In this episode on The Product Experience, we welcome back Matt LeMay—author, consultant, and champion of no-nonsense product thinking. We dig deep into the ideas behind his new book Impact First Product Teams and explore how teams can focus on what really matters: delivering business impact.

Featured Links: Follow Matt on LinkedIn and his website | Buy Matt's new book 'Impact-first Product Teams' | Sudden Compass | Randeep Sidhu's episode on The Product Experience: 'Lessons from building the UK's test and trace app'

Chapters
00:00 – The Myth of Rational Business
01:03 – Matt’s Accidental Journey into Product
02:20 – What Are “Impact-First” Teams, Really?
04:50 – Why OKRs Are Often Just Theatre
07:12 – Best Practices ≠ Business Value
10:00 – Who’s on the Product Team, and Why It Matters
12:30 – Dealing With Cross-Team Goal Conflicts
15:00 – Culture Change via Strategic Goal Alignment
17:00 – Proactive Conversations About Impact
20:00 – Commercial Awareness for Product Teams
24:00 – Platform Teams & Measuring Amplified Impact
27:00 – What Do Good Impact-First Teams Look Like?
31:00 – Customer-Centricity vs. Business Impact
34:00 – Discovery, Metrics & Mission-Critical Goals
36:00 – Culture, Strategy & Individual Leverage
41:00 – BAU vs. Innovation: Set Clear Expectations
44:00 – The Ego Trap in Product Work
46:00 – Matt’s Final Zinger on Capital and Feelings

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Sunsetting features is rarely a celebrated milestone in product, but it’s often one of the most critical. In this episode, Ronie Ben Aharon CPO and CTO of Craft.io, joins Lily and Randy to share how his team made the tough call to retire a key feature—and what they learned in the process.

Ronie walks us through a real-world example of removing Craft.io’s visual spec tool, why trying to compete with established platforms like Figma didn’t make sense, and how they approached the transition with both technical rigour and user empathy. He also explains what happens when a sunset strategy goes wrong, and the lingering costs of keeping legacy features alive.

Key takeaways
- Sunsetting is about creating space for more impactful product work.
- Features that seem harmless because they’re underused often introduce hidden costs, especially when they complicate onboarding, UX, and development cycles.
- Data-related features are the hardest to retire. Plan for thoughtful migration and clear communication with users.
- Soft approaches, like “feature starvation,” can backfire and prolong technical debt.
- Strong collaboration between product, customer success, and engineering is key to pulling off a successful sunset.

Chapters
0:00 – Why announcing a feature sunset is rarely met with applause
1:58 – What makes sunsetting necessary, and why underused features are a risk
5:01 – How to recognise when it’s time to kill a feature
6:10 – The story behind Craft.io’s visual spec feature and why they let it go
9:01 – Navigating the difficult conversations with users who still rely on a dying feature
12:27 – Handling data migration without compromising user trust
14:04 – A sunset that didn’t go as planned: learning from the feedback portal misstep
22:44 – Managing engineering expectations and avoiding unnecessary rebuilds
24:38 – How sunsetting shapes the way new features are designed
26:11 – Final reflections on doing it right—and why it’s worth it

Featured Link: Follow Roni on LinkedIn | Craft.io | Figma | 'Sunsetting success: How to strategically phase out products in the digital age' feature by Balaji Ananthanpilla and Sabah Qazi at Mind The Product

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Most organisations dream of building products that delight users. But what happens when the users are your internal teams—and the product is the business itself? In this episode of The Product Experience, Randy Silver sits down with Jo Wickremasinghe, Chief Product & Technology Officer at BPP, to talk about leading transformation at scale.

Featured Links: Follow Jo on LinkedIn | BPP | 'What we learned at #mtpcon London 2025' feature by Kent McDonald and Louron Pratt

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

This week on the podcast, we're joined by Dave Killeen, VP of Product at Pendo, who shares his go-to AI tools that can help make life a little easier for product managers—tried, tested, and ready to use.

Featured Links: Follow Dave on LinkedIn | Pendo | Claude | Manus |'What we learned at #mtpcon London 2025' feature by Kent McDonald and Louron Pratt

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Product management is facing a crisis — and Dave Wascha calls it The Reckoning. In this episode, Dave joins Lily and Randy to unpack the growing backlash against the product profession. He shares stories from his time at Microsoft, Moonpig, and Zoopla, revealing why product people lost the room — and how to win it back.

Featured Links: Follow Dave on LinkedIn | 'Product Management is NOT dead' feature by Dan Olsen | 'What we learned at #mtpcon London 2025' feature by Kent McDonald and Louron Pratt

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Mergers and acquisitions are often seen as boardroom strategy – but it's becoming ever more important for product leaders to be key stakeholders in the process. In this live interview recorded at #mtpcon London 2025, Randy sits down with Vincent Jong, CPO at Dealfront, to explore the real, unfiltered lessons of product leadership during M&A.

Vincent shares stories from inside two major integrations offering tactical insight into what product teams need to know, how to spot risk before it's too late, and why defining success early is critical.

Featured Links: Follow Vincent on LinkedIn and his website | Join Vincent at Saas on The Beach event in May | Buy Vincent's book 'Product-Led Sales: Combine the Best of Product-Led Growth and Sales' | 'What we learned at #mtpcon London 2025' feature by Kent McDonald and Louron Pratt

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Featured Links: Follow Trisha on LinkedIn | Pendo | Trisha's 'The future of product management' talk at #mtpcon roadshow Amsterdam 2024

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

In our latest conversation on The Product Experience podcast, Zan Gilani, Principal Product Manager at Duolingo, discusses the innovative use of AI in language learning, particularly through the video call feature with their character, Lily.

He shares lessons on creating the new video feature and highlights the principles that guide Duolingo's product management approach.

Featured Links: Follow Zan on LinkedIn and his website | Duolingo Lily feature | 'What we learned at Pendomonium and #mtpcon Raleigh: day 2' feature by Louron Pratt

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.