The Best Moments from ProductCon New York 2025
Check out the highlights from our most ambitious ProductCon yet.
Last week, we welcomed a thousand product leaders to ProductCon New York 2025, and 10,000 more attendees joined us virtually from around the world. At our invite-only CPO breakfast, we took things to the next level with more Chief Product Officers and product execs than ever before gathering in one place to swap ideas and share challenges.
The energy at the venue was electric from the very first talk to the final session. As always, I was blown away by the level of insight, vulnerability, and practical wisdom shared by our speakers. We heard from product executives at companies like Upwork, Shopify, SoulCycle, Warner Music Group, and more. The themes this year reflected the urgent realities of modern product leadership—from navigating AI transformation to proving impact in the boardroom.
To everyone who helped bring this event to life—speakers, attendees, sponsors, volunteers, and the incredible Product School team—thank you. The conversations we sparked today will ripple far beyond the stage.
If you missed anything or want to rewatch your favorite moments, all the sessions are available now on our website.
Let’s dive into the highlights!
What It Really Takes for VPs of Product to Operate as GMs
Dave Bottoms, GM and VP of Product at Upwork
Dave Bottoms opened the day by taking us inside his journey from VP of Product to full business ownership as a General Manager at Upwork. He shared how product leaders can expand their impact by adopting a GM mindset—thinking beyond roadmaps and features to own revenue, resource tradeoffs, and long-term business strategy. With a blend of humor and hard-won lessons, Dave made a compelling case for elevating product skills to drive company-wide outcomes.
“Ask yourself, what would I do if this were my P&L? And if you do those things, you will be more prepared when you get a tap on the shoulder to say, ‘Yeah, I think a GM role would be really interesting for me.’”
Watch Dave's full talk on the ProductCon New York event page
From Hype to Moat: Building a Defensible AI Strategy
Penny Szeto, Head of Product, Amazon Games
Penny Szeto explored how product leaders can move beyond the AI buzz to build sustainable, defensible value. Drawing on lessons from her experience leading GenAI initiatives at Amazon Games, Penny outlined a practical framework for evolving from demo-stage experimentation to strategic moats. She challenged the audience to think in terms of long-term flywheels, not fleeting features.
“If you are not proactively creating guardrails, you’re not shipping innovation—you’re shipping liability.”
Watch Penny’s full session on the ProductCon rewind page
Intervene with Precision: Zooming In as a Leader Without Micromanaging
Mamuna Oladipo, VP of Product, Shopify
Mamuna Oladipo delivered a powerful talk on a nuanced leadership skill that separates good operators from great ones: knowing how to engage deeply with your team without stepping on their autonomy. Drawing from her experience at Shopify, she explained how "strategic depth" isn’t about control—it’s about protecting quality, modeling clarity, and surfacing risk before it becomes regret. With practical frameworks and empathetic language, Mamuna showed us how to lead with presence, not pressure.
“Strategic depth is not about hovering—it's being close enough to spot the risk, and skilled enough to step away when it's time.”
Watch Mamuna’s full session on our website
Product in Wartime: How to Build When the Market Is Against You
Drew Lesicko, VP of Product and Technology at SoulCycle
Drew Lesicko gave an unflinching look at what it means to be a product leader when the market is in crisis. Reflecting on his experience steering SoulCycle through the pandemic—when 90% of revenue vanished overnight—Drew shared a candid account of survival through scrappiness, speed, and hard decisions. From dismantling teams to launching revenue-first features on a shoestring budget, his story was a powerful reminder that leadership in wartime is about trade-offs, not perfection.
“All of a sudden, your number one KPI is revenue. The number one KPI you're thinking about is dollars in the door, and you're going to end up launching products that no one asked for but the business needs.”
Watch Drew’s full session on the event page
Panel Discussion: Deploying AI Agents in Product Teams
Moderator: Michelle Parsons, Co-founder & CPO at Lex
Panelists:
Ludmilla Schappert, VP of Product Management, Homes.com at CoStar Group
Shailesh Nalawadi, VP of Product, Sendbird
David Ragones, SVP of Product, Amplitude
Vijay Umapathy, Senior Director of Product, Contentsquare
This high-energy panel tackled the evolving role of AI agents across product teams, offering a deep dive into real-world deployments, data challenges, and how product managers can future-proof their roles. Panelists emphasized that effective AI implementation starts with proprietary data, rapid iteration, and thoughtful user experience design. They shared how their teams are using agents not just to automate support but to empower product managers, streamline go-to-market strategies, and synthesize customer feedback faster than ever.
“What the AI agent does is quickly surface relevant results by analyzing all of our data. That’s how we’re differentiating—by applying smart technology to unlock the power of our proprietary data.”
— Ludmilla Schappert, CoStar Group
From organizing internal “AI weeks” dedicated to scaling AI solutions to embedding AI agents into analytics and customer success workflows, the panel showed that AI isn’t replacing product teams—it’s amplifying them.
Watch the full panel discussion
The Product Podcast LIVE with Ariel Bardin
Guest: Ariel Bardin, President of Technology at Warner Music Group
Host: Carlos González de Villaumbrosia, CEO at Product School
I had the pleasure of sitting down with Ariel Bardin for a special live episode of The Product Podcast. Ariel’s career spans from leading product at YouTube and Google to now driving digital transformation at Warner Music Group.
What stood out most was his philosophy around leadership and product quality. Ariel doesn’t believe in MVPs—he pushes teams to aim for what he calls the “Minimum Proud Product.” His honesty about working across layers of a complex organization, while staying close to the build process, offered a refreshing reminder of what it means to lead with authenticity.
“At launch review, I’ll ask: Are you proud of the product you’re releasing? It’s not perfect, but it can’t just be viable—it has to be something you’re proud of.”
—Ariel Bardin, Warner Music Group
Watch the live podcast recording
Product Transformation Trends in 2025
Carlos González de Villaumbrosia, Founder & CEO at Product School
I opened my talk by challenging the overuse of the word “transformation” especially given that over 70% of digital transformations fail. Today’s CPO is expected to do far more than manage a roadmap: they need to take ownership of revenue growth, reduce costs, and lead AI adoption across the business. I shared tactical examples from our enterprise work, including incentive realignment, tool consolidation, and driving top-line results through experimentation. But I ended with a reminder that transformation starts with people. As I told the room in New York:
“If anger and fear are leading the behavior of our teams, it’s going to be very hard for them to get on board with change.”
Watch the full talk on our event page
The Board Doesn’t Care About Your Roadmap: Running Product at the Board
Tim Holley, CPO at MyFitnessPal
Tim joined us straight from his Q1 board meeting and delivered a clear message: when you're in the boardroom, your job as a CPO isn't to walk through feature lists, but rather to connect product work to business impact. He emphasized the importance of showing strategic implications, being consistent in messaging, and acting as a translator between product operations and outcomes.
“Your job is to take a list of projects and features and share with the board why they're important and how they're going to have an impact on the business, not enumerating all of the things that you're working on and launching. Your job is to focus them on outcomes over output.”
Watch Tim’s talk on our website
A huge thanks to everyone who was a part of ProductCon New York 2025! Every time we come together—whether in NYC, San Francisco, London, or online—I’m reminded of how powerful this global product community truly is. This time, we heard from leaders building in wartime, redefining what it means to lead with depth, and scaling AI responsibly. And the message is clear: product isn’t just a function—it’s the engine driving the most exciting innovations happening today.
If you found value in the talks above, don’t stop here. Join us at the next ProductCons:
ProductCon Online: August 6th, 2025
ProductCon San Francisco: October 8th, 2025
Let’s keep building. Let’s keep learning. And let’s keep raising the bar for what it means to lead in product.
You can learn more about attending and sponsoring ProductCon here.