Christian Idiodi, Partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, and Co-author of the valuable product book Transformed, dismantles some of the most persistent myths in product leadership.

Drawing from his global perspective and work across Africa’s fast-emerging tech ecosystem, Christian makes the case for a new kind of leadership, one grounded in clarity, context, and radical trust.

Chapters
00:00 — The environment, not the people
02:00 — Building product leadership in Africa
06:00 — Stories of impact
10:00 — What real leadership means
14:00 — Managing minds, not hands
19:00 — The “first team” mindset
23:00 — Focus, not prioritisation
25:00 — Scaling and the myth of process
29:00 — AI and the redefinition of excellence
35:00 — Creating space for practice
40:00 — Product crits and leadership feedback
41:30 — Inspire Africa Conference

Key Takeaways
— Better outcomes start with better environments. Leadership is about designing the conditions for people to do their best work — not managing their output.
— Africa is building for Africa, by Africans. The Inspire Africa Conference is catalysing coaching, capital, and community to accelerate meaningful innovation.
— Strategy defines focus. If prioritisation is hard, the strategy probably isn’t real.
— Leadership is a different sport. Managing people’s minds, not hands, requires context, clarity, and trust — not control.
— AI won’t replace good leaders. But it might replace bad leadership. Judgment, product sense, and curiosity are the new differentiators.
— Create practice space. Growth requires safety to make mistakes, experiment, and learn — at every level of the organisation.
— Critique is culture. Teams that coach and critique together develop sharper thinking and stronger product judgment.

Featured Links: Follow Christian on LinkedIn | Silicon Valley Product Group | Inspire Africa

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 this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith speaks with Sahil Jain, co-founder and CEO of Samepage.ai, about one of product management’s hardest challenges: keeping teams aligned.

From his early career at Yahoo and AOL to founding multiple startups, Sahil shares lessons on building products that tackle “unsolvable” problems like communication and alignment. He explains why shared understanding matters more than speed, how product managers can become better storytellers, and why early-stage startups should obsess over just a handful of teams before chasing scale.

Chapters

• 0:00 – Why alignment is so hard
• 1:14 – Sahil’s unconventional career path
• 4:00 – First foray into startups at AOL and beyond
• 6:50 – Founding AdStage and lessons from raising early capital
• 9:00 – Moving into product leadership after acquisition
• 12:53 – On delusion, motivation, and tackling “unsolvable” problems
• 16:34 – Starting Samepage.ai and the problem of information asymmetry
• 22:43 – Validating the problem and testing prototypes
• 27:22 – Why product managers are the perfect early adopters
• 29:20 – The first 10 obsessed teams: startup focus
• 34:00 – Neurodivergence, communication, and shared understanding
• 36:43 – From Claude Shannon to storytelling: frameworks for better communication
• 39:59 – Lessons from Duolingo on multimodal learning
• 41:19 – Where to find Samepage.ai

Featured Links: Follow Sahil on LinkedIn | Samepage.ai | 'What we learned at Industry conference - day one' feature by Louron Pratt 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.

In this episode of The Product Experience, hosts Lily Smith and Randy Silver speak with Damilola Adelekan, Lead Product Manager at Remedial Health, who discusses building pragmatic, people-centred solutions in Africa’s fragmented and under-resourced healthcare system.

Chapters
05:30 – Early Lessons from Volunteering and Nonprofits
07:00 – Why Digitising a Broken System Isn’t Enough
10:00 – Tackling Trust, Funding, and Fragmentation in Healthcare
12:30 – Collaborating Beyond the Organisation
14:30 – Building a Full Healthcare Supply Chain
16:00 – Pragmatism Over Perfection in Product Vision
18:00 – Cross-Team Collaboration at Scale
20:00 – Structuring Product Work Across Functions
22:00 – Communications Tips for Cross-Functional Leadership
24:00 – Increasing Tech Adoption Among Low-Digital-Literacy Users
26:00 – Customer Research in Low-Tech Contexts
28:00 – Voice of the Customer: Calls, Feedback, and Sales Teams
30:00 – What Inspires a Product Manager in Nigeria?

Featured Links: Follow Damilola on LinkedIn | Remedial Health | Inspire Africa | 'How I got my job in product' feature with Damilola 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.

In this episode of The Product Experience, Patrick Ndjientcheu, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Irembo, shares how his team transitioned from delivering projects for government to building a portfolio of scalable products.

Patrick talks about shifting mindsets from execution to strategy, spinning out payments and identity into independent products, and the challenges of balancing internal bias with customer needs.

He also reveals how Irembo is evolving into a super app, why sales enablement is crucial in a B2B context, and the lessons he has learned guiding teams through the move from project to product to product portfolio.

Six things we learned from Patrick

Project to product mindset: Repeat customer demand signals value, turn ad-hoc projects into structured products with identity, principles, and strategy.

Team restructuring without turnover: Shifting from project delivery to product development requires reorganising teams around capabilities.

Spinouts emerge from features: Payments and identity started as embedded features, but with scale and external demand, became standalone products.

Bias is real: Teams naturally over-index on the dominant revenue product. Separation, customer interviews, and rebranding are critical to balance focus.

Sales enablement matters: Without educating sales and customers on new platform capabilities, adoption stalls and value is under-communicated.

Leadership lesson: Product leaders must bring the whole organisation on the journey—marketing, sales, finance, and operations—not just product teams.

Featured Links: Follow Patrick on LinkedIn | Irembo | Inspire Africa

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 this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith speaks with Sally Foote, a seasoned product leader whose journey from product roles to C-suite commercial leadership spans Carwow, Go Compare, and The Guardian. They unpack the increasingly vital intersection between product, marketing, and sales.

Sally explains why growth is a shared responsibility, how product managers can become commercially fluent, and why understanding marketing economics is now critical. Expect actionable advice on working across functions, owning growth levers, and designing products that fuel acquisition and retention. Whether you’re in B2B or B2C, there’s something in here for every product leader looking to elevate their commercial impact.

Key Takeaways:
— Modern product managers must understand marketing funnels, ROI, and acquisition costs to create scalable impact.
— Propositions beat PPC: In saturated digital channels, differentiation must come from product innovation.
— Stop the handoffs: A strict separation between product, marketing, and sales creates missed opportunities and inefficiencies.
— Product roadmaps matter to the business: While sometimes shunned by PMs, roadmaps help align and activate sales and marketing functions.
— Product marketing isn't enough: What’s needed is cross-functional growth thinking—not just better product copy.
— B2B is a rich source of insights: Embedding PMs in sales cycles and advisory panels unlocks product innovation directly from the source.
— AI is reshaping go-to-market: From focus groups to pricing strategies, machine learning is changing how teams make commercial decisions.
— Your funnel is only as good as your data: PMs should design products with marketing data needs in mind to drive better acquisition performance.

Featured Links: Follow Sally on LinkedIn | YourRoom AI focus group | Carwow | Watch Sally's 'Maximum Possible Products' talk at #mtpcon London 2019 | Sustainable living made easy with Bower Collective

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 decisions built on daily-active metrics fall apart when your customers show up once a year, or once a decade. In this episode, Randy Silver talks to Vivek Kumar about building and growing low-frequency products, from property and tax to jobs and dating.

Chapters
04:25 — What makes a product “infrequent”? Episodic use and recall decay
07:05 — Rethinking PMF: penetration and market share over retention curves
10:36 — When iteration is slow: prioritising problems under seasonal cycles
14:28 — BELT framework: behaviours, enduring vs transient problems, lock-ins
21:56 — Spotting enduring problems: “what will still matter in 10 years?”
24:11 — ICE framework overview for infrequent products
26:03 — Engagement: active retention, complexity, single- vs constant-touch
29:55 — Predictable vs unpredictable retention; referrals as a strategy
31:06 — Lifetime retention: seeding frequency hooks (e.g., estimates, salary data)
33:01 — Distinctiveness and brand: why CAC collapses when you own the memory
33:48 — Control over experience: monetisation through end-to-end journeys
36:13 — Research that works: ethnography, diary studies, “follow-me-home”
40:22 — Example: discovering the real tax filing pain (document collection)
43:04 — Ethics and value: “cures vs treatments”, utility vs entertainment products

Featured Links: Follow Vivek on LinkedIn | Atlys | The Steps 'Grow and manag

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 this episode of The Product Experience, Randy Silver and Lily Smith sit down with Katja Forbes, Executive Director at Standard Chartered Bank, design leader, and lecturer, to explore the fast-approaching world of machine customers.

Katja shares why businesses must prepare for a future where AI agents, autonomous vehicles, and procurement bots act as customers, and what this means for product managers, designers, and organisations.

Key takeaways

1. Machine customers are here already. From booking services for Tesla cars to procurement bots closing contracts, AI-driven commerce is no longer hypothetical.
2. APIs are necessary but insufficient. Businesses need to think beyond plumbing and address trust, compliance, and customer experience for non-human agents.
3. Signal clarity matters. Organisations must make their value propositions machine-readable to remain competitive.
4. Trust will be quantified. Compliance signals, ESG proof, uptime guarantees, and reliability ratings will replace human gut instinct.
5. New roles will emerge. Trust analysts and human–machine hybrid coordinators will be critical in shaping future interactions.
6. Ethics cannot be ignored. Without careful design, agentic commerce could amplify consumerism and poor societal outcomes.
7. Practical first step. Even small businesses can prepare by structuring their product and service data into machine-readable formats.
8. Product managers must adapt. The skill to manage ambiguity, think systemically, and anticipate unintended consequences will be central to success.

Featured Links: Follow Katja on LinkedIn | Katja's website | Sign-up for pre sale access to Katja's forthcoming book 'The CX Evolutionist'

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 this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith and Randy Silver are joined by Kirsten Mann, former CPO at Prospection and now startup founder and board member, to discuss how product leaders can play a vital role on company boards.

Drawing from her own board experience and a research series interviewing founders and directors, Kirsten explains why product, culture, and customer insight must be central to boardroom conversations.

Key Takeaways
— Product’s Place on Boards: Product is a strategic lever, boards should treat it with the same seriousness as financials.
— Culture as a Strategic Asset: Culture emerged as the most frequently cited factor in board-level success—more than AI or tech.
— From Operator to Overseer: Transitioning to a board role requires stepping back from execution and focusing on governance and strategic guidance.
— Communicating with Boards: Product leaders must avoid jargon, speak in terms of customer problems, outcomes, and investment returns.
— The Risk of Exclusion: If your product team isn’t presenting to the board, that’s a red flag.
— Practical Preparation: Aspiring board members should build financial literacy, start with non-profit boards, and cultivate visibility through writing or public speaking.

Chapters
00:00 – Culture over strategy: Why getting culture right matters more than clever planning
00:45 – Meet Kirsten Mann: Introduction and credentials
01:45 – Career transition: From CPO at Prospection to board member, investor, and startup founder
04:50 – Early board experience: Saving a youth club through governance and tech
06:45 – Product’s value on boards: Bringing customer and tech insight into strategic discussions
08:00 – Oversight, not execution: Adjusting from exec roles to governance roles
09:50 – Frustration sparks research: Why Kirsten began writing about product leaders on boards
11:00 – Product strategy ≠ support: The board’s risk-first mindset

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.