Gyanda Sachdeva

Confidence might be the most underrated skill in product marketing. In the latest episode of Embracing Erosion, I sat down with Jason Oakley - founder of Productive PMM and DemoDash - to unpack how confidence (or the lack of it) shapes everything for PMMs. We talked about how founders can unintentionally erode confidence with unclear feedback or shifting priorities, and why protecting a PMM’s confidence directly impacts speed, clarity, and execution. We also got into: ⚙️ How to build systems before layering on AI and automation 🎯 Why interactive demos are some of the highest-intent assets in B2B 💪 What it really takes to thrive as a founding PMM in 2025/26 If you’ve ever been the “first marketer” or a PMM trying to do it all, this one will hit close to home. Link to the full pod in the comments 👇

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Listen, Learn, Launch: The Non-Negotiable Power of User Feedback in Product Management In the world of product development, we often talk about vision, strategy, and execution. But there's one critical ingredient that underpins true success: User Feedback. It's not just a nice-to-have; it's the lifeblood of building products that genuinely resonate and solve real problems. Why is user feedback so indispensable? • Validation & Course Correction: It tells us if our hypotheses are correct, or if we need to pivot. Real users expose blind spots and unexpected use cases. • Prioritization Done Right: Feedback helps prioritize features based on actual user needs and pain points, not just assumptions. • Enhanced User Experience: Direct input on usability, intuitiveness, and pain points leads to more delightful and effective product experiences. • Building Advocacy: When users feel heard, they become your most ardent advocates, driving organic growth and loyalty. From early concept testing to post-launch reviews, actively soliciting and integrating user feedback is a continuous cycle. It transforms products from good to great, ensuring we're always building for the people who matter most , our users. #ProductManagement #UserFeedback #CustomerCentric #ProductDevelopment #UX #Innovation #ListenToYourUsers

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As product manager roles are transmutating from a pure manager type role to a PM engineer type role, here's the checklist for you - 1. Everyday play and experiment with different AI tools, internally make a list on which model to use for what purpose (this step is critical, as this compounds). 2. Never use AI for the initial draft when you are writing something. Writing brings you detailed clarity and in this AI age, clarity is king. Finish up your draft with AI, but start manually. 3. Always pay and use the frontier model. Don't cut corners here. The output of an Opus 4.6 is drastically different from sonnet when it comes to complex tasks. Having said that, develop a mental map on which model to use for what complexity of tasks. Otherwise you will just burn tokens for simple tasks. 4. When learning or understanding a concept, be deliberate and progressive when using the AI tools as well. For example, start with ChatGPT, take that output, understand it, add your own thoughts and then go to claude. Again point number 3, do apples to apples. If you are using the free tiers, treat all the free tiers as equals. 5. Learn to write agent native specs. Agent native specs are living docs which live in the repo, which the agent has direct access to. Take care of the smaller nuances. For example - If your team is using a context window of 100k models, then don't write specs which are too large. Eventually the agent will run out of context and start hallucinating. 6. When you have developed a strong intuition about points 1-5, then and only then build. The world is moving away from a PRD driven build environment to an agent spec driven build environment. Internalise that change. Change your workflow to adapt to it. 7. Build prototypes with the speed of thought, but remember these are prototypes and not actual production code. The prototype to production code journey is a bit far along. But that doesn't mean, you don't build, build your ideas quickly. Again the idea here is for you to develop enough intuition and judgement so that you can keep up with the agent. 8. As we are shifting from "vibe coding" to "agentic engineering", please remember this shift is going to be chaotic. Remember the world required 1-2 yrs to fully understand what actually is an "agent". So don't get overwhelmed, don't get any FOMO. Remember there's still a lot of time for the world to make this transition. All you can do is prepare better. Finally, anyone who is transitioning from a traditional PM to an AI native PM builder, remember, "chaos is a ladder". Be curious, be eager to learn, be adaptable, be flexible. Spend a lot of your time with the AI tools, stress test them, understand their limits, understand their context window and memory. This is in no way any exhaustive list (in fact I would argue this is a beginners list). But as you climb each stair in this ladder, you will develop enough intuition to move even further.

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It was great collaborating with Ibrahim Bashir on the Platform PM piece recently. It may not be obvious to many people, but there are a lot of parallels between how you need to adapt your strategic approach to platform products to how you might approach strategy for 0-to-1 products. Ibrahim lays out below a number of key points in this post on how you might adapt your approach to metrics, impact and ROI for platform products that require more nuance than typical growth initiatives or mature product work.

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Product Leaders and Directors, what happens to your roadmap after a stakeholder meeting? If it unravels, it might not be broken. It might just be too rigid. Sometimes, it just needs a little loosening up. I used to treat my roadmaps like contracts. Now, I lead roadmap discussions like conversations. I treat them as opportunities to collaborate. This shift changed everything. I started focusing on 3 clear bets instead of 30 disconnected features. I also stopped tying roadmap items to "personas" and instead anchored them to real user insights (Monica LaBarge thank you for this). During my stakeholder meetings I explain what will not get done, and more importantly, why. I also prepared for questions from stakeholders and came into every discussion ready to answer them with clarity. As soon as I made these changes, I noticed more alignment across teams, fewer objections, and a much clearer path forward. I began thinking about road maps the same way I think about Google Maps. They provide direction, but still leave space for adjustment and flexibility when the situation changes. BTW, I love when Google Maps asks: is constructions still there (see image below). Leadership is not about holding the line. It is about helping the work move forward, even when the plan flexes. >Follow if you’re building roadmaps that evolve without chaos. #productmanagement #productleadership #roadmapping #stakeholderalignment #calmPM #buildinpublic (image source: Pennsylvania constructions zones year round 🤣)

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What happens when your Product Ops team gets so good that executives start asking them to fix everything else? In some companies, high-performing product operations teams aren't just supporting product managers anymore. They're becoming magnets for operational challenges across the entire organization. When Product Ops demonstrates real operational rigor and starts delivering measurable value, leadership takes notice. Suddenly, engineering operations and onboarding capabilities are getting moved under the Product Ops umbrella because these teams have proven they can turn chaos into clarity at scale. This isn't scope creep, it's strategic expansion. The best Product Ops teams become centers of operational excellence that other functions want to learn from and be part of. They teach the entire organization how to operate more effectively. Denise Tilles and I have seen this happen with many leaders. Their Product Ops function started small, focused on basic PM support. But as they matured and showed impact, they naturally absorbed adjacent functions that needed the same level of operational discipline. I’m even seen some Product Ops teams now leading AI adoption efforts across the company. The lesson? Operational excellence is contagious when done right. Have you seen Product Ops expand beyond its original scope at your company? What functions are they absorbing?

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After 40+ episodes of interviewing product leaders on the Intentional Product Manager podcast, a clear theme emerged: It’s not the best PMs who get hired. It’s the ones with the clearest stories. 📌 Sachin Kotwani (now GPM at Google) said it straight: “I had a compelling story — I built my own mobile app from scratch. That made me memorable in interviews, even more than my resume.” Sachin didn’t get the job because he had the perfect PM credentials. He got it because he could package his journey into a clear, confident arc: -> I saw a user problem -> I built something real -> I shipped it -> I learned That’s what hiring managers remembered. 📌 Shub Agarwal (Head of AI PM at US Bank) added this: “You can’t just say, ‘I built X.’ You have to tell the story of the opportunity. Why it mattered. What tradeoffs you made. How it moved the business.” At senior levels, this is the difference between approval and buy-in. It’s also the difference between being respected and being promoted. 📌 Aakash Gupta shared how narrative became his growth unlock: “I was doing 90% of the work already. But the 10% that changed everything? Clarifying my story.” Before, he sounded like a “doer.” After, he positioned himself as a strategic operator. That’s what helped him step out of a VP role at a unicorn and grow a 6-figure creator business — all based on how he framed his value. 📌 Will Lowrey (ex-Director at Indeed): “The best candidates weren’t always the most experienced. They had the clearest stories about their impact.” In his hiring loop, strong storytelling consistently beat perfect resumes. Why? Because the story made the impact real, emotional, and easy to share with other decision-makers. 📌 Bruno Germand (ex-Google PM) said: “At senior levels, people aren’t evaluating your tasks. They’re evaluating your ability to inspire belief.” And belief isn’t built through bullet points. It’s built through narrative clarity. Interviews? Storytelling. Internal promotions? Storytelling. Buy-in across teams? Storytelling. Funding new bets? Storytelling. Executive visibility? You guessed it — storytelling. The better you are at explaining your why, the easier it is for others to say yes. What’s one story you’ve struggled to tell well — even though you know it mattered?

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