Elena Verna is Head of Growth at Lovable, one of the fastest-growing AI-native companies. She's previously held growth and product leadership roles at Dropbox, Miro, Amplitude, and SurveyMonkey, where she built some of the most influential frameworks in product-led growth.

We discuss

• The shift from "product manager" to "product builder" and why interviews now require working prototypes
• Automating Growth 101 work so you can focus on creative strategy
• The collapse of the talent stack: how roles in product, design, and engineering are blurring
• Three things that won't change: customer interaction, vision setting, and understanding distribution
• The "superpower framework" for career-accelerating decisions

Key takeaways

• PMs who can't build are becoming obsolete. The shift isn't theoretical or five years away. Top tech companies are already changing their interview processes to require functional prototypes instead of case studies. If you can't translate your product thinking into something tangible, you're competing with one hand behind your back.
• Automate Growth 101, then invest the freed-up time in creative strategy. The repetitive mechanics of growth marketing (A/B tests, funnel analysis, campaign setup) are increasingly automatable with AI. Elena argues that the PMs who thrive will be the ones redirecting that time toward the harder, more creative work that machines can't do yet.
• The talent stack is collapsing, and that's exciting. Boundaries between product, design, and engineering are blurring as AI gives individuals more autonomy across disciplines. Elena sees this as liberating rather than threatening. The PMs who embrace building, not just specifying, can move faster and validate ideas without waiting for a team to assemble.
• Three foundations won't change, no matter how good AI gets. Customer interaction, vision setting, and understanding distribution remain irreplaceably human. AI can accelerate execution, but it can't replace the judgment that comes from sitting with customers, setting a compelling direction, or knowing how your product actually reaches people.
• Your superpower lives at the intersection of what you're good at and what you love. Elena's career accelerated when she stopped trying to be well-rounded and started leaning into product-led growth as her defining skill. Find that intersection, then make career moves that compound on it rather than scattering your energy across unrelated opportunities.

Chapters

00:00: Introduction and highlights

01:13: Welcome and the current state of tech

02:10: Why Elena joined Lovable and automating Growth 101

05:36: The shift from product managers to product builders

08:39: Advising growth-stage companies on AI adoption

11:56: Fostering AI fluency and bottom-up adoption

14:54: Raising AI fluency at scale beyond checkbox exercises

17:38: The collapse of the talent stack: product, design, and engineering blur

20:42: Critical skills for the AI era PM

24:16: Three things that won't change: customers, vision, and distribution

28:20: Demo: Building a nonprofit offering spec and prototype with ChatGPT and Lovable

47:01: Lightning round: podcasts and Substacks

49:22: Career-accelerating decisions and the superpower framework

52:00: Desert island favourites and closing

#productmanagement #PM #atlassian

About Atlassian:

Behind every great human achievement, there is a team. From medicine and space travel to disaster response and pizza deliveries, we help teams all over the planet advance humanity through the power of software. Our mission is to help unleash the potential of every team.

Cemre Güngor has helped shape how billions interact with technology, from Facebook and Instagram's global sharing experiences to Figma's AI-powered workflows, and now reimagining the browser at The Browser Company with Dia.In this conversation, we break down:

• Product Craft in the AI Era
• Why starting with the end in mind matters more than ever when prototyping is democratized
• The difference between durable AI features and "demo candy"
• How to evaluate prototypes without clear problem definition
• Scaling Products Across Surfaces
• What changes (and what doesn't) when building for social platforms vs creative tools vs AI-native workflows
• Why product managers get too attached to their existing mental models
• The hidden costs of ignoring new interaction paradigms
• Real AI Workflows at The Browser Company
• Practical examples: automated communication audits, personality type predictions, and workflow optimization
• Why meeting transcripts are the most underutilized data source in remote work

Jira Product Discovery is the home for all your product ideas, customer feedback, and bets, so you can prioritize what actually matters and share living roadmaps with your stakeholders. Turn scattered requests and spreadsheets into a single, shared source of truth that connects directly to delivery in Jira.

Get it free at https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/product-discoveryChapters01:31 Welcome back to Product in Practice03:21 Starting with the end in mind and focusing on problems05:36 Product management behavior that stopped working, moving from Instagram to Figma08:30 Shift from metric-driven to judgment-based product management09:18 Cemre's background with AI at Figma10:50 Learning by doing and shipping quickly14:39 How LLM-based features change product development16:59 The Browser Company's focus on design and intentionality19:10 The single most important test for an AI feature: internal usage22:20 How evolving AI models (reasoning models) impact product roadmaps23:03 The Bitter Lesson: When to wait for model improvements25:09 Why agentic workflows (like computer use models) are not a priority yet26:12 The necessity of shipping first to learn what good looks like for general-purpose AI assistants29:22 The browser's responsibility in an AI world: holding all your context32:47 The key value of an AI browser: bringing in your context34:33 Advice for PMs: Do the boring thing with AI37:06 Demo: Simulating your manager's perspective (the "Josh skill")42:18 Demo: Revising a document with real meeting feedback/transcript47:00 Demo: Daily priority recommendations based on all context (Memory, Calendar, Slack)51:09 How AI tools have transformed productivity and PM workflows53:54 Demo: Coaching and feedback on communication style from all channels54:41 The advantage of browser-level integrations like Dia'sReferencedArc Search (mobile app): https://arc.net/search Arc (browser): https://arc.net/ Gemini (model): https://gemini.google.com and https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs... Cursor: https://cursor.com/ Claude Code: https://claude.com/product/claude-code GPT Codex: https://openai.com/codex/ Granola (note-taking tool mentioned): https://www.granola.ai/ Four Thousand Weeks: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54785515-four-thousand-weeksAbout Atlassian:Behind every great human achievement, there is a team. From medicine and space travel to disaster response and pizza deliveries, we help teams all over the planet advance humanity through the power of software. Our mission is to help unleash the potential of every team.

What if you could build product prototypes in 15 minutes instead of 3 weeks?In this episode, Aakash Gupta (creator of the Product Growth Newsletter and former VP of Product at Affirm, Epic Games, and ThredUp) reveals the AI prototyping workflow that's revolutionizing product management.Watch as he live-demos building a sleep tracker app using Bolt, V0, and Lovable, showing you exactly how to go from concept to a working prototype in minutes.What You'll Learn:

• The 6-step framework every PM needs to master AI product building
• How to use Bolt, V0, Lovable & Cursor for rapid prototyping
• Why AI prototyping is the most significant change product management has ever seen
• Real-time demo: Building a sleep score calculator from scratch
• The exact prompt engineering techniques that get better results
• How to iterate across multiple AI tools to find the best output

• Start with problem discovery (not jumping straight to solutions)
• Test across multiple tools (Bolt, V0, Lovable)
• Iterate with detailed feedback
• Move to Cursor for final refinements

The Four-Step AI Prototyping Method:"What used to take weeks now takes literally minutes." This isn't hype; this is the new reality for product builders.About Aakash Gupta: Long-time product leader at ThredUp, Epic Games, Affirm, and Apollo. He now runs the Product Growth Newsletter (Substack), featuring practical playbooks and AI experiments for product builders.Where to find Aakash Gupta:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aagupta/

Where to find Axel:

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/axelsooriah

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/axelsooriah/

About Atlassian:

Behind every great human achievement, there is a team. From medicine and space travel to disaster response and pizza deliveries, we help teams all over the planet advance humanity through the power of software. Our mission is to help unleash the potential of every team.

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If you're a PM, designer, or engineer building AI products, this is required viewing for 2025.