Shaping the Future of Product with AI: Executive Insights from Product Confidential SF

For today’s product leaders, AI isn’t optional, it’s a competitive mandate. And as the pressure mounts to deliver faster with fewer resources, building the right products—not just more of them—has become the difference between relevance and irrelevance.

We brought together a curated group of VPs and Heads of Product from across industries for Product Confidential in San Francisco: a closed-door, intentionally off-the-record event focused on how AI is transforming product work: from discovery to delivery, strategy to execution. We’re sharing the high-level insights that emerged, so you wouldn’t miss out.

Kicking off the afternoon, legendary product thinker Marty Cagan set the tone: AI isn’t just accelerating how we build, it’s changing what we build and who gets to shape it.

“The job is no longer just to build. It's to think. That’s what’s left.” — Marty Cagan 

In a world where prototyping cycles can be compressed from weeks into hours, Marty emphasized that the real value of product managers lies in their ability to evaluate, not just execute. That means developing sharper product judgment, understanding business implications, and collaborating with greater clarity and speed.

He also warned against mistaking velocity for vision. AI can help you move fast, but if you're building the wrong thing, you're just speeding toward irrelevance. What separates the best teams isn’t access to technology, it’s how they apply it with intent, guided by deep product sense.

“You still need a solution that is 10x better than what’s out there,” he noted. “Understanding the problem is easy. Inventing a better solution? That’s hard.” — Marty Cagan

So what does it actually take to lead through this shift? At Product Confidential, we unpacked this question from three vantage points: data, operations, and culture.

Subhash: Making Your Data AI-Ready

Subhash Bahuguna, Head of Product at Viasat, offered a critical framing: the question isn't can AI generate a roadmap, it’s should it?

To unlock meaningful outcomes, product teams must feed AI systems with clean, structured, and relevant data. But most aren't there yet, about 80% of data is unstructured (MIT). Unsurprisingly, 74% of companies are still struggling to generate real results from their AI investments (BCG).

Here’s Subhash’s framework for determining AI readiness:

• Structure your market and opportunity data.
• Evaluate ROI at every level: model training, data quality, and implementation cost.
• Use AI to generate directional insights (but validate every step through your business context).

In his view, the future isn’t AI-built roadmaps. It’s roadmap thinking augmented by AI.

Get started: Audit your product data inputs. Identify where customer feedback, opportunity data, and roadmap artifacts are stored, how structured they are, and whether they’re tagged and connected in a way that AI tools can leverage.

Shelly: Scaling AI from Chaos to Clarity

Shelly La Rock, Head of Product Operations and Delivery Excellence at Autodesk, grounded the conversation in operational reality. She’s not alone: in 2024, 65% of product professionals reported integrating AI into their roles primarily to streamline analysis, surface insights, and improve decisions (Pragmatic Institute). But without the right operational foundation, AI can just accelerate the chaos.

With a large product org, Autodesk didn’t start with sweeping change—they started with structure:

• Centralized 70+ feedback channels.
• Standardized opportunity assessments and PRD formats.
• Built prompt libraries and reusable workflows.

“We’re not replacing product teams. We’re giving them space to think.”

AI now helps write specs, uncover related efforts, and highlight signals, but prioritization, judgment, and customer discovery still sit squarely with people. As Shelly emphasized, AI is the assistant. Not the decider.

Get started: Create a prompt library for your team’s most repetitive or cognitively draining tasks (e.g., writing PRDs, summarizing feedback, identifying duplicate requests).

Namrta: Culture Is Your Operating System

Namrta Raghvendra, Product Leader at Meta, reminded the room that all the tooling in the world won’t save a team stuck in the wrong culture.

Culture isn’t just a soft skill. It’s a performance lever, and one with real business stakes. The cost of replacing an employee can range from 50% to 200% of their annual salary, depending on their level (SHRM). In fast-changing environments, where speed, ownership, and alignment are critical, that kind of cultural drag isn’t just costly—it’s a barrier to transformation.

To build products and teams that thrive in the AI era, she pointed to five must-have values:

• Ruthless prioritization: Only a few things actually matter. Work on those.
• Fail fast, learn fast: Speed beats perfection. Iterate, iterate, iterate. 
• Validate your data: Go a level deeper than “this person said this.”
• It’s everyone’s job: No more silos. Everyone’s responsible for unblocking themselves.
• Qualify your collaboration: At Meta, they prioritize intentionality and live that out with a pre-read culture.  

Whether you’re scaling processes or onboarding GenAI tools, culture is the hidden architecture that determines whether your team can adapt and thrive.

Get started: Run a "ways of working" alignment session with your team leads. Define what ownership, speed, and collaboration look like in your org, and document those expectations.

Are You Ready for the Shift?

The core takeaway from Product Confidential SF? AI is not a silver bullet. But for leaders who can structure their data, operationalize their teams, and foster the right culture—it’s a serious advantage in building the right products faster in a high-stakes market.

At Productboard, we believe that in the age of AI, success belongs to the teams that move fast and think deeply. Building the right products faster requires more than speed; it demands tools that accelerate innovation, reduce time to market, and evolve how teams work. That’s why we hosted this event, and why Productboard serves as a strategic partner to empower product leaders to align, prioritize, and execute with clarity and confidence. 

Winning teams won’t just ship quickly. They’ll think smarter, align tighter, and deliver better. How are you preparing your team for this shift?

→ Book a Productboard demo to see how you can build smarter, faster, and more strategically in the age of AI.