VP of Marketing at LogRocket.
Jeff Wharton has hosted 74 Episodes.
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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
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Agentic AI for Vertical Software | Bret Tushaus, VP Product (Deltek)
August 12th, 2025 | Season 1 | 28 mins 16 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Today on LaunchPod, we’re talking with Bret Tushaus, VP of Product at Deltek.
In this episode, we discuss:
- How Deltek built Dela—an AI agent framework powering everything from smart summaries to autonomous accounting
- Why AI is rewriting the role of Product Management, and what leaders need to know now
- And how Bret’s team leveled up their AI skills fast — with short, high-impact sprints focused on real tools and real problems
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AI Is Killing SaaS Pricing: Lessons From 10k+ Customers | Prittam Bagani, VP of PM (Chargebee)
August 5th, 2025 | Season 1 | 42 mins 43 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Today, we’re talking with Prittam Bagani, VP of Product Management at Chargebee, where they have insight into how over 10,000 customers are optimizing their pricing models.
In this episode, we discuss:
- How AI is forcing companies to rethink pricing - and why usage-, outcome-, and agent-based models are the future
- Why OpenAI made over 100 pricing changes in a single year and what you can learn about agile pricing experimentation from it
- And how to build the necessary technical and product infrastructure to test pricing models in real-time across millions of users
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How Lattice’s PM team built an AI Slack “Intern” | Neha Monga, CPO (Ex-Lattice)
July 31st, 2025 | Season 1 | 27 mins 2 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
On today’s episode of LaunchPod AI, we’re talking with Neha Monga, former Head of Product at Lattice and has led product teams at Meta, Amazon, Expedia, and more
In this episode, we discuss:
The AI workflows that are table stakes for PMs now—and how to adopt them so you don’t fall behind
How Neha’s team used Figma Make + Claude to spin up high-fidelity prototypes, gather customer feedback fast, and slash validation time with design and engineering
And the PM “intern” they built inside Slack to instantly surface insights from their massive customer feedback library
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How Zuora is Betting on Retention-Led Growth | Ken Houseman, VP of Product (Zuora)
July 29th, 2025 | Season 1 | 36 mins 58 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Today on LaunchPod, we’re talking with Ken Houseman, VP of Product at Zuora.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Why even a 0.1% increase in churn can cause huge losses, and how to turn retention into a growth engine
- How Zuora made payments so valuable that customers want to pay more - boosting revenue, margins, and customer retention
- And how Ken used AI to slash prototyping time and unlock faster, smarter product development
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Inside Apartment List’s AI-Powered Product Team | Sierra Hahn-Ventrell, Dir. of PM (Apartment List)
July 24th, 2025 | Season 1 | 31 mins 8 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Today on LaunchPod AI, we’re talking with Sierra Hahn-Ventrell, Director of Product Management at Apartment List. In this episode, we discuss how they:
*Analyze customer interviews with ChatGPT, even uncovering a missed insight that led to a full product strategy reset
*Built an AI Slack bot to flag issues in a new customer-facing tool before they become big problems
*And transformed sales enablement and automated documentation using NotebookLM and Claude -
Growing to 42 Million Users: Audiomack's Growth Playbook | Charlie Kaplan, VP of Product (Audiomack)
July 22nd, 2025 | Season 1 | 33 mins 55 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Today, we’re talking with Charlie Kaplan, VP of Product at Audiomack about Product Market Fit and how to tell if you’ve got it or not
In this episode, we discuss:
- How he drove 50x user growth at Cymbal, and why that still didn’t matter because they lacked strong fit
- The story of how he launched Audiomack’s product org and scaled to 42M MAUs, on the back of strong product market fit
- How he transformed failed features into new revenue streams—helping Audiomack grow into a platform big enough to host Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, and more
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The 4 Essentials of Killer Product Storytelling | Lanie Schenkelberg, VP of Product Marketing (Inovalon) | LaunchPod
July 15th, 2025 | Season 1 | 32 mins 15 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Today, we’re talking with Lanie Schenkelberg, former product manager and current VP of Product Marketing at Inovalon.
In this episode, we discuss:
- The 4 essential elements of compelling product storytelling
- How to spot weak messaging - and what strong positioning really looks like
- How Lanie’s team led a storytelling overhaul that contributed to Inovalon’s growth
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Designing AI for the ICP That Doesn’t Trust New Tech | Deepti Mehtani, VP, AI (NextGen) | LaunchPod| Deepti Mehtani, VP, Clinical & AI Solutions (NextGen) | LaunchPod
July 8th, 2025 | Season 1 | 33 mins 10 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Today, we’re talking with Dr. Deepti Mehtani, VP of Clinical and AI Solutions at NextGen Healthcare.
In this episode, we discuss:
- How Dr. Mehtani’s team proved AI can be trusted with sensitive medical data - So why are you avoiding it in your own product?
- The key lessons behind NextGen’s AI that turns doctor-patient conversations into medical-grade, accurate, structured data
- And how Deepti and her team won over skeptical doctors and turned them into AI champions - saving them hours per day in the process
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How to scale $0 to $25M ARR | Michael Park, VP of PM (Buffini & Co) | LaunchPod (Repeat)
July 1st, 2025 | Season 1 | 43 mins 53 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Today, our guest is Michael Park, VP of Product and Project Management at Buffini and Company.
In this episode, Jeff talks to Michael about:
- His six lessons from scaling product from zero to $25M ARR
- The nuance that comes with the “founder mode” discussion
- And what a self-imposed sabbatical taught Michael about product leadership.
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Automating PRDs and Beyond with AI | Roman Gun, VP of Prod. (Zeta Global) | LaunchPod AI
June 24th, 2025 | Season 1 | 29 mins 45 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
We're excited to kick off a new show focusing on the real-world AI applications that product teams are using to become faster, more efficient, and smarter.
Jeff has been traveling across the country meeting product leaders, and he keeps having the same conversation: every product person wants to know how their peers are using AI in their teams and their workflows.
So we’re bringing you those conversations about how your peers are using AI in their day-to-day to move faster and more efficiently than ever before.
In our first episode, we’re welcoming back Roman Gun, VP of Product at Zeta Global. In this episode, we talk about:
- The prompting and workflow orchestrations Roman created to automate writing PRDs, one of the most disliked tasks of product managers, and how he has made them into living, breathing documents that initiate collaboration
- The AI communities and platforms he uses, including Reddit and Discord, to stay ahead, learn new tricks, and gain early access to the best new tools
- And Magic...not actual magic, but we have a little fun with Roman’s side-project centered around Magic: The Gathering, and how he built tools to prototype new decks and beat players with far more experience
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How To Modernize Million-User Products | Kamal Srinivasan, SVP of Product (Alludo) | LaunchPod
June 17th, 2025 | Season 1 | 40 mins 49 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Today on the pod, we’re talking with Kamal Srinivasan, SVP of Product Development at Alludo.
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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