About the show

LaunchPod is a product management podcast hosted by LogRocket's CEO, Matt Arbesfeld, and VP of Marketing, Jeff Wharton, where they talk to product leaders about the issues they faced in their careers, how they found solutions to those issues, and how you can apply these solutions in your own day-to-day product role.

LaunchPod | Product Management Podcast on social media

Episodes

  • Kickstarter's Comeback | Mahesh Guruswamy, CPTO (Kickstarter)

    June 10th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  35 mins 16 secs
    business, digital experience, product management, technology

    Today, we’re talking with Mahesh Guruswamy, CPTO at Kickstarter.

    In this episode, we discuss:

    • How daily reflection on hard moments helped him grow as a leader—and led to his widely praised book How to Deliver Bad News and Get Away with It.
    • How Kickstarter went from “printing money” and experiencing “insane” PMF to plateauing - and how they created urgency and competition to quickly turn it around
    • The actual process Kickstarter used to activate its creator and backer communities to shape a better UX, build real loyalty, and re-ignite growth
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    Inside MailChimp's PLG Engine | Lauren Schuman, VP of Prod. Growth (Bitly) | LaunchPod

    June 3rd, 2025  |  Season 1  |  35 mins 3 secs
    business, digital experience, product management, technology

    On today’s episode, our guest is Lauren Schuman, VP of Product Growth at Bitly & former Sr. Dir. of Product Growth at MailChimp.

    In this episode, we discuss:

    • How Lauren created PLG as a discipline at MailChimp and turned it into a systematic growth engine
    • The turnaround story behind a failed product launch, and how it led to a 183% spike in adoption overnight
    • Why lagging engagement pushed her to lead a ground-up rebuild of MailChimp’s core email editor to improve growth
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    How to compete with Apple — and win | Steve Chazin, CEO & Founder (Skytech.io) | LaunchPod (Repeat)

    May 27th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  30 mins 30 secs
    business, digital experience, product management, technology

    On today’s repeat episode, our guest is Steve Chazin, CEO & Founder of Skytech.io and formerly VP of Products at Alarm.com.

    In this episode, we discuss:

    • Steve’s experience working at Apple, competing with Final Cut Pro, and his current role at alarm.com
    • The time he said no to Steve Jobs — and how that pushed his career forward
    • The importance of user-centered product design and the impact of AI in home security
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    The AI Velocity Engine for Product | Jeremy Pollock VP of Product (WP Engine) | LaunchPod

    May 20th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  41 mins 20 secs
    business, digital experience, product management, technology

  • Build product impact with LLMs and data normalization | Rajitha Chaparala VP of Product (Procore) | LaunchPod

    May 13th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  38 mins 22 secs
    business, digital experience, product management, technology

    On today’s episode, we’re talking with Rajitha Chaparala, VP of Product at Procore, a construction management solution and one of the most successful examples of vertical SaaS out there today.

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    How to category carve in B2B commerce | Jake Hookom, EVP of Product (Perforce) | LaunchPod

    May 6th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  38 mins 32 secs
    business, digital experience, product management, technology

    Today, we’re talking with Jake Hookom, EVP of Product at Perforce.

    In this episode, we’ll explore:

    • How Jake’s focus on "category carving" at Four51 helped them soar above the sea of headless commerce tools and into a successful exit
    • Why most PMs are wrong to measure success on features shipped - it’s about solving user problems throughout the entire customer journey
    • And, how Sitecore’s enormous practitioner community provided market awareness and a means to drive product adoption beyond anything they could do alone disrupts the world
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    Building Consumer Trust for Mainstream Adoption | Sean McLeary, VP, Prod. Exp. (InTapp) | LaunchPod

    April 29th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  38 mins 53 secs
    business, digital experience, product management, technology

    Today, we’re talking with Sean McLeary, VP of Product Experience at Intapp.

    In this episode, we’ll explore:

    • How Sean turned Macys.com and Macy’s brick-and-mortar into one cohesive experience, increasing revenue across both sources
    • How the team at DocuSign improved the UX to go from tech darling to mainstream product
    • The current landscape of AI adoption, addressing "empty box syndrome," and how AI’s parallels to the early stages of the internet help us understand how user behavior might evolve
  •

    Build Product Like Typeform | Aleks Bass, CPO (TypeForm) | LaunchPod (Pt.2)

    April 22nd, 2025  |  Season 1  |  30 mins 26 secs
    business, digital experience, product management, technology

    Today, we’re getting into Part 2 of our masterclass on user research and product strategy from Aleks Bass, CPO at Typeform.

    In part two of this episode, Aleks talks about:

    • How she successfully launched Typeform for Growth in only six months, which quickly became Typeform's fastest-growing product ever
    • How she restructured the entire Typeform product development lifecycle, adding continuous usability testing as a crucial part of that process
    • And how you can cultivate strong partnerships between R&D and GTM to drive similar success
  •

    Build Product Like Typeform | Aleks Bass, CPO (TypeForm) | LaunchPod (Pt.1)

    April 15th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  43 mins 21 secs
    business, digital experience, product management, technology

    Today, we’re talking with Aleks Bass, CPO at Typeform.

    In part one of this two-part episode, Aleks talks about:

    • The exact methodologies for user research that she used to develop a complete product strategy in just 45 days
    • Their discovery of “feature constellations” - sets of features that are worth 10x more when combined than just the sum of the parts
    • How to break the rules of user research for even faster results
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    How To Say "Not Yet" To Enterprise | Deepti Mendiratta, VP Of Products (HungerRush) | LaunchPod

    April 8th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  35 mins 34 secs
    business, digital experience, product management, technology

    Today, we’re talking with Deepti Mendiratta, VP of Product at HungerRush, an all-in-one POS system for restaurants.

    In this episode, Deepti talks about:

    • Why you have to just “make the pizza” - meaning experience the day-to-day of your users, not just your buyers, to build software that solves key issues for the business
    • getting her biggest UX wins from fixing the paper cuts that users run into all the time, not just the sporadic gaping wounds
    • And, how to say “not yet” to the allure of going upmarket to Enterprise too soon...because, as she says, once you catch that elephant, you have to feed it
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    How to unlock $50 million in revenue in one year | Vaarrun Bimbhat, Head of Product (Jiffy.com) | LaunchPod

    April 1st, 2025  |  Season 1  |  37 mins 42 secs
    business, digital experience, product management, technology

    Today, we’re talking with Vaarrun Bimbhat, Head of Product at Jiffy.com, an online retailer of customizable clothing.

    In this episode, Vaarrun talks about:

    • Humanizing the sale of high-commit items, like furniture, at Wayfair - which led to $50m in additional sales
    • How he built a repeatable process to expand into new countries at Shopify - adding almost 100k new merchants and $50m in additional revenue in India in the first year alone
    • And why developing a billing experimentation platform drove over $26m in gross profit annually at Shopify
  •

    Vertical shift: How to navigate new product markets | Dan McCarthy, VP of Product (Cyvl) | LaunchPod

    March 25th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  33 mins 3 secs
    business, digital experience, product management, technology

    Today, we’re talking with Dan McCarthy, VP of Product at Cyvl, an AI-powered mapping tool for transportation infrastructure.

    In this episode, Dan talks about:

    • Using lessons from building digital products to improve the physical world around us
    • Dan’s repeatable playbook for launching into new industries—and the pitfalls to avoid.
    • How a drop in data ingestion costs allowed Cyvl to open up a new, digitally enhanced way of looking at the world
    • Why nailing the entire go-to-market strategy is just as critical as the product itself
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    A PM’s guide to mergers and acquisitions | Sowmya Sundararagavan, Sr. Dir. Product (Freshworks)

    March 18th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  39 mins 14 secs
    business, digital experience, product management, technology

    Today, we’re talking with Sowmya Sundararagavan, Senior Director of Product at Freshworks, an AI customer service, IT, and CRM software platform.

    This episode with Sowmya was a master class in product leadership after an acquisition. She explains:

    • The worst thing you can do as a product leader post-acquisition
    • Her process to successfully integrate separate product visions
    • How to bridge the gap between old and new teams during M&As
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    How to tell your CEO they’re wrong about product centricity | Steve Nash, Dir. of Product (GumGum) | LaunchPod

    March 11th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  31 mins 50 secs
    business, digital experience, product management, technology

    Today, we’re talking with Steve Nash, Director of Product for GumGum, an ad-tech platform that matches brands and consumers through AI-powered data and media solutions.

    In this episode, Steve talks about:

    • How to tell your CEO that they’re wrong — and not lose your career
    • The story behind Playground’s transition to a product-centric culture, and the pace of innovation it unlocked for the team
    • Why unifying behind Playground’s mission of being “the attention company” led to their successful exit and acquisition by GumGum
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    How to build for customers— not stakeholders | Jonathan Sussman, CPO (Jebbit) | LaunchPod

    March 4th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  31 mins 3 secs
    business, digital experience, product management, technology

    Today, we’re talking with Jonathan Sussman, CPO for over 5 years at Jebbit, an enterprise experience platform for first-party data capture, which was recently acquired by BlueConic.

    In this episode, Jonathan talks about:

    • Why Product Management is one of the hardest functions to master
    • How to use professional services - usually a cost center - as a source of product innovation that drives longterm growth
    • And, the time when they built to solve internal problems, not customer value, nearly caused an early key launch to fail
  •

    How to fail fast to unlock hypergrowth | Dane Molter, VP of Product (Navan)

    February 25th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  36 mins 15 secs
    business, digital experience, product management, technology

    When it comes to challenging the status quo in SaaS and product strategy, you can’t fundamentally disrupt an industry without failing fast and pushing boundaries.

    On today’s episode of LaunchPod, we’re talking with Dane Molter, VP of Product and Strategy at Navan, an all-in-one travel and expense app for corporate travelers.

    In this episode, Dane talks about:

    • His framework for driving product teams to “be brave,” ship faster, and attain huge goals
    • Why perfect is actually the enemy of progress, and when good enough is actually good enough
    • How to exceed the perceived boundaries of any solution, and deliver product that really disrupts the world