Hubert Palan is the Founder and CEO of Productboard, a product administration platform designed to assist groups carry merchandise to market extra effectively by prioritizing person wants and aligning groups round a shared roadmap. Greater than 5,400 firms, together with Zoom, UiPath, JCDecaux, and Microsoft, use the platform to collect buyer insights and inform improvement selections.
What impressed you to begin Productboard, and the way did your expertise at GoodData affect its creation?
Productboard was impressed by my work as a product supervisor and product chief. The concept got here throughout a flight once I was making an attempt to handle product roadmaps throughout numerous shows and spec sheets whereas on less-than-optimal airplane Wi-Fi — making it apparent how inefficient it’s to attempt to coordinate strategic product selections and not using a single, consistently-updated supply of fact.
When creating Productboard, our objective was to construct one platform that covers your complete product administration course of, fixing much more PM ache factors alongside the best way. Productboard has now grown right into a platform that places buyer centricity on the middle of contemporary product administration, utilizing AI expertise to champion the voice of the shopper, elevating the function of the PM.
And it’s labored. Immediately Productboard has 6000+ prospects together with wonderful firms like Salesforce, Autodesk, and Zoom.
What challenges did you face in the course of the early days of Productboard, and the way did you overcome them?
Within the early days of Productboard, I realized in regards to the challenges of onboarding new employees at a startup. Productboard was transferring in a short time and I had a bent to anticipate new hires to catch onto what we have been doing virtually instantly and clarify, strategic selections instantly. Since then, I’ve realized that there’s extra worth in taking your time with onboarding. By specializing in efficient information sharing and coaching, you may foster groups which are simply as knowledgeable and passionate in regards to the work as you’re. The ROI on a radical onboarding interval is substantial.
What’s the “Product Excellence Framework,” and the way did you develop it as a foundational idea for Productboard?
The Product Excellence Framework is our structured method to product administration, emphasizing customer-centricity, inserting massive bets, and constructing wonderful groups. It is our product philosophy at Productboard, guaranteeing that we’re at all times centered on delivering worth to our prospects. We developed this framework after recognizing frequent challenges confronted by product groups, comparable to the necessity to consolidate suggestions, prioritize successfully, and align everybody round a transparent roadmap. It is a core a part of our mission to assist product managers navigate the complexities of constructing trendy merchandise, particularly within the age of AI.
Productboard makes use of AI to research buyer suggestions at scale. What motivated you to include AI into your platform, and the way has it remodeled product administration?
One thing that grew to become clear to our staff early on was a urgent want to assist product groups make sense of the huge quantities of buyer suggestions they obtain. AI was the pure resolution to research this knowledge at scale, establish key insights, and assist prioritize what to construct subsequent. This has remodeled product administration by permitting groups to make faster, extra knowledgeable selections with larger confidence. It has additionally elevated the PM to a place of management by which they can provide extra strategic suggestions that aligns with an organization’s enterprise targets. Total, AI in PM is about staying forward of the curve and guaranteeing our prospects can construct merchandise that sustain with rising tendencies and really resonate with their customers.
Are you able to share particular examples of how AI has improved decision-making for Productboard’s prospects?
Think about a product supervisor needs to know the overall sentiment on a brand new function. As a substitute of sifting by way of mountains of knowledge throughout Salesforce, social media, the Apple Retailer, and who is aware of what else, they will simply use Productboard. Productboard Pulse’s AI-powered conversational interface immediately solutions questions like, “What are prospects saying in regards to the final replace?” or “Is pricing a significant concern for customers on this sector?” This entry permits PMs to shortly establish ache factors and alternatives, resulting in simpler product improvement.
Past Pulse, we even have an AI-powered analytics dashboard that routinely surfaces key themes and tendencies from buyer suggestions. This helps product managers prioritize options with the most important potential impression, making it a game-changer for data-driven decision-making. We’re seeing prospects use these insights to speed up time-to-market, enhance product satisfaction, and finally, construct higher merchandise that individuals love.
How do you handle issues round knowledge safety and privateness when utilizing AI to course of buyer insights?
We take privateness very significantly. At Productboard we use a multi-layered method to knowledge safety and privateness, incorporating industry-standard practices and strong measures to guard delicate info. Our dedication to safety is clear in our SOC 2 Sort II compliance certification and our adherence to strict knowledge safety laws like GDPR and CCPA.
We make use of knowledge encryption, and our platform is constructed on safe infrastructure. We additionally implement application-level safety measures, together with person authentication, authorization, and entry controls, to stop unauthorized entry to buyer knowledge. Our prospects have granular management over their knowledge, permitting them to find out what info is collected and the way it’s used. For AI particularly, we make use of nameless knowledge to research buyer suggestions, defending particular person identities whereas extracting helpful insights.
What tendencies do you foresee in using AI for product administration, and the way is Productboard getting ready to guide on this house?
AI can be important for product managers to navigate the complexities of the fashionable product panorama. Utilizing AI in PM is not only about automating duties; it is about empowering PMs to be extra strategic and customer-centric, thus elevating the impression they will have inside their respective firms.
At Productboard, we’re dedicated to main the best way in AI-powered product administration. We’re repeatedly enhancing our AI capabilities and delivering revolutionary options that empower our prospects. Final yr, we introduced a number of iterations of our AI functions and there’s extra the place that got here from in 2025.
Our objective is to make AI accessible and useful for all product groups, no matter their dimension or technical experience. We imagine that by embracing AI, PMs can unlock new ranges of productiveness, creativity, and customer-centricity and change into extra integral inside their organizations.
How has your management type advanced as Productboard has grown from a small staff to a world group with over 6,000 prospects?
Early on, I adopted a really hands-on management type — carrying a number of hats, and figuring issues out as we went alongside. As we expanded, I needed to study to delegate extra successfully, belief my staff, and empower them to take possession.
Nonetheless, even with the significance of letting go, I additionally realized the significance of staying related and sustaining a founder’s mindset. I’m continuously questioning, analyzing, and looking for methods to enhance. Efficient management is about balancing strategic imaginative and prescient with a deep understanding of the day-to-day realities of our prospects and our staff.
What recommendation would you give to aspiring product managers who need to leverage AI of their roles?
I’d encourage aspiring product magnets to discover ways to leverage AI successfully by following these three finest practices:
- Develop Buyer-Centricity: At all times join AI-driven insights again to the human wants and ache factors they symbolize.
- Search Mentorship and Collaboration: Join with skilled product managers who’re already leveraging AI of their roles. Be taught from their successes and challenges, and ask for steering on methods to navigate the evolving panorama.
- Embrace Steady Studying: AI is a dynamic subject, so keep curious and continue to learn. Discover on-line programs, attend workshops, and skim in regards to the {industry} to deepen your understanding of AI ideas and functions in product administration.
What’s your long-term imaginative and prescient for Productboard, notably in leveraging AI to reinforce customer-centric product improvement?
My objective for productboard now is identical because it was day one – to unravel PM ache factors and empower PMs to make the most effective merchandise doable.
We’re dedicated to constantly evaluating and updating our AI choices to make sure we’re serving to PMs be extra collaborative, efficient, inventive and strategic. As their ache factors change, so will our expertise. Actually, we use Productboard’s expertise ourselves to verify we’re being really customer-centric and delivering the updates and options that our prospects really want. So it’s exhausting to say in the present day what we’ll do sooner or later, as a result of at Productboard, it’s all about what our prospects want proper now. However I can promise that we’ll proceed to evolve and leverage AI to supply for our prospects and empower PMs to be distinctive members of their group.
Thanks for the good interview, readers who want to study extra ought to go to Productboard.