April Dunford’s 1 Killer Question to Expose Weak AI Product Positioning

January 13th, 2026  |  Season 2  |  36 mins 2 secs

business, digital experience, product management, technology

This week, we’re joined by the undisputed queen of B2B positioning, April Dunford.

April is the best-selling author of the seminal book "Obviously Awesome" and the new hit "Sales Pitch." She has spent 25 years as a startup executive and consultant helping companies stop guessing and start winning. If you have ever struggled to explain exactly why customers should pick you over the other guy, this episode is a masterclass.

In this episode, April talks about:

• Why Positioning is a Product Problem: How undefined positioning leads to wasted roadmaps, "not good enough" feedback from Sales, and engineering teams burning out on features that don't win deals
• The "AI Washing" Trap: Why saying "We have AI" is no longer a strategy—and how to articulate the specific value your tech unlocks that the competition can’t
• Why she loves when competitors lie: How to ethically trap competitors who over-promise features (and the one question sales should tell your prospects to ask them)
• And finally, vision vs. reality: How to sell the "glorious future" without losing the deal you need to close today

Is Dashboarding Dead? How AI Is Changing Analytics UX | Robert Henkhaus, VP of Product (Enverus)

January 6th, 2026  |  Season 2  |  27 mins 9 secs

business, digital experience, product management, technology

From U.S. Army sniper to VP of Product, Robert Henkhaus knows a thing or two about high-stakes decision-making. Today, he’s a product leader at Enverus, the software platform guiding billions of dollars in global energy capital.

Fresh off Enverus’ acquisition by Blackstone, Robert joins us to discuss how to innovate when the pressure is on.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why "Black Box" AI Fails: How Enverus builds trust with investment stakeholders by forcing AI to "show its work" on multi-million dollar recommendations.
• The Death of the Dashboard: Robert’s hot take on why AI will soon make traditional charts obsolete.
• Surviving Acquisition: The "60-Day Horizon" strategy Robert uses to keep team velocity high amidst Private Equity uncertainty.

Why AI Agents Are the Future of ERP | Bret Tushaus, VP Product (DelTek) - Repeat

December 30th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  28 mins 16 secs

business, digital experience, product management, technology

In this repeat episode of LaunchPod, originally published on Aug 12, 2025, 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
• How Bret’s team leveled up their AI skills fast — with short, high-impact sprints focused on real tools and real problems

Lessons from the Launch that Became a Silicon Valley Punchline | Berni Fisher, VP Product (Appcues)

December 23rd, 2025  |  Season 1  |  25 mins 8 secs

business, digital experience, product management, technology

This week, we sat down with Berni Fisher, VP of Product at Appcues and a self-described "first principles goddess." Berni goes deep on what it was really like behind the scenes during the notorious 2012 Apple Maps launch, the triple threat problem at ButcherBox where they exist at the intersection of grocery, eCommerce, AND SaaS, and more.

In our conversation, Berni discusses:

• Surviving the "2012 Apple Maps Debacle" and the intense backlash post-launch, as well as how the team used a "triage mindset" to prioritize fixes based on customer usage and risk.
• Her Black Friday Gamble: Why she pushed for a risky site overhaul at ButcherBox right before their busiest season, resulting in double-digit conversion gains
• And Customer-Led AI Innovation: how Appcues used their own product to poll users on AI trust, leading to a roadmap driven by actual customer needs rather than industry hype.

Why Top-of-Funnel Traffic is Dead (& How TED is Replacing It ) | Tricia Maia, Head of Product (TED)

December 17th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  34 mins 1 sec

business, digital experience, product management, technology

Today, we’re joined by Tricia Maia, Head of Product at TED. We all know TED Talks — but behind the scenes, TED is undergoing a massive product transformation to adapt to a post-AI media landscape. In this episode, Tricia Maia, Head of Product at TED, pulls back the curtain on how they’re solving the “discovery” crisis facing digital media today.

Tricia shares:

• Why “views” are dead: Explaining why TED is abandoning top-of-funnel traffic as their North Star metric and shifting focus to “depth,” completion rates, and account signups to combat volatile search algorithms
• AI that actually scales: How TED is using advanced AI auto-dubbing — not just subtitles — to clone speakers’ voices into other languages, driving 2-3x better performance
• The “gap” strategy: The challenge of connecting a decentralized ecosystem of free users and volunteers at TEDx with an ultra-premium live experience that can cost up to $12,500 per ticket

Make the C-Suite Think Like a Startup (Without Getting Fired) | West Stringfellow, VP Product (ex-Target, Blackhawk)

December 9th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  32 mins 25 secs

business, digital experience, product management, technology

Today, we’re joined by West Stringfellow, currently VP of Product at Blackhawk Network and former VP of Innovation at Target.

In this episode, West shares:

• How he went from stealth startups to leading innovation at a company with over $77 billion in annual sales
• The methods he uses to manage up and influence leadership in order to achieve the outcomes necessary to create successful organizations time and time again
• The bold move that accelerated his Target career, which included hand-delivering over 300 copies of his innovation proposal to every executive at their Minneapolis HQ, even catching the attention of Target’s CEO
• An inside look at how Blackhawk is thinking about AI and digital transformation by cultivating “culture carriers” to champion AI

Why PMs are Leveling up into AI Product Engineers | Sarah Jacob Singh, CPTO (Medbridge)

December 2nd, 2025  |  Season 1  |  28 mins 21 secs

business, digital experience, product management, technology

Today, we’re joined by Sarah Jacob Singh, CPTO at Medbridge, a digital healthcare platform.

In this episode, Sarah shares:

• Why AI means all companies have to act like startups again, with product more tightly integrated from engineering all the way to go-to-market
• How many Product Managers are evolving into Product Engineers - building prototypes, shipping code, and helping developer teams innovate faster
• The ways Medbridge is leveraging AI-enabled Product Engineers to ship big bets weekly instead of quarterly

A Serial Founder’s Guide to Pivots, Exits, and AI | Raj Singh, VP of Product (Mozilla)

November 25th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  28 mins 37 secs

business, digital experience, mozilla, product management, technology

Today, we’re joined by serial entrepreneur Raj Singh. His multiple exits have landed him in product leadership roles at companies like Salesforce.com, and, most currently, as a VP of Product at Mozilla, where he’s leading the team creating new AI products for SMBs.

In this episode, Raj shares:

• How his companies navigated multiple pivots, with innovations from ChatGPT and Zoom leading most recently to an acquisition by Mozilla
• What makes “agentic browsers” the next major interface for the web, and how they could change everything from ad models to API access
• And why Mozilla’s stewardship of Gecko, one of only three major browser engines, is essential to keeping the internet open in the age of AI

When CPO Becomes CMO: The Expanding Role of Product Leaders | Karen Chao (Flowspace)

November 18th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  27 mins 12 secs

business, digital experience, product management, technology

Today, we’re joined by Karen Chao, Chief Product Officer at Flowspace, an ecommerce logistics platform, where she’s also taken on a role as head of marketing. Previously, Karen held product leadership roles at Apple, Replicon, Innit, and more.

In this episode, Karen shares:

• How she ended up running Marketing on top of Product, and how bringing these two functions under one leader has improved go-to-market for Flowspace
  
• The biggest surprises she’s uncovered running marketing as a product leader, from chaotic tool stacks to the next wave of AI-powered go-to-market automation
• And how Flowspace’s product team uses AI tools like Cursor and Claude to accelerate discovery and prototyping, and even ship small bug fixes straight to production without Engineers involved

When AI Makes Engineering Too Fast for Product Teams | Oji Udezue (ex-Typeform & Calendly)

November 13th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  24 mins 8 secs

business, digital experience, product management, technology

On today’s episode of LaunchPod, we’ve got something special for you. Normally, you’d have to join us in person at one of the dinners we host for product leaders to hear this talk from Oji Udezue. But the response has been so great, we had to bring him onto the show again.

Oji has previously held product leadership roles at Typeform, Twitter, Calendly, and Atlassian. Today, he’s joining us to share a major problem in product delivery that he’s seeing as AI adoption increases across teams.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The “three-speed problem,” as Oji calls it – how AI will bring about a 10x increase in engineering velocity. But where does that leave product management and go-to-market teams if they can’t keep up?
• Why AI is a BS term, as it’s really five new AND distinct capabilities – and how to use those as a framework for smarter product strategy
• And how his “shipyard model” for product teams will ensure you keep up and thrive, even as AI reshapes how we build software