The Product Podcast

In this episode, Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia interviews Chris Geoghegan, VP of Product at Zapier. As the company’s first-ever Product Manager, Chris has spent nearly a decade scaling Zapier into a $5 billion automation giant that serves over 3.4 million businesses and 69% of the Fortune 1000.

Zapier is not just building AI tools; they are powering their entire company with them. Chris reveals that his team currently runs over 800 active AI agents internally to manage everything from calendar prep to engineering triage. He breaks down the Code Red moment that shifted their strategy and how they are defining the future of Agentic Workflows.

What you’ll learn:
Agentic vs. Deterministic: Why standard workflows follow a set path, while agents can reason, access knowledge, and change course to solve problems.
The Orchestration Layer: How to hire and onboard AI agents using Context Engineering and Model Context Protocols (MCPs).
Adoption vs. Transformation: Why adoption is just doing old tasks faster, while transformation unlocks business models that were previously impossible.
Building a Moat: How Zapier uses its vast data on user intent to stay ahead of commodity LLM features.
Key takeaways:
Treat Agents Like Employees: You can't just deploy an agent; you must onboard it with specific context and tools to be effective.
Lead by Building: Transformation fails if leaders don't use the tools. Zapier’s execs do show-and-tell sessions to prove they are hands-on.
AI Governance is Key: To move up-market to the enterprise, you must solve for Observability (who sent what data) and Access Control.
Credits:
Host: Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia
Guest: Chris Geoghegan 
Social Links:
Follow our Podcast on Tik Tok here
Follow Product School on LinkedIn here
Join Product School's free events here
Find out more about Product School here

In this episode, Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia, Founder & CEO at Product School, interviews Tim Simmons, Chief Product Officer at Walmart International, the retail giant serving 255 million customers weekly across 18 countries. Tim is leading a massive transformation to move from decentralized tech stacks to global platforms that empower local innovation.

Tim explains why complexity is actually a competitive advantage when training AI. He dives deep into Agentic AI and the concept of Orchestrators—systems that manage workflows between agents to automate tasks like user story generation with 88% accuracy. He also shares the strategy behind the Walmart Translation Platform (WTP), which has cut translation costs by 99% while increasing speed and trust.

What you'll learn:
The Orchestrator Strategy: How to build AI systems where project manager agents coordinate tasks for maximum efficiency.
Global vs. Local: A framework for building core platforms that scale while allowing for hyper-local customization.
The ROI of AI: How Walmart tracks adoption and accuracy, not just productivity.
Human in the Loop: Why keeping humans involved in AI workflows actually makes the models smarter over time.

Key takeaways:
Complexity is Data: The more you expose AI to your organization's complexity, the more resilient and accurate it becomes.
Trust Through Nuance: Successful localization isn't just word-for-word translation; it's about capturing intent to build customer trust.
Platform Discipline: Moving from bespoke builds to multi-tenant codebases is essential for scaling innovation globally.
Credits:
Host: Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia
Guest: Tim Simmons
Social Links:
Follow our Podcast on Tik Tok here
Follow Product School on LinkedIn here
Join Product School's free events here
Find out more about Product School here

In this episode, Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia, CEO & Founder at Product School, interviews Aparna Sinha, SVP of Product at Vercel, the cloud platform recently valued at $9.3 billion following a $300 million Series F. Aparna joins us to discuss how Vercel is powering the next generation of AI-native applications.

Drawing from her experience at Google Kubernetes and Pear VC, Aparna reveals how Vercel empowers Teams of One to ship faster than ever. She explores the cultural shift required to build in the AI era—moving from rigid planning to rapid experimentation and iterating to greatness.

What you'll learn:
How Vercel’s Team of One philosophy maximizes developer leverage.
Why shipping imperfect products early is crucial for AI strategy.
The mechanics of Hybrid Pricing to balance AI costs and value.
How to use internal dogfooding to accelerate product quality.

Key takeaways:
Speed is Survival: In the AI era, waiting for perfection means falling behind.
Agency over Hierarchy: Small, autonomous teams outperform large structures.
Price for Value: Align AI pricing with user outcomes, not just compute costs.
Credits:
Host: Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia
Guest: Aparna Sinha
Social Links:
Follow our Podcast on Tik Tok here
Follow Product School on LinkedIn here
Join Product School's free events here
Find out more about Product School here

In this episode, Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia, CEO & Founder at Product School, interviews Anique Drumright, General Manager and VP of Product at Rippling, the workforce management platform valued at $16.8 billion with over $570 million in ARR.

Anique is a product veteran who has shaped high-growth teams at Uber, TripActions, and Loom. Now at Rippling, she helps lead a workforce of over 4,000 employees, including 100 former founders, to maintain the speed and ownership typically lost at scale. In this conversation, Anique breaks down how Rippling successfully operates as a compound startup and why product leaders must evolve into General Managers.

What you’ll learn:
How to pivot from managing a backlog to owning a P&L as a GM.
The Compound Startup framework for consolidating enterprise categories.
How to build high-performing teams by hiring for "founder-level" curiosity.
Strategies for proving ROI to enterprise customers to drive platform adoption.

Key takeaways:
Go and See: Why leaders must personally investigate customer issues to set the bar for quality.
Singular Obsession: How to organize teams to maintain focus and velocity as you scale.
Automating ROI: How Rippling uses product efficiency to justify headcount reduction for clients.
Credits:
Host: Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia
Guest: Anique Drumright
Social Links:
Follow our Podcast on Tik Tok here
Follow Product School on LinkedIn here
Join Product School's free events here
Find out more about Product School here

In this episode, Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia interviews Andrey Khusid, Co-founder and CEO of Miro, the visual collaboration platform valued at an estimated $17 billion with over 100 million users. Andrey reveals how Miro transformed from a simple browser whiteboard into a central hub for innovation, serving 250,000 customers worldwide. He discusses the critical shift from best-of-breed tools to platform suites and how Miro is aggressively integrating AI to support agentic workflows.

What you'll learn:
How to apply day one thinking to constantly reinvent your product strategy.
Why speed of learning is the only true competitive moat in the AI era.
How to navigate the tension between market consolidation and AI experimentation.
The role of acquisitions in scaling a product team to 1,600 people.

Key Takeaways:
Reinvention is Mandatory: Why you must risk short-term revenue to secure long-term relevance.
AI as a Teammate: Moving beyond features to humans and AI working together to solve problems.
Fast Fashion Software: How to build a Lovemark brand to survive rapid commoditization.

Credits:
Host: Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia
Guest: Andrey Khusid 
Social Links:
Follow our Podcast on Tik Tok here
Follow Product School on LinkedIn here
Join Product School's free events here
Find out more about Product School here