Top 4 AI Workflows Product Leaders Can Steal Today
Learn how top product leaders from Lattice, Apartment List, Sporcle, and Zeta Global are using AI in real workflows, from Slack interns to AI-powered PRDs.
It’s that time of the week again, product leaders: reading your favorite product newsletter as you sign out of Slack just a liiiittle bit earlier to enjoy the final days of summer.
(Trust me, our dutiful newsletter writer, Imane, left me, your favorite podcast producer, to write this in her stead while she’s doing the same.)
With that said, this week we’re bringing you:
Our top four AI initiatives that have proven successful for our LaunchPod product leaders, from Apartment List to Lattice
LaunchPod’s interview with Zach Heller, VP of Product at Penn Foster, where he talks about how Penn Foster rethought retention, doubled completion rates, and built a product-led engine for student success.
Interviews with product leaders about leveraging AI for personal brand building and how to use analytics to keep your customers and clients at the center of your product.
Plus, the best conversations we’ve seen this week from product leaders
Happy reading, whether you're in the office or lounging on the beach,
Em Kochanek
How Product Leaders Are Using AI: 4 Case Studies
1. The AI Slack “Intern” | Neha Monga, former Head of Product (Lattice)
Neha’s team built an AI assistant directly into Slack to help PMs quickly access notes, past decisions, and research. Instead of losing time digging through Confluence or docs, the AI delivered instant answers inside the team’s communication hub.
How they did it:
Identified repetitive tasks PMs spent too much time on (note-taking, decision recall, status reporting)
Embedded an AI bot in Slack so it worked in the team’s natural flow
Started with small use cases to build trust before expanding functionality
Used feedback loops from PMs to refine the assistant’s responses
Tip for PMs: Pilot AI in the tools your team already lives in (Slack, Teams). Focus on one “painful but boring” task and let AI handle it before scaling.
2. Rethinking Product Strategy with AI Customer Insights | Sierra Hahn Ventrell, Director of Product (Apartment List)
Sierra’s team used AI to analyze customer interviews, uncovering insights that contradicted their roadmap and forced them to scrap their initial plan and pivot their product strategy.
How they did it:
Collected raw interview transcripts and centralized them
Fed transcripts into an AI tool for fast synthesis
Compared AI findings against the team’s original assumptions
Discussed contradictions openly, leading to a strategic reset
Used AI-driven insights as inputs into the new roadmap
Tips for PMs: Run your unstructured customer data (interviews, tickets, surveys) through AI. Look not just for speed, but for patterns and blind spots that might expose flawed assumptions.
3. Prototyping in an Afternoon | Derek Pharr, CPO (Sporcle) {NEED LINK}
Faced with limited resources, Derek used Replit and Claude to build a prototype in a single afternoon. The prototype wasn’t perfect, but it gave his team a fast way to validate ideas and avoid wasting engineering time.
How they did it:
Picked a small idea worth testing without over-investing
Used Replit and Claude to generate a first-pass prototype quickly
Shared the prototype to gather immediate feedback from stakeholders
Measured engagement and identified flaws early, before committing engineering cycles
Iterated or discarded based on learnings without sunk cost
Tip for PMs: Encourage PMs to use AI code tools themselves. Even rough prototypes can clarify direction and give engineers a tangible starting point.
4. Automating PRDs and Redefining the PM Role | Roman Gun, VP of Product (Zeta Global)
Roman’s team experimented with using AI to draft PRDs, reframing them as living documents co-created with AI. This shifted PMs from being document writers to orchestrators who curate and align.
How they did it:
Asked AI to generate first-pass PRD drafts based on context and requirements
Reviewed and curated drafts, layering in team-specific insights
Treated PRDs as iterative, updating AI-generated sections as new inputs came in
Repositioned PM focus from writing to orchestration and alignment
Built team norms around AI-assisted documentation
Tip for PMs: Stop starting PRDs from a blank page. Use AI to generate the skeleton, then refine and contextualize. This frees PMs from time-consuming writing so they can focus on strategy and stakeholder buy-in.
ICYMI: LaunchPod
Jeff sits down with Prittam Bagani, VP of Product Management at Chargebee, to unpack how 10,000+ SaaS companies are navigating the biggest shift in pricing strategy since the rise of cloud.
Here’s what we cover:
How AI is forcing companies to rethink pricing - and why usage-, outcome-, and agent-based models are the future (02:25)
Why OpenAI made over 100 pricing page changes in a single year and what you can learn about agile pricing experimentation from it (06:28)
And how to build the necessary technical and product infrastructure to test pricing models in real-time across millions of users (18:37)
Leader Spotlight Roundup
Leader Spotlight: Leveraging AI to elevate personal brand building, with Karen Brophy
Karen Brophy is a veteran product and media executive with leadership roles spanning major players like Hearst, Nexstar, and Gannett. At Hearst, she served as President of Digital, overseeing product, design, and engineering across a portfolio of top-performing media brands. At Nexstar, she led digital product transformation for the largest local broadc…
Karen Brophy shares her thoughts on how to:
Make product strategic, not tactical: Brophy built product divisions at Hearst and Nexstar that generated tens to hundreds of millions in revenue, proving product’s place as a strategic driver.
Build visibility with intention: She stays on people’s radar with a monthly newsletter, quick thank-yous after meetings, and consistent, authentic engagement on LinkedIn.
Use AI as a career multiplier: She taps ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity for ideation and prep, using them to surface content ideas, role-play networking conversations, and explore job pivots.
Read more Leader Spotlights
🔥Hot🔥 discussions in PM this week
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