Product School

11 episodes scanned.

Recent Episodes

1. Replit CEO on The Self-Driving Company: How AI Agents Learn to Operate Themselves While Humans Set the Destination | Amjad Masad | E317

   Oct 28, 2026

   Amjad Masad, founder and CEO of Replit, discusses the company's roughly eight-year search for product-market fit and how the launch of Replit Agent, described as the first coding agent on the market, preceded a 100x revenue increase in a year. He explains why he believes non-engineers and simple prompts have advantages with current AI models, how companies could move toward autonomous "self-driving" operations, and how Replit approaches model routing, code review, and enterprise adoption. The conversation also covers the company's reported 50M+ users, $9B valuation, and its goal of $1B in annual recurring revenue.

2. MrBeast CPTO on How the World's Biggest YouTuber Uses AI to Run Every Video Like a Product Launch | Shiva Rajaraman

   Oct 21, 2026

   Shiva Rajaraman, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Beast Industries, discusses how the MrBeast organization treats each video as a product launch with reviews before and retrospectives after. He describes why the team replaced off-the-shelf enterprise project management software with internal tools built in about three months, embedding forward-deployed engineers in functions such as the studio and marketing, and shipping changes daily. The conversation also covers how AI is used to connect the production workflow and create a shared memory layer of past production problems, and how founder-led products can be tested against a wider set of user needs.

3. Deel Head of Product on How AI Agents Do the Work of 600 Employees and Added $140M in New Revenue Without Hiring | Aaron Goldsmid, SVP of Product, Deel

   Oct 14, 2026

   Aaron Goldsmid, SVP of Product at Deel, discusses how the global HR and payroll platform found over $140M in ARR through AI agents and automation, work he compares to the output of 600 employees. The conversation covers scaling from roughly $250M to $1.5B ARR while staying profitable for nearly three years, along with running a remote company of that size through biweekly business reviews, a semantic data layer, and an internal bot that predicts review questions. He also discusses training a small language model on Deel's compliance corpus, the rising cost of maintaining software built with AI, and why he sees judgment as a continuing differentiator.

4. HP President on Replacing Middle Management and Cutting Tickets 40% with AI Agents | Faisal Masud | E314

   Sep 30, 2026

   Faisal Masud, SVP and President of HP's Digital Services (commercial software business), discusses how HP transformed from a hardware company into a software and AI company. He explains the Workforce Experience Platform, which collects telemetry from HP devices to deliver insights that demonstrably reduce support tickets by 30-40% and hardware refresh costs by 25-30%. Masud argues that AI is eliminating unnecessary management layers and advocates for outcome-based pricing models rather than seat-based licensing.

5. Toast VP of Product on Building Agents Into Pre-AI SaaS; Shipping AI Into a 14-Year-Old Platform and Building for the Real Economy

   Sep 25, 2026

   Maggie Crowley, VP of Product at Toast, discusses the unique challenges of shipping AI agents into a 14-year-old point-of-sale platform built for restaurants and retail operators. She covers Toast's approach to integrating AI without breaking established workflows, including their year-long design partner phase with 10 customers in WhatsApp groups before general availability, and demonstrates Toast IQ's capabilities for menu optimization and business analytics in real-time.

6. Hinge CPTO on Building an App Designed to Be Deleted, Merging the CPO and CTO Roles, Chasing $1B in Revenue Without Chasing Engagement | Ben Celebicic | E312

   Sep 16, 2026

   Ben Celebicic, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Hinge, discusses the dating app's counter-intuitive business model that optimizes for users leaving the platform rather than engagement. He covers how Hinge monetizes by charging only for features that cannot be offered free without disrupting the ecosystem (resulting in less than 15% paying users), how the company uses AI for personalized onboarding and trust & safety (which comprises a third of the organization), and Hinge's mission to reach $1 billion in revenue by 2027. Celebicic also shares his conservative approach to AI-assisted engineering, maintaining that non-technical staff should prototype but not ship to production until AI tools achieve near-perfect output quality.

7. Bolt CEO on Turning AI Prototypes Into Production Code Engineers Trust, the Story Behind a 5M-to-20M ARR Ramp in Two Months | Eric Simons | E311

   Sep 9, 2026

   Eric Simons, CEO of StackBlitz and founder of Bolt, discusses the dramatic turnaround that saved his company from shutdown. After seven years reaching $500K ARR with a cloud IDE product, Simons pivoted to Bolt—an AI-powered prototyping tool for professional builders—and grew from $0 to $5M ARR in 30 days, then to $20M ARR within two months. The conversation covers his first-principles approach to business, the shift from cloud IDEs to AI-assisted development, his focus on specific user workflows (PMs, designers, engineers) rather than broad consumer markets, and his aggressive adoption of usage-based pricing over traditional SaaS per-seat models.

8. Anthropic Member of Technical Staff on Leading Forward-Deployed Engineers, Turning Down 2x Pay, and Why Leaders Are Becoming ICs Again | Amandeep Khurana | E310

   Sep 2, 2026

   Amandeep Khurana, Member of Technical Staff at Anthropic leading the forward-deployed engineering function, discusses his unconventional career path from engineer to founder to AWS PM to IC, and why he chose mission alignment over compensation packages worth 2-3x his Anthropic offer. The conversation covers what forward-deployed engineering actually means versus traditional professional services, how Anthropic selects customer engagements based on mission fit rather than commercial metrics, and his philosophy on career design—realizing the futility of climbing ladders defined by others and creating your own definition of success.

9. Mural CPO on How to Put AI in Multi-Player Mode for Your Team; Why AI Made Work Lonelier, Not Better | Elaina O'Mahoney

   Aug 26, 2026

   Elaina O'Mahoney, Chief Product Officer at Mural, argues that visual collaboration has gone missing in the AI era, with teams working in isolation rather than making decisions together. She discusses how ideas have become cheap (prototype in hours) while shared context has become the real bottleneck, and explores how product leaders can foster multiplayer collaboration, safe AI experimentation in enterprises, and rethink pricing models beyond legacy seat-based SaaS.

10. Square Global Head of Product on: How to Build AI Agents People Actually Use, Why $49B Company Got Rid of General Managers | Willem Avé

    Aug 19, 2026

    Willem Avé, Global Head of Product at Square (part of Block), discusses Square's organizational transformation from a general-manager model to a fully functional structure focused on customer outcomes. He explores how Square integrates hardware and software, explains the DRI (Directly Responsible Individual) model for faster decision-making, and demonstrates Manager Bot—an AI agent that helps small business owners delegate real tasks like inventory management and menu engineering without requiring technical expertise.