Zero to One: Product Journeys

About Zero to One: Product Journeys

Zero to One features bi-weekly conversations with some of the world's best Product leaders, unpacking the real decisions behind building and scaling category-defining products. Each episode focuses on trade-offs, judgment calls, and lessons that help sharpen how you think and operate as a product professional. Featured guests have come from foundational companies, including AWS, Stripe, UiPath, Twilio, Amplitude, X, Box, Google, 1Password, PrizePicks, VMware, Fitbit, Gusto, Upwind Security, Salesforce, Freshworks, PayPal, and many more.

Publisher

Raman Rajakumar

Category

technology

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

22 May 2025

Latest episode

14 Aug 2026

Latest episodes

29 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   14 Aug 2026

   Security as Architecture: Building Agents That Can Be Stopped | Piyush Gupta

   Piyush Gupta (https://www.linkedin.com/in/piyushgupta/) has been building in AI since 2005, and now leads product for the Enterprise AI Platform at Uniphore, where he works on the models and agentic layers that Fortune 100 companies are deploying. He has been a CPO three times with two exits, and before that founded a mapping company in India that Google tried to acquire, and built a mobile banking product that brought millions of people into the financial system for the first time. In this episode, we cover: Why he thinks about security as an architecture rather than a guardrail, and what a launch blocking spec for an agent actually looks like The kill switch question most agentic platforms have not answered: how fast can you pause an autonomous workflow Why the model was not the problem in the Hugging Face incident, and why Sam Altman's response is the more worrying part The difference between technology and product, and why we are deep in a technology cycle right now Building a way to send money by missed call in India, taking a year to reach 100 users, then $10M in payments the year after What the World Bank found about EKO's customers that brought him to tears Why open weight model adoption is about to accelerate, and how model training becomes part of the product development lifecycle Why evals at scale in production is still the unsolved problem blocking enterprise agents A conversation for PMs and product leaders building AI products who want to understand what actually breaks between proof of concept and production, and how to design for it before you ship.

2. 

   31 Jul 2026

   Why Understanding Human Behavior Is Still the Core Product Skill | Talia Schmerling

   Talia Schmerling (https://www.linkedin.com/in/nouromid) started out doing cancer research before switching to computer science, and her path runs through the Mayor's Office in LA, Mint.com, Disney, Nordstrom, and now as VP and Head of Product and GTM at Swiftly, alongside seven years as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Scopus Ventures. In this episode, we cover: How she talked her way into working with Dan Ariely at Intuit after discovering the company had him on retainer and wasn't using him Why prevention beats aspiration - "don't miss a transaction" outperforms "get your full financial picture" - and what loss aversion actually does to behaviour The anchoring experiment she coded and shipped herself days before Black Friday, flipping which price customers saw first, and the millions in sales it drove over one weekend Why the old PM model of writing specs and handing them off breaks down when you can prototype in days Her honest take on PMs using AI: if it's all Claude, she can just ask Claude herself Why seed to Series B companies are the most exposed right now, caught between AI native startups and incumbents with data and distribution Why she stopped presenting one-year roadmaps and what she does instead A conversation for PMs and product leaders who want to understand what the role is actually becoming, from behavioural experimentation to building in a market where the foundations shift every six months.

3. 

   10 Jul 2026

   Stop Filling the Leaky Bucket: Why Retention Comes Before Acquisition | Jaclyn Zhuang

   Jaclyn Zhuang (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaclynzhuang) grew up in Singapore, spent years consulting across Southeast Asia, and came to American tech with what she calls an outsider's view. Her path runs through Deloitte, EA, Google, Twitch, Facebook, Zoom, Atlassian, and now as a former VP of Product and GM for Eightfold AI. In this episode, we cover: How gaming at Electronic Arts taught her systems thinking - and why multiplayer game launches are one of the most demanding product environments you can work in Why she made every career move without a grand strategy, and the principle behind each one: you don't need a plan, you need a good reason The leaky bucket moment - leadership pushing hard on acquisition while retention was quietly broken, and why fixing the foundation first was the right call, even when it wasn't the exciting one Her metric for evaluating any business: seats used divided by seats sold, and what it reveals before the churn shows up Why structuring PM teams around features is a mistake, and what changes when you organize around personas instead The AI hesitation she sees outside Silicon Valley - policy vacuums, EU AI Act, workers' councils - and why the real opportunity is closing the adoption gap, not building better models Two things she's carried throughout her career: aim for the best given the circumstances, not perfect, and logic only moves people so far A conversation for PMs and product leaders who want to think more clearly about where to actually focus, from retention and org design to what enterprise AI adoption really looks like on the ground.

Who has been a guest on Zero to One: Product Journeys

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Brian Huss
• Vivek Bedi
• Nachi Periakaruppan
• Errol Apostolopoulos
• AJ Jindal

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

7 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 19 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

39

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

0

Contact Zero to One: Product Journeys

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.