How AI is reshaping the product role

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

How AI is reshaping the product role | Oji and Ezinne Udezue

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How AI is reshaping the product role | Oji and Ezinne Udezue

🎙️ Finding sharp problems, embracing chaos, PMs as the new bottleneck, and why simplicity still matters most

Lenny Rachitsky

Sep 07, 2025

∙ Paid

Watch on YouTube • Watch on Spotify • Listen on Apple

Jump to the best parts:

(12:37) → The “shipyard team” model: A new way to structure product orgs that crushes the old EPD handoff model and thrives in chaos.
(17:02) → Hiring the right PMs in the AI era: Why curiosity, humility, and high agency matter more than pedigree—and the new skills (like writing evals and constraining hallucinations) that separate great PMs from the rest.
(46:25) → Timeless product truths: Always focus on sharp problems, ship simple and opinionated products, and stay humble (teachability = survivability).

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Ezinne and Oji Udezue have over 50 years of combined product leadership experience at Microsoft, Twitter, Atlassian, WP Engine, Typeform, and Calendly. They’ve witnessed every major shift in product management, and, despite their seniority, they’re taking beginner AI courses and learning from engineers half their age, and Oji is coding more now than in the past decade—from Waterfall to Agile to AI. They are also the authors of Building Rocketships, a guide to building great products. In this conversation, the couple shares hard-won lessons they’ve learned from companies successfully adapting to AI, including their “shipyard” framework and their “sharp problem” methodology.

What you’ll learn:

The “shipyard” framework: why the best AI teams embrace controlled chaos
Why Oji writes more code now than in the past 10 years—despite being a PM for more than 25 years
The three skills that matter most for PMs in 2025: curiosity, humility, and agency
How to identify “sharp problems”
AI at the core vs. AI at the edge: why companies that are building entirely new AI-centric codebases will beat those just “sprinkling AI” on existing products
The counterintuitive truth: engineers are moving so fast with AI that PMs are now the bottleneck
Their biggest product lesson from 50 combined years

Where to find Oji and Ezinne:

• ProductMind on Substack: https://substack.productmind.co/

• ProductMind on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/productmindco

• ProductMind on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ProductMindX/videos

• ProductMind on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/07OVh5pdSv0szHPwWktzQQ

• ProductMind website: https://www.productmind.co/

• ProductMind Slack community: https://app.slack.com/client/T07HF3HB4E4/C07GUQ4FDFE

• Oji on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ojiudezue/

• Ezinne on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ezinne/

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Oji and Ezinne

(04:14) The evolving role of product managers

(08:01) Challenges and opportunities in product management

(10:34) Sharp problems

(12:37) The shipyard model for product development

(17:02) Hiring PMs in the AI era

(24:55) The importance of staying humble

(27:16) Hands-on learning and personal projects

(39:10) Companies succeeding with AI adoption

(46:25) Lessons from 50 years in product

(49:22) Simplicity in design

(51:24) The role of communication in strategy

(55:17) Career intentions and personal growth

(01:00:00) Ethics and responsibility in product management

(01:03:09) Introducing Building Rocketships

(01:06:42) Lightning round and final thoughts

Watch on YouTube • Watch on Spotify • Listen on Apple

Referenced:

• How 80,000 companies build with AI: products as organisms, the death of org charts, and why agents will outnumber employees by 2026 | Asha Sharma (CVP of AI Platform at Microsoft): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-80000-companies-build-with-ai-asha-sharma

• Picking sharp problems, increasing virality, and unique product frameworks | Oji Udezue (Typeform, Twitter, Calendly, Atlassian): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/picking-sharp-problems-increasing

• Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com/

• Joff Redfern on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mejoff/

• Brownian motion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion

• Calendly: https://calendly.com/

• Women in Product: https://womenpm.org/

• Brian Chesky’s secret mentor who died 9 times, started the Burning Man board, and built the world’s first midlife wisdom school | Chip Conley (founder of MEA): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/chip-conley

• Home Assistant: https://www.home-assistant.io/

• What people are vibe coding (and actually using): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/what-people-are-vibe-coding-and-actually

• How many layers should I wear today?: https://layers.today/

• Typeform: https://www.typeform.com/

• David Okuniev on X: https://x.com/okuiux

• Clay: https://www.clay.com/

• Martin Eriksson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martineriksson/

• Geoffrey Moore on finding your beachhead, crossing the chasm, and dominating a market: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/geoffrey-moore-on-finding-your-beachhead

• Dave Mendlen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davemendlen/

• Deepfake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepfake

• How to kickstart and scale a marketplace business: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-kickstart-and-scale-a-marketplace

• Forever on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81418639