VP of Marketing at LogRocket.
Jeff Wharton has hosted 86 Episodes.
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How Tinder Swiped Right on Customer Experience | Curtis Stevens (ex-Tinder)
October 28th, 2025 | Season 1 | 27 mins 46 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Today, we’re talking with Curtis Stevens, who, until recently, was Tinder’s Director of Product Consumer Insights, and prior to that held product leadership roles at Qualtrics, Amazon, and more.
In this episode, Curtis shares:
- How AI can actually be a tool for human connection
- His process behind Tinder’s transformation into customer-centricity, with real, measurable results
- How to balance short-term user joy with long-term product innovation and future features
- And how AI is driving customer experience changes faster than research can follow, and what you can do to keep up
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The Hidden AI Revolution in Construction | Rajitha Chaparala (Procore)
October 23rd, 2025 | Season 1 | 8 mins 30 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.
In this episode, we discuss:
- How Rajitha and her team are using LLMs to streamline complex processes like requests for information (RFIs), project revisions, and construction site walkthroughs
- Why building trust and showing real, immediate value were key to getting AI buy-in from construction professionals, historically hesitant to adopt new tech
- Why Rajitha believes this is construction’s moment for AI, and how the shift from skepticism to curiosity happened almost overnight
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Linear’s Secret to Building Powerful AI Products | Nan Yu, VP of Product (Linear)
October 16th, 2025 | Season 1 | 29 mins 32 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Today, we’re joined again by Nan Yu, Head of Product at Linear.
In this episode, Nan shares:
- Why you’re wrong to think of AI as a way to reduce costs -- and why the real value is in enabling new work that was previously impossible
- The 3 must-haves he’s deduced from across the most successful AI products to produce consistently great outcomes for users
- The behind-the-scenes details of Linear’s new Agent Interaction Guidelines
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Reinventing SaaS: Zuora's AI Transformation | Karthik Chakkarapani and Shakir Karim (Zuora)
October 9th, 2025 | Season 1 | 31 mins 30 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Today, we’re joined by Shakir Karim (Senior VP of Product) and Karthik Chakkarapani (CIO & Senior VP of Corporate Operations) from Zuora.
In this episode, Shakir and Karthik discuss:
- Why they believe AI is a bigger inflection point than web, mobile, or cloud
- Their internal AI agent workflow that automatically resolves thousands of service requests instantly, freeing teams to focus on strategy
- How they cut a major feature deployment step from 14 days to 10 minutes using Claude Code
- Why prompt-a-thons and hackathons have been vital for driving not just AI adoption but AI literacy
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The Secrets Behind a 30x AI Product Team | Zac Hays, CPO (Luxury Presence)
October 7th, 2025 | Season 1 | 23 mins 31 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Today, we’re joined by Zac Hays, CPO at Luxury Presence, a fast-growing real estate tech platform that made a huge bet on AI adoption across the company..
In this episode, we discuss:
- Luxury Presence's 30x Value Principle and how they rethought goals and projects to have exponential-level impact
- The AI design sprint process that allowed the company to 20x product velocity
- How their mandatory AI bug triage policy has cut resolution time by 80%
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Zapier’s AI Transformation Playbook with Phil Lakin (Zapier)
September 30th, 2025 | Season 1 | 32 mins 35 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Today, we’re joined by Phil Lakin, Head of Enterprise Innovation at Zapier.
In this episode, we discuss:
- How Phil built No-Code Ops into a thriving community and SaaS product - and what led to its acquisition by Zapier
- Why Phil ended up leading the initiative on Zapier’s first solution-based product, and the decision process behind making it Lead Router
- How Zapier is driving AI transformation across both their org and others with hands-on bootcamps, agent workflows, and a 97% AI literacy rate among employees
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Copilot, Claude, & OptiGPT: The AI Stack Driving Optimizely
September 25th, 2025 | 8 mins 36 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
How is Optimizely reshaping experimentation with AI? Cory Liebgott, VP of Product at Optimizely, joins LaunchPod to share how her team is using AI into both customer-facing solutions and their own product workflows.
Cory shares how her team:
- Uses Copilot and Claude for everything from PRD writing and meeting recaps to translating technical language into accessible insights
- Developed OptiGPT, an internal AI assistant that surfaces customer data, product knowledge, and HR policies in seconds
- Built a customer-facing AI query tool that also became a surprise hit internally for measuring customer health and engagement
- Encourages a culture of experimentation where PMs demo and share AI tools, turning emergent use cases into productivity boosts across teams
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How 1 CPO Uses AI to Deliver Like a Full Product Team | Michael Krafft, CPO (FoundersCard)
September 23rd, 2025 | 35 mins 26 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Today, we’re joined by Michael Krafft, CPO at FoundersCard, a membership community for entrepreneurs and executives offering exclusive perks and VIP treatment.
Previously, Michael worked in investment banking, led product teams at American Express, and played a key role in turning around Alight, an HR-tech firm, ahead of its IPO.
In this episode, we discuss:
- How Michael uses AI to be a 1-person Product team at a profitable startup with more than 250K members
- His AI-driven discovery engine that automates interviews, segments users, and turns feedback into roadmap-shaping insights
- Why working as both a leader and IC lets him move from idea to prototype to product in record time with tools like V-Zero and Lovable
- The simple test that boosted paid conversions by 50%—and how he runs growth experiments far beyond his team’s size
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Top 4 AI Workflows Every PM Leader Should Know
September 18th, 2025 | 26 mins 59 secs
ai
Unlock the future of product management with AI. In this episode of LaunchPod, we dive into the top 4 AI workflows every product manager needs, from automating user research to building smarter prototypes and running faster experiments.
Hear real stories from product leaders who are already using AI to:
*Turn hours of customer interviews into actionable insights
*Prototype and test new features in record time
*Automate PRDs and documentation without losing quality
*Drive data-backed decisions that accelerate growth -
Why Optimizely is Betting on Agentic AI | Cory Liebgott, VP of Product (Optimizely)
September 16th, 2025 | Season 1 | 31 mins 7 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
How is Optimizely reshaping experimentation with AI? Cory Liebgott, VP of Product at Optimizely, joins LaunchPod to share how her team is building agentic AI tools that put customer trust at the center.
Cory shares how her team:
- Pivoted away from risky benchmarking AI to focus on agentic AI tailored to each customer’s brand and data
- Launched Opal, Optimizely’s AI suite built on Google Gemini, with strict governance to keep customer data secure
- Developed experimentation agents that suggest test ideas, run experiments, and summarize results
- Built internal AI tools like OptiGPT to streamline workflows, from PRDs to customer research, boosting productivity across teams
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The Company Using AI to Change the Game for Sports Betting | Marty Styles, VP of Product (PFF)
September 9th, 2025 | Season 1 | 33 mins 25 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
How is AI changing the game for sports betting? Marty Styles, VP of Product at Pro Football Focus (PFF), visits LaunchPod to share how his team is bringing pro-grade football analytics, trusted by every NFL team, to everyday bettors.
Marty shares how his team:
- Built Key Insights, an AI-powered feature that simplifies 200+ data points per play into actionable betting takeaways
- Designed the Player Prop Tool, which combines PFF’s grades with market odds to reveal hidden betting edges
- Used Play Finder and AI-driven film study to transform raw data into instant, searchable insights
- Positioned PFF as the “Bloomberg Terminal of sports betting”, giving bettors the same edge NFL teams rely on
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The "Feature Constellation" Framework That Unlocks 10x Customer Value | Aleks Bass (CPO, Typeform) - Repeat
September 2nd, 2025 | 43 mins 21 secs
case study, framework, growth
How do you decide what to build when growth is flattening and you're facing intense competition from free products? When Aleks Bass joined Typeform as Chief Product Officer, she was faced with this exact challenge.
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Why You Can’t Ignore AI Moving to the Edge | Joel Polanco, Senior Hardware Product Manager (Intel)
August 28th, 2025 | Season 1 | 32 mins 54 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
On today’s episode of LaunchPod AI, we’re talking with Joel Polanco, Senior Hardware Product Manager at Intel’s Edge Computing Group. He’s led dozens of enterprise AI edge deployments and knows exactly what it takes to run AI models locally at scale.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Why AI at the edge will cause a whole new wave of disruption across multiple industries
- Why moving AI to the edge slashes costs and levels up customer experience
- And real-world examples of edge AI deployments Joel has seen - from IT assistants to agents that restock store shelves from a single photo
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The AI Agent Behind 4x Productivity in Collections Teams | Dave Ruda, VP Product (Billtrust)
August 26th, 2025 | Season 1 | 28 mins 53 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
How did an AI agent help 4x the productivity of collections teams? Dave Ruda, VP of Product at Billtrust, visits LaunchPod to share how his team built a collections AI that transformed drudgery work into high-impact outcomes.
Dave shares how his team:
*Reduced average email handling time from 8 minutes to just 2.5 minutes
*Built an AI agent that categorizes and prioritizes collector workflows to maximize efficiency
*Designed a “human in the loop” system to ensure trust, personalization, and better customer outcomes
*Developed a learning loop that adapts to each collector’s voice and scales across email and voice channels -
The 3 Biggest Barriers to AI Adoption Across Your Team | Derek Pharr, CPO (Sporcle)
August 21st, 2025 | 30 mins 19 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Why is AI adoption so hard inside companies? Derek Pharr, CPO at Sporcle, joins LaunchPod to reveal the 3 biggest barriers to AI adoption and how he helped his team overcome them.
In this episode, you’ll learn how Sporcle:
*The 3 biggest barriers to AI adoption and how Derek addressed them
*How Sporcle built a “content intern” with Claude Projects to augment trivia writers and improve user engagement
*How Derek prototyped, tested, and rejected a doomed product idea in under an hour -
The EdTech Graduating 150K by 2X’ing Completion Rates | Zach Heller, VP of Prod. (Penn Foster)
August 19th, 2025 | 38 mins
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Today, we’re talking with Zach Heller, VP of Product at Penn Foster Group.
In this episode, we discuss:
- How Penn Foster plans to literally “fill a stadium” with 150,000 graduates by 2029—doubling completion rates to do it
- Why they shifted focus from acquisition to graduation—and how that’s now driving over 50% of enrollments through word-of-mouth
- How AI-powered learning tools boosted course completions by 25% in just one year, setting a new record for outcomes