided to use it.

This also came up recently in this episode that I think is going to 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.

Just more fun than not having fun.

That's like a really silly line.

Yeah, it is. And, and even if it's like, very stressful and scary, just reframing it to how do I have fun?

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.

Well, I'm on with that we reached our very exciting lightning round.

Are you ready? Ding ding ding.

There's a ding that comes that we overlay.

I know. I always have to resist not saying ding ding ding.

I know. Yeah. Yep, I'm ready.

Let's do it. First question.

What are two or three books you recommended most to other people?

I really loved Short History of Mealy Everything by Bill Bryson.

I don't know if that's a you know, 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 kind of tells this like story of the history of science really and how we know the things that we know.

And he kind of 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 co workers he had or, you know, or like Darwin wasn't maybe perceived as like such an amazing scientist at the time, like, and so a lot of in 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, years later, at times, and people don't get credit for things 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 recommend to like almost everyone, because it's pretty easy read as well.

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 these actually, you know, one of the founders of idea.

And these, these folks are 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 that I remember I did myself as well, and I wasn't sure which direction to go in my career, that helped me really figure out, you know, the most powerful exercise and like take away 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 kind of 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 just I love both of those books, because they're, they're really like shifting in from a perspective standpoint.

I love that second book.

I read it, and it was really meaningful to me.

But it's been a long ago, and I forgot it now.

But I remember it was really great.

And so I'm glad you brought that up.

Next question. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you really enjoyed?

I don't usually binge watch TV, I gotta be honest, like I'm not a binge watcher.

But it's 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 documentary on Netflix.

I don't know if we've seen that I don't even know if it gets like pushed up that highly in the Netflix algos.

But 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, and I even realized they're gave credit to.

And then to kind of coming back to like, the characters and 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 F1.

But yeah, highly recommend it.

And it's it's intense.

I'm gonna kind of start there like, I didn't realize what I was gonna get to but I just ramped up in more and more intensity and yeah, really enjoyed it.

Is their favorite product you've 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.

Replet is incredible.

It's so easy to use.

You know, V zero and these are all like, really like I think the create really polished products at the end of the day.

But the product that really that I've been like using and having a ton of fun with is Websen.

I think it creates this almost playful version of the prototype in the first place you might be trying to build or just something so crazy and wacky and zany that you're not even sure as possible.

And, and it's so hard to describe.

I remember even, you know, we I used to show a presentation from some of the founders of web sim at, 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 thought I was like super I've just been obsessed with it lately, just to like push the boundaries of what's possible.

I also do have another product as well.

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 kind of kind of weird.

But I'm a little bit old school.

And I, I actually like like you I like to like write note notes and like physical notebooks.

And so I was you know, like, I'm always looking for like, oh, it's like a fun, you know, like a really practical notebook to use.

And this was this is really weird.

But I was recently given a notebook from actually like an AI meetup here.

And I opened it and it's made from recycled apples.

And when you open the notebook, it smells like apples, which is really interesting, because like, I didn't think 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.

It's like 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 loop in my head of like, I, I enjoy like using that notebook now.

I'm not sure what that means of what I run out of papers in this one, if I'm going to buy another, but that was that was really funny.

I didn't expect to like that as much.

You're making me hungry.

I can almost smell it.

What is the brand of this notebook in case folks want to look it up.

It's called appeal.

I need to do 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 like, specifically one that I ended this essay that I wrote a while back with called, I read a bunch of self help books, you don't have to and I like share it with my friends.

It's literally just called that, that you know, are not sure what to do when they're in that next phase of their career as well.

And the quote is from Steve Jobs, 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 at the same time, I think what's been really powerful for me has been to look reassess what my goals are, and what, 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 along the way based on that.

So I truly love that sentiment.

Then it came up recently in another conversation with Jam Nichols.

But let's move on actual final question.

So as I was researching you, I was googling your name.

And when I Google your name, there's a cricket player very prominently comes up curious how much that bothers you that there's a player that is number one on Google in many ways.

Oh, my God. Tell us about how that feels.

This is gonna sound crazy, but I, I was like, thinking I literally I was thinking about this.

Yesterday. It's gonna sound crazy.

Because I was like, 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 when I have kids, like, they're gonna have some unique names, because it gets so much harder.

Like you have to type in like a mod cod, San Francisco or Berkeley or something to like get that to pop up.

So yeah, so it does bother me.

We'll iterate on that for the next.

Or it's a this is a goal, I feel like you have the chance to beat this guy.

Totally, right? Or, you know, maybe another way to look at it is like, if I if we still keep using search engines, and it's funny, because my partner works at Google, the future might look like what if we, you know, what if we're using LLMs more kind of gives me a second shot here to like, be part of the training

near the set in a way.

So yeah, Amazing. I love the silver lining there.

I'm on this was amazing.

I think this is going to be helpful to so many people trying to get into AI trying to thrive.

As an AIPM, or just wanting to stay down the IC track.

We went through so many things, I there's like my notes were very long, and we touched on basically everything.

So thank you so much for being here to 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 not super active on x though, you know, my might spend a little bit more time there were LinkedIn easily.

And then to that note, yeah, how can listeners be helpful?

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 want to fit into it, or they want to 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 respond to anyone that messages me.

And but 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 there's, you know, this, this note from john dory spoke at the college I went to and he put his email up on the board and his like, No, it was I'll email anyone who emails me as long as you send me your three top three favorite books, movies, podcasts, or like videos that impacted you in some

way. And I'll do the same for you.

And so I actually did that email them and got back his top three as well.

So I want to kind of carry that forward.

And, you know, would love to hear from folks, send me your top three, whatever pieces of content they might be, and I'll do the same for you.

It's an amazing collection, you're going to build.

I'm I want to see all these things, too.

I love that idea. It's almost like a mini lightning round.

What a clever idea.

I'm on. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much, this has been awesome.

Really, really had fun with this one.

Same for me. Bye, everyone.

Thank you so much for listening.

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[How to Become and Thrive as an AI Product Manager]-[Becoming an AI PM | Aman Khan (Arize AI, ex-Spotify, Apple, Cruise)]

📋 Summary

Navigating the Frontier: Insights from AI Product Management

The Three Flavors of AI Product Management

Pivoting into AI: The Power of Prototyping

Thriving as an AI PM: Focus on the Problem, Not the Hype

The Art of the Individual Contributor (IC)

Conclusion

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript