20Product: How Scale AI and Harvey Build Product | Why PMs Are Wrong: They are not the CEOs of the Product | How to do Pre and Post Mortems Effectively and How to Nail PRDs | The Future of Product Management in a World of AI with Aatish Nayak | The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch | Podwise
20Product: How Scale AI and Harvey Build Product | Why PMs Are Wrong: They are not the CEOs of the Product | How to do Pre and Post Mortems Effectively and How to Nail PRDs | The Future of Product Management in a World of AI with Aatish Nayak
This episode explores the evolution of a product manager's role in the rapidly evolving landscape of AI, particularly within hyper-growth startups. Against the backdrop of the speaker's experience at Scale AI and currently at Harvey, the discussion highlights the shift from a product manager as the "glue" of the organization to a more facilitative "WD-40" role, enabling other team members to excel. More significantly, the conversation emphasizes the importance of prioritizing market selection over other factors, illustrated by the success of companies like Tesla and Waymo in the self-driving market and the failures of others. As the discussion pivoted to product development, the speaker advocated for prioritizing user needs and iterating quickly through prototyping, even before writing formal product requirement documents (PRDs). For instance, the speaker detailed the importance of pre-mortems to anticipate potential problems and the need for clear communication and alignment within the team. In contrast to the common belief that chat interfaces are the future of AI, the speaker argued that more sophisticated interfaces are needed to handle the complexity of real-world tasks. This means for the future of product management in AI is a greater emphasis on domain expertise and the ability to bridge the gap between AI models and user experience tailored to specific professions.
