VP of Marketing at LogRocket.
Jeff Wharton has hosted 56 Episodes.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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How to A/B test your product to millions in ARR | Eric Metelka, Head of Product (Eppo)
February 18th, 2025 | Season 1 | 42 mins 51 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Today, we’re talking with Eric Metelka, Head of Product at Eppo, a next-gen A/B experimentation platform for product teams. With a background in A/B testing and data science, Eric has worked in building product at companies like Cameo, SpotHero, and G2.
In this episode, Eric talks about:
- The process he used to cold start G2’s review product and turn it into a self-sustaining flywheel
- His secrets to running great A/B tests that can really prove your impact on product growth
- How he recovered from Cameo’s Engineering Director telling his entire exec team that all Eric’s test data was incorrect and what he learned from that
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(Ethically) cheat your way to $25M+ | Mikal Lewis, Product Exec. (Whole Foods, Nordstrom)
February 11th, 2025 | Season 1 | 36 mins 39 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Today, we’re talking with Mikal Lewis, a Digital Product Executive at Whole Foods who drove hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue over the course of his career.
In this episode, Mikal talks about:
- Why you should absolutely (ethically) cheat to get outsized results for your product
- His framework that drove a quarter of a billion dollars in additional revenue for Nordstrom’s online store
- How to use four types of luck to optimize for opportunity
- And, how to build a quiet portfolio so that you can choose your own career moves
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How to launch your ugly MVP in high-velocity markets | Kevin Wang, CPO (Braze)
February 4th, 2025 | Season 1 | 40 mins 26 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Today, we’re talking with Kevin Wang, Chief Product Officer at Braze, a platform that enables businesses to build meaningful, personalized relationships with their customers across multiple channels.
In this episode, Kevin talks about:
- How you can pair high-velocity market innovation with a long-term, consistent vision to beat competition year after year
- Why you should build durable teams, over agile org structures, to drive long-term success
- And, a process to partner with early adopters to get the best market insights for your product
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How to build a $1M ARR startup (x3) | Adam Schoenfeld (Keyplay)
January 28th, 2025 | Season 1 | 36 mins 44 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
Today, we’re talking with Adam Schoenfeld, CEO at Keyplay, a SaaS solution to help B2B marketers make GTM more efficient.
In this episode, Adam talks about:
- How he built 3 startups to over $1m ARR
- His process that’s allowed him to reliably reach Product Market Fit again and again
- And the critical mistakes founders always make...and how you can avoid them