Productly Speaking: Real Stories for Product Managers · 33 min
What if the thing you are closest to is actually what is blinding you? In this episode, Karl talks with Jake Bowen-Bate about the quiet, human challenges of building products in fast‑moving environments. Jake shares what it really feels like to work in places where you are building the plane, flying it, and still figuring out how the controls work, all while knowing the money might literally run out if you get it wrong. The pressure is real, the workload never quite matches the capacity, and the fear hums in the background more often than anyone likes to admit. They also dig into a surprisingly emotional story about “dogfooding” your own product. Jake reflects on the moment he stepped away from a product he had lived inside for years and started using the market leader instead. What he discovered was uncomfortable, eye‑opening, and deeply human. Features he once dismissed as nice to have suddenly became things he felt he could not live without. It forced him to confront how easy it is to lose empathy when familiarity turns into tunnel vision. This conversation is about curiosity, humility, and the emotional attachments users form that never show up neatly in a backlog.
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S3E2: Remote Realities: Product Management in a Hybrid World with Flora Taagen
S2E1: Mastering the Craft of Product Management with Michael Palmer and Evie Brockwell
S1E7: The Triad of Design, Engineering, and Product with Johannes Marbach and Callum Upfield